From the Hand to the Mind: Demography and Semiology of Paleolithic Artists through hand representations

PhD researcher: Verónica Fernández Navarro

PhD supervisor: Diego Garate Maidagan

The main goal of this Proyect is to characterize Palaeolithic artists in terms of gender and age in order to establish the regime of access to artistic activity in Palaeolithic societies. It also pretends to deepen into the meaning of these symbols through their semiotic study, depending on the recurrences in the folds of the fingers.

Among the wide diversity of figures in prehistoric rock art, representations of hands are probably the most universal symbols. In other words, these painted images are an artistic expression present in art around the world, in different continents and chronologies over thousands of years.

It is an act that implies a voluntariness, that of leaving their own mark, a part of themselves. Beyond seeing them as symbols, we should include them in the anthropomorphic theme because of their unequivocal relationship with the human being. These hands are the most reliable images we have when it comes to making a physical approach to the artists of the Upper Palaeolithic, and therefore their analysis from the palaeodemographic approach is essential. It is a way to approach the identity and the biological/anthropological characteristics of those hunter-gatherer societies of prehistory. In other words, the hands are a unique element in this sense because, at the same time, they provide direct anatomical information about the artists themselves and, moreover, they are a symbol with a series of limited variations whose semiotics can be addressed. These hands are the most reliable images we have when it comes to approaching the artists of the Upper Palaeolithic and, therefore, their analysis from the palaeodemographic approach is essential.

With this project we want to approach, for the first time, the study of hands from a global and interdisciplinary perspective. On the one hand, from the paleodemography, deepening in the identification of the European artists, in terms of gender and sex, as well as the detection of the possible pathologies that affected the paleolithic societies. On the other hand, from semiotics, we will approach the meaning of these images, through the different motor positions adopted by the fingers and the statistical study of their recurrences. The methodology applied to the archaeological study of the negative hands is based on the implementation of new technologies in order to achieve the most precise information possible and for the most profound analysis of the data.
It should be noted that geometric morphometry, an analysis technique derived from biology, has been incorporated for the first time into the palaeodemographic study. The aim is to study morphological and sexual dimorphism in the hands of today’s population, as well as those of the archaeological record.

The strengths of our methodological system lie in the fact that the basis of our work is photogrammetry, which provides rigorous measurements and a photographic and metric catalogue that can be used in the future for any type of study. In addition, the complete experimental programme will bring a series of new considerations that have not been applied to the results before and, therefore, avoiding until now possible distortions or "errors”; that the technique, disposition, orientation. . . etc. could be added.