Cornes d'aurochs (supptique pour le reexamen d'une gravure neolithique de bovide dans File morhihannaise de Gavrinis, Bretagne)

摘要

Amongst the large menhirs erected as open-air sanctuaries in the 5~th millennium BC on the present-day peninsula of Locmariaquer in the Gulf of Morbihan, the stele aux bovides stands out by the uniqueness of its horned animal figures in the engraved art of the Armorican Neolithic - whence its name - and by its "megalithic puzzle" aspect. The ornamentation of this monolith, originally more rock art than parietal art, cut into sections and reused in various dolmen capstones, presents a couple of animal outlines that are exceptional on more than one level. While the transformation of the famous quadruped of the Table-des-Marchand into a horned animal, after adding the truncated horns of the Gavrinis passage grave, is at the origin of the theoretical, connection of the two fragments of the still incomplete standing stone, it is rather the unusual horns of the other bovid, figured whole on the same slab, that caught our attention. Microwear analysis of these impressive horns indeed questions the usually accepted sexual or zoomorphic characteristics by revealing the astute association of a pair of crosses back to back in the continuation of the raised horns. This linking of signs, both common in Neolithic symbolism and unusual in this fully figurative and joined form, underlines, after deciphering, our overall simplistic vision of megalithic engravings and the obsolescence of most tracings that would benefit from updating from a technical, rather than artistic, point of view (translated by Estelle Bougard).