For the first time, researchers have directly measured the age of the ancient artwork on the walls of the Font-de-Gaume grotto, a cavern in France painted with colorful motifs of bison, horses, and other large fauna (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2026, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2524751123). Because the naturalistic styling is characteristic of Paleolithic artwork found elsewhere, researchers long assumed that the paintings were made 18,000–16,000 years ago. But until “our experiments, nobody could really give experimental proof that these paintings are indeed Paleolithic,” says Ina Reiche, a research chemist at the French National Center for Scientific Research.
Font-de-Gaume is one of many caves designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Dordogne region of France. Because of the historical significance of the cave art, touching the walls of Font-de-Gaume is forbidden. The only exception is for collecting a sample to conduct radiocarbon dating, as the analytical technique intrinsically requires some physical material, Reiche says.
Unfortunately, since the cave was discovered in 1902, it was widely accepted that the drawings of large fauna were done with inorganic iron and manganese oxide–based pigments. There seemed to be no carbon to sample.
Then, in 2023, Reiche and her team used three noninvasive imaging techniques and found that some of the art in the main gallery was actually drawn in charcoal (Sci. Rep. 2023, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-47652-1). It was a surprise—that area has been open to the public for over 120 years. Finally, with multiple independent threads of evidence showing some art was carbon-based, the team requested that French authorities grant permission to collect samples for radiocarbon dating. They approved the request.
A researcher uses a small tool to remove some black pigment from a cave wall.
After a team of researchers used noninvasive techniques to confirm that a bison in the Font-de-Gaume cave was drawn with charcoal, Ingrid Caffy collects a tiny sample of the pigment (shown here) to analyze via radiocarbon dating. The scientists discovered the age of the sample to be between 13,162 and 13,461 years old—confirming for the first time that the cave art was indeed drawn by Paleolithic people.
Credit:
National Monuments Center (CMN)/Regional Archaeology Service
In 2024, Reiche and her team used the same noninvasive techniques to show that two drawings—a bison figure and an abstract mask figure—were carbon-based. They also added reflectance imagining spectroscopy (RIS) to their repertoire. The method essentially combines imaging and spectroscopy, and might be “even better with respect to what we did before,” Reiche says.
The scientists collected four tiny pigment samples, one from the bison and three from the mask. The team then used accelerator mass spectrometry to determine the concentration of carbon-14 in each sample and calculated the ages. Three of the four samples date to the Paleolithic era, but the left eye of the mask was markedly younger. Reiche says that it’s clear the left eye contains younger carbon but impossible to know if it came from purposeful retouching, accidental contamination, or more recent graffiti.
Dating rock art is one of the greatest challenges in archeology, according to Inés Domingo Sanz, an archeologist at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies who was not involved in the new work. Carbon-based pigments are not always present in cave art, and the organic binders used in inorganic pigments are often long decomposed.
“Any opportunity we have to obtain dates is really important, because it helps us fix the art to particular periods of time,” Domingo Sanz says. The precision of radiocarbon dating allows scientists to better understand how groups of people used sites over the ages. But collecting and dating at least two samples from a single drawn figure is vital to confirm that the dates are correct. In this case, “we need, I think, more data to be able to rely on the results obtained so far,” Domingo Sanz says.
Even so, Domingo Sanz thinks this study is a good example of how ancient cave art can be ethically sampled. And it’s exciting to have the first directly dated art in a region with many important Paleolithic sites, such as Lascaux, she says. “We archeologists use chemistry and imaging to answer archeological questions.” And she’s interested to see what new questions arise or old questions are answered by these new dates.
Chemical & Engineering News
ISSN 0009-2347
Copyright ©
2026 American Chemical Society