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• Paleolithic artwork with overlaping engravings provides a dynamic analyses. • The succession of the animals themes suggests story tellings. • The realization of the artwork is similar to art performance. • 3D of the panel in its space lets consider an audience watching the art in progress. • Social cohesion through stories, tellings or myths recalled in a peculiar space. This paper investigates the cognitive role of the palimpsest in cave art through the case of the Cussac Cave Grand Panel, the main engraved assemblage from this sepulchral and decorated site dated from the Middle Gravettian period (31,200–28,700 cal BP). The technical, thematic and formal unity of this monumental panel yields evidence of a short time-span for its creation. The accurate study of the superimpositions in situ and on a high resolution 3D model leads to the conception of a Harris matrix like model. It attests to a global structuring based on privileged themes interactions (taxa associations, animation and scale of depictions, relative chronology). Considering Cussac Cave Grand Panel palimpsest as a dynamic composition, the paper discusses agency and practice of accumulation in one place in Palaeolithic cave art. In the perspective of "art as action" the dynamic composition could be considered as a performance which raises the question of the audience. The monumentality of the depictions, the physical space of the chamber and the panel setting would suggest two agents: the engraver as primary agent acting towards a potential collective audience as a secondary agent. In this social context we assume that the palimpsest could have been used as a way to share and reinforce common concepts in the community. Whatever the particular semantic content of Cussac cave rock art, this study testifies to the collective dimension of cave art palimpsests, unlike most works so far which considered these specific compositions as the expression of an individual relationship to the parietal images. Thus it brings new elements of discussion on the socio-cultural functions of cave art production and cave art sites in the Palaeolithic societies of Western Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents a geoarchaeological study of Middle and Upper Palaeolithic (Châtelperronian, Aurignacian and Solutrean) occupations preserved at the Bordes-Fitte rockshelter in Central France. The lithostratigraphic sequence is composed of near-surface sedimentary facies with vertical and lateral variations, in a context dominated by run-off and gravitational sedimentary processes. Field description and micromorphological analysis permit us to reconstruct several episodes of sediment slope-wash and endokarst dynamics, with hiatuses and erosional phases. The archaeostratigraphic succession includes Châtelperronian artefacts, inter-stratified between Middle Palaeolithic and Aurignacian occupations. Systematic refitting and spatial analysis reveal that the Châtelperronian point production and flake blanks retouched into denticulates, all recovered in the same stratigraphic unit, result from distinct and successive occupations and are not a ‘transitional’ Middle to Upper Palaeolithic assemblage. The ages obtained by 14C place the Châtelperronian occupation in the 41–48 ka cal BP (calibrated thousands of years before present) interval and are consistent with the quartz optically stimulated luminescence age of 39 ± 2 ka and feldspar infra-red stimulated luminescence age of 45 ± 2 ka of the sediments. The Bordes-Fitte rockshelter sequence represents an important contribution to the debate about the characterization and timing of the Châtelperronian, as well as its affinities to earlier and later industries. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]