Grotte Chauvet-Pont d'Arc: the dating of the parietal art

Anita Quiles and colleagues' study on the dating of the parietal art of Grotte Chauvet-Pont d'Arc, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2016, is a peer reviewed radiocarbon dating study that examined charcoal from the cave's paintings and occupation layers directly, refining the chronology of one of the oldest known collections of parietal art. Its strength is that it is primary scientific dating evidence published in a leading peer reviewed general science journal, methodologically independent of any interpretation of what the images meant to the people who made them. Its limit is that radiocarbon dating establishes when the charcoal was made, strong evidence for when the associated images were painted but not direct evidence of intent or meaning, so a claim about the religious or ritual significance of the Chauvet paintings needs an archaeological or art historical source that argues that interpretation, not this dating study alone.