Cougnac Caves（ I looked into Cougnac Cave, but Wikipedia only had an article in French, so I am writing down the author’s tentative translation as a personal memo. In addition, since we could not find an English version of the page, we have also posted a provisional translation by the author of the English version.(hereinbelow).
Cougnac Caves
44° 45′ 38″ N, 1° 21′ 47″ E
Cougnac Caves
Location
Contact details
44° 45′ 38″ N, 1° 21′ 47″ E
Country
France
Region
Occitania
Department
Batch
Municipality
Payrignac
Address
The Green Oak
Features
Kind
Limestone
Human occupation
-25,000 years and -14,000 years
Heritage
Classified MH (1954)
Geolocation on the map: France
(See location on map: France)
(See location on map: France)
(See location on map: Occitanie)
(See location on map: Lot)
The Cougnac caves are located in the French commune of Payrignac near Gourdon, in the Lot department, in the Occitanie region.
The site is made up of two caves approximately 200 meters apart: the first has numerous concretions, some of which are very fine, are called Soda straw(tubular stalactites), the second is a decorated cave from the Paleolithic.
History
The Cougnac caves were discovered in 1949 and 1952 by Lucien Gouloumes, René Borne, Jean Mazet, Roger, Maurice Boudet and Alphonse Sauvant following a drought. The decorated cave was classified as a Historic Monument in 1954*1. The two caves have been accessible to the public for around fifty years.
These caves served as a setting for
a school outing scene in the film Le Boucher by Claude Chabrol filmed in 1969 and released in 1970, and in
a final scene from Georges Lautner’s film A Few Gentlemen Too Quiet, filmed in 1972 and released on January 25, 1973.
The decorated cave
The decorated cave of Cougnac has yielded numerous prehistoric paintings dating from the Upper Paleolithic.
The figures include megaceros deer, ibexes, mammoths as well as various schematic human figures, including two interpreted as “wounded men” which are found almost identically at the Pech Merle cave. Their description was carried out by Michel Lorblanchet.
Direct dating could be carried out using the carbon-14 method on samples of charcoal used for certain drawings. They showed that the parietal decorations corresponded to at least two clearly distinct phases:
one around 25,000 years before the present (Gravettian) corresponds to animal representations;
the other around 14,000 years before the present (Magdalenian) corresponds to punctuations.
The Pech Merle museum offers an analysis of the prehistoric works of the Cougnac cave.
Tourist exploitation
The Cougnac caves have been open to the public since 1954. Around 25,000 people visit the site every year.
Notes and references
“Notice n°PA00095181 [archive]”, on the open heritage platform, Mérimée base, French Ministry of Culture
L2TC.com – Film Shooting Locations, “A few gentlemen too quiet (1973) [archive]”, on l2tc.com (accessed October 4, 2008).
Michel Lorblanchet, Cave Art: Decorated Caves of Quercy, September 2012 (ISBN 978-2-8126-0164-4)
See as well
Bibliography
Lorblanchet, M. Cougnac, the magical caves, Éditions Grottes de Cougnac, reissue 2004.
Lorblanchet, M. The prehistoric art of Quercy, Édition Loubatières, 2004.
Lorblanchet, M. The decorated caves of Prehistory, new views, Éditions Errance, 1995.
Lorblanchet, M. Discovery of a decorated cave: Cougnac en Quercy, Éditions Grottes de Cougnac, CD ROM.
Lorblanchet, M. “Payrignac, Cougnac cave, dating of parietal pigments with radiocarbon”, Scientific report 1992, SRA DRAC Midi-Pyrénées, p. 99-100, 1993.
external links
Architecture resource: Mérimée
Caves of Cougnac [archive], official site.
The Cougnac caves [archive], tourist site.
The Cougnac caves [archive] seen by the pupils of the Payrignac primary school.
Related articles
Upper Paleolithic
Prehistoric art
List of French Paleolithic sites
[display]
v m
Caving and archaeology: Decorated caves or caves with archaeological deposits
[display]
Caving and underground tourism: tourist caves and chasms
decorative icon Lot Portal
decorative icon Portal of Prehistory
decorative icon Archeology Portal
decorative icon Portal of French historical monuments
decorative icon Caving Portal
Categories:
Ornate cave in France
Cave in the Lot
Tourist cave in the Occitanie region
Prehistoric site in the Lot
Historical monument in the Lot
Cave historical monument in France
Historical monument classified in 1954
Gravettian
Magdalenian
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