Bone Pendant with Geometric Decoration
Body personal ornaments
Saint-Marcel type, Indre
Magdalenian,
21 000 to 14 000 years
The pendants [...] often have geometric or realistic decorations that correspond to portable art themes…
Y. Taborin, A. Leroi-Gourhan, Dictionnaire de la Préhistoire, P.U.F, Paris, 1988
Commentary :
It is only from the onset of the Upper Palaeolithic that personal ornaments begin to play a significant role in prehistoric societies.
Most of pendants are decorated with geometric motifs. The Saint Marcel pendant is adorned with concentric circles, connected semicircles and regularly spaced incisions.
These graphic elements are found in similar forms at other sites and express a set of symbolic codes shared among different hunter-gatherer communities.
In the Magdalanian, pendants with geometric motifs are cultural markers that indicate social status or kinship.
Intensive traces of use and reuse can result from transmission between individuals, groups or generations.