PALART425-001 - archaeological find
La Madeleine chevron fragment
Dordogne - Tursac; Magdalenian attribution - Europe - Southwest France
Archaeological datec. 15,000–9000 BCBroad Magdalenian cultural attribution; object not directly dated.
Function not recorded Candidate only
The Magdalenian takes its name from this shelter under the cliff above the Vézère, the last great culture of Ice Age Europe. This thin strip of bone, three and a half centimetres long, came from it. Two aligned runs of multi-line chevrons were cut across it, and the start of a third; the body they were cut into broke away long ago, leaving the pattern and the perforation standing beside the fracture.
- Object
- Thin, perforated bone fragment, broken across the body; 3.5 × 1.1 × 0.3 cm.
- Function
- Not recorded.
- Source
- British Museum online collection record H_Palart-425: decorated Magdalenian bone pendant fragment, 3.5 × 1.1 × 0.3 cm; excavated by Henry Christy and Edouard Lartet at La Madeleine (Tursac) in 1863
- Source location
Page references
British Museum collection object Palart.425
- Source confidence
- low Abri de la Madeleine, Tursac, Dordogne; the British Museum record names the findspot but provides no coordinates.