Fragments d'images, images de fragments. La statuaire gravettienne, du geste au symbole.

摘要

The work is based on the meaning and function of female Gravettian sculptures. It raised and tested the hypothesis of a ritual usage leading to the intentional fragmentation of sculptures which is widely observed in European research. The study material is a series of animal and human female sculptures originating from Kostienki 1.1 which is a Gravettian site of the Russian plain dated around 23.000 years B.C. The series is one of the most important with 297 sculpted items including 289 made of limestone and 8 of ivory. A specific methodology was developed for allowing a classification of items that was required for building a register of representations (images). The classification was done according to the place of the items in the production line (blank, figurine outline, finished shape) and to their completeness (full, incomplete, fragment). Three main approaches were used: search for morphological and technical recurrences, defect reconstruction and direct experimentation. The study allows describing a technical system which was barely known before (sculpture of Gravettian "ronde-bosse"), categorizing new representation codes distant from visual realism and questioning the fragmental nature of most of the representations. We suggest that fragmented sculptures do not result from the fragmentation of representations but express rather the representation of a fragmented female bodies. In addition to the topic of body's fragmentation, representations of gestation are also frequently observed in the series. The iconographic interpretation of those topics together with the analysis of indices reflecting the material usage of sculptures led to new functional hypotheses.