TROIS FRRES, LES

cave in southern France, discovered in 1914, containing an important group of monumental Late Paleolithic (c. 40,000c. 10,000 BC) paintings and engravings of the Franco-Cantabrian school, which flourished mainly in the limestone caves of central and southwestern France and northern Spain. The majority of these pictures of animals and half-animal, half-human figures, representing both major phases of Franco-Cantabrian art, the Aurignacian and the Magdalenian, are located on the walls of a deep interior chamber called the sanctuary. Its entrance flanked by two lion's heads, the sanctuary is filled with the overlapping figures of bison, stags, reindeer, horses, and ibex, some 280 figures in all. The most striking feature of the cave, however, is the prominent representation of human or half-human figures, a theme that is extremely rare in Franco-Cantabrian mural art. Scattered among the figures of animals are several figures that seem to represent human magicians or ritual dancers, shown with the heads and sometimes forequarters of bison. Also among the animals are small, distorted pictures of human faces that have been interpreted as images of the souls of the animals. Finally, unique to the cave, is a painting with engraved outlines of a sorcerer figure, half man and half stag; it dominates the mass of figures from a height of 13 feet (4 m) from the cave floor, with a clarity of composition unusual in Franco-Cantabrian art. The significance of the sorcerer is unknown, but it probably represents some sort of Great Spirit, presiding over the figures of animals and dancers below; perhaps it is conceived as the master of hunting and of animal fertility. The unusual dramatic conception of the sanctuary's decoration may reflect magical ceremonies carried on in the chamber.