Anne Bertrand-Callède, PhD Anthropology-Ethnology-Prehistory, Nantes, France
I have worked several months in the Cerma, and I have discovered the world of the architectural and urban ambiances, “lighting ambiance”, “sound ambiance”, “thermic ambiance”, “visual ambiance”…
As Prehistorian, with the period preferred the Upper Paleolithic, this research seemed far removed from that of prehistoric man, and associate this time with the concept of architectural ambiance seemed unscientific.
Indeed, the notion of architectural ambiance is mainly based on sensitive perception of the built environment and the comfort and research of these ambiances is based on the study of physical phenomena such as light, heat, humidity, wind, sun, darkness on the visual perception of the environment, space around us.
Now can we talk about environment built in Upper Paleolithic while human is an integral part of its natural environment that he has not changed and not really built?
At the Upper Paleolithic, a period dating from 35,000 years to 9000 BC, several cultures succeed. The men live mainly by hunting, fishing and gathering and all are living well in small groups: they are nomads whose movements are essentially those of their game. The fire is under control for centuries, they bury their dead, the first burials dating from 80,000 years BC. All have practiced the art, whether portable (on object), on the walls in deep caves, in rock shelters or outdoors. These men acquired during the Upper Paleolithic quality of life much more advanced than people today realize.
In terms of habitat, depending on where it is located, Upper Paleolithic human lives either in tents, while it is plain, or in rock shelters at the foot of the cliffs, or the entrance to the caves, sometimes in dwellings built with tusks and bones of mammoth, as is the case in Moravia, Russia and Ukraine. We could talk for the last of the first architecture, it is more difficult to do for tents.The image of prehistoric man living in the deep caverns is generally false, we know only a few examples.
With certainty, as regards habitat, the choice of settlements is not indifferent to exposure to the sun, its warmth and its light, to the wind, cold can make it … Furthermore, it is likely that these phenomena had their roles in the interior of the habitat.
The caves painting are much more difficult to study, although such phenomena as light, the shadows have been important at the level of visual perception. It is certain that the light – artificial – available to the prehistoric man was involved in the animation of the parietal figures, and generally, to the mysterious atmosphere of depths of caves. Now we find paintings, carvings and sculptures of these caves in a context separate from that of prehistoric man, with a very different light…
Questions concerning the role of light, heat, wind, their importance in the prehistoric settlement, in the underground world of caves paintings have reason to be asked.
However, many data are unknown and it is difficult to assess. Prehistoric men knew then fire. Light – beyond its natural – heat were made in dwellings at the household level that we find during the excavations. They also realized grease lamps which they used to go into dark areas of caves and torches as we watch the traces of trimming on the walls. But how to measure the importance and rendering of light sources ? If, through experimentation, the output of a lamp fat is known to us, we do not know their number, location.
Similarly, the importance of the sun or natural light in the rock shelters or caves entrance is often impossible to estimate because the canopy shelters and the entrance porch of caves have partly collapsed …when the latter is that of prehistoric man.
Following this very brief summary of life in Upper Paleolithic, it is easy to perceive that the physical phenomena at the base of scientific research ambiances – light, heat, humidity, wind, sun, the darkness – have a major role in human prehistory. Certainly he was looking for quite some comfort in its habitat, that visual perception in the caves paintings was an important … But can we go ahead and talk to the ambiance in Upper Paleolithic while prehistoric man does has not yet built his environment?
As Prehistorian I ask myself, why the concept of ambiances is related to built spaces ? It is difficult not to speak of ambiance when we are at the heart of a cave decorated with dark, or in a rock shelter or at the entrance of a cave where prehistoric man lived when the sun enters…
