The Chauvet cave at Vallon-Pont-d’Arc in the Ardèche was discovered on December 18, 1994. It has been on UNESCO’s World Heritage List since June 22, 2014, as it represents a masterpiece of human creative genius, with 435 animal figurations recorded, and a unique testimony to a vanished civilization (UNESCO).
In 1995, the first samples from the walls of the Chauvet cave were taken from five charcoal marks on parietal graphic works, corresponding to the two rhinoceroses facing each other, the large bison, the cow, the horse and two torch markings (Valladas et al., 2001).
These first radiocarbon (14C) dates revealed the cave’s human presence and described the fauna that existed, such as mammoths, megaceroses, rhinoceroses, felines, bison, bears, horses, aurochs, ibex, deer…
Subsequently, new samples of Chauvet cave art were taken during new field campaigns in 1998, 1999, May 2000, April 2009, March 2012 and most recently in March 2022.
The collected coals were chemically treated to remove all traces of contaminants, then oxidized in the presence of copper and silver wire to carbon dioxide, then reduced in the presence of hydrogen and iron to graphite and compacted into a target.
Until 2012, samples were analyzed on the Tandetron gas pedal mass spectrometer, then from 2013 on the ARTEMIS gas pedal mass spectrometer.
Since 2018, radiocarbon dates on cave art have been obtained on a new generation of gas pedal mass spectrometer called ECHoMICADAS. This instrument has made it possible to reduce the quantity of charcoal taken from samples of parietal art (on the order of 2 to 3 milligrams). They are first chemically treated and then transformed in the presence of pure oxygen in the form of CO2 on a dedicated vacuum line called a “microline”, which collects between 150 µg and 25 µg of carbon in micro-tubes.
The latest mission carried out by N. Tisnérat-Laborde, H. Valladas and C. Fritz in 2022 in the Chauvet cave yielded micro-charcoal samples of pine wood (Pinus sylvestris/nigra) from the back room on the lions, an ibex and the Venus counterpart…
Direct dating on the black charcoal drawings confirmed two periods of occupation of the cavity, with an early Aurignacian phase between 37 and 34,000 years ago and a more recent Gravettian phase between 34,000 and 25,000 years ago.
These results show that 37,000 years ago, man was already capable of creating masterpieces.
Reference: Valladas H, Clottes J, Geneste J-M, Garcia MA, Arnold M, Cachier H, Tisnérat-Laborde N. 2001. Palaeolithic paintings: evolution of prehistoric cave art. Nature 413(6855):479