The "Lascaux of sculpture"

Dear friends,

It took me sometimes to manage a visit to this great site of "Roc-aux-Sorciers", or more precisely the "Centre d'Interprétation de la frise magdalénienne du Roc-aux-Sorciers".

I just wanted to highly recommend you to visit this center if you have the opportunity to come in France. It is located in the village of Angles-sur-l'Anglin, about fifty kilometers away from the city of Poitiers. Poitiers itself is less than 2 hours away from Paris by train. I visited it last Friday and it is really worth a detour...

The Center is overall very well designed. The original is not accessible but the facsimile is exceptionaly well made. Inside the building there is an animation which is primarily made for a large public but stil remarkable from a technical point of view.

Of course visiting off season has some advantages... We could take all the time to ask questions to the Center's director who was guiding the visit on that day.

The discoveries made on the original site in Angles-sur-l'Anglin in the fifties are quite important with regard to the understanding of Magdalenian culture. It is one of the rare cases where parietal art was produced in an humanly occupied environment rather than deep down in narrow caves. The dating was facilitated by the geological situation of the site. The ceiling of the hanging over cliff collapsed arround 14,000 years ago and the hearth fond on the rock bottom date about 15,000 years ago (I'm quoing from memory what I remember from the explanations of our guide) so the dating is relatively précise and limited in time. Note that the ceiling was decorated too. It is being analysed by a team of researchers in the French "Musées d'Archéologie Nationale" (St-Germain-en-Laye), under the scientifique direction of Geneviève Pinçon.

Beyond the considerable importance with regard to parietal art, associated human activities around the camp were quite interesting too. There appears to be there a technological innovation for spear heads allowing fast bleeding of animals, avoiding a slow death and having to follow the wounded animal over long distances. There seems to be also indications that some "hand axes" were not so much hand held and may have been mounted on wooded handles.

Again, I can just recommend that any one around that area should visit this place. Note that the small village of Angles-sur-l'Anglin is beautiful in itself...

Paul