The Bronze Age Decorated Cave of Les Fraux: Ritual Uses of an Atypical French Heritage Site

The Bronze Age decorated cave of Les Fraux (Dordogne, France) combines cave art and evidence for domestic and symbolic activities. The interdisciplinary research which has been conducted on the site since 2007 attempts to untangle the interwoven uses of this cave for later prehistoric communities, during short but regular human visitations, by combining chronology, interactions between individuals and their environment, and emerging technologies. The cave seems first to have been characterised by symbolic activity (cave art, votive deposits), becoming increasingly used for domestic activities. One aim of the research was the interpretation of archaeological data within a framework which combined space and time, from data acquisition, implementation of site monitoring, experimentation and simulation to reconstruction. We employed an integrative research approach based on new technologies, involving full 3D documentation of the entire site and processing of interdisciplinary data according to accurate 3D models of the cave, which provided a common framework for the various studies and partners involved. The difficulty of our study, however, lies in the definition and the meaning of ritual or symbolic gesture, as practiced in a cave context.