somehow connecting the hand and the pigment with the cave wall surface (Lewis-
Williams, 2002:217-8).
I n some instances, there are faint finger marks; in most cases the fingers
were held back so that only the palm touched the surface. All the prints are of a
right hand and a bent little finger (Lewis-Williams, 2002:218), however, is now clear
that these handprints are more complex and intentional than previously thought.
For many years, researchers tended to regard the placement of images of different
species of animals as the most important defining gesture of the patterned use of a
cave. I n doing so, they were following workers such as Abbé Breuil and, more
especially, André Leroi-Gourhan who believed that he had found an intentional
structure in the locations in which Upper Palaeolithic people placed images of, on
the one hand, horses and aurochs, and, on the other, bison. Yet the placing of
paint, a highly charged substance, on the membrane of the cave, was a highly
significant act, dotted handprints and their colouring (red) had to suggest
something more meaningful and universal in the images (Lewis-Williams,
2002:218). There are other puzzling motifs; on one small rock shelf there are finger
punctuations in the soft surface and a small sliver of bone was also thrust into the
clay. These are clearly meaningful ‘gestures to the cave’, the need to touch the rock
surface, “... the membrane between people and a subterranean spirit world” (Lewis-
Williams, 2002:217).
Figure 2. Hand dots in Chauvet Cave. (www.bradshawfoundation.com/ hands/ chauvet.html^ )Figure 3. Handprint in the cave at Pech Merle (com/ vismath1/ avital/ hand1.jpg)^