title: The chronology of hand stencils in European Palaeolithic rock art: implications of new U-series results from El Castillo Cave (Cantabria, Spain).
abstract: The hand stencils of European Paleolithic art tend to be considered of pre-Magdalenian age and scholars have generally assigned them to the Gravettian period. At El Castillo Cave, application of U-series dating to calcite accretions has established a minimum age of 37,290 years for underlying red hand stencils, implying execution in the earlier part of the Aurignacian if not beforehand. Together with the series of red disks, one of which has a minimum age of 40,800 years, these motifs lie at the base of the El Castillo parietal stratigraphy. The similarity in technique and colour support the notion that both kinds of artistic manifestations are synchronic and define an initial, non-figurative phase of European cave art. However, available data indicate that hand stencils continued to be painted subsequently. Currently, the youngest, reliably dated examples fall in the Late Gravettian, approximately 27,000 years ago.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Geografía, Prehistoria y Arquelogía, Facultad de Letras, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, c/ Tomás y Valiente s/n, 01006 Vitoria-Gazteiz, Álava, Spain, marcos.garcia@ehu.es.
authors.forename: Marcos
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: García-Diez
authors.affiliation: Cuevas Prehistóricas de Cantabria, Sociedad Regional de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, 39670 Puente Viesgo, Cantabria, Spain.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Garrido
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Department of Human Evolution, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, German.
authors.forename: Dirk
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hoffmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Archaeology, Durham University, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, U.K.
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pettitt
authors.affiliation: Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, Avenue Campus, Highfield Road, Southampton, SO17 1BF, U.K.
authors.forename: Alistair
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pike
authors.affiliation: University of Barcelona÷ICREA, Departament de Prehistória, História Antiga i Arqueologia, "Grup de Recerca" SERP SGR2014-00108, c÷ Montalegre 6, 08001 Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Joao
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zilhão
mesh_terms: D001106:Archaeology; D001154:Art / Q000266:history*; D059552:Caves; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D055110:Radiometric Dating; D013030:Spain