Carole Fritz

My research is part of the general theoretical framework of the study of symbolic thought by Homo sapiens sapiens, more particularly in the vast field of reflection that constitutes Paleolithic art. My work is oriented as much towards a diversification of the analyzed supports (art of the objects known as «  mobilier art " and art of the caves and shelters known as " parietal ") as towards a chrono-cultural and geographical widening of the assemblages. Indeed, the corpus of study extends from the Aurignacian to the Magdalenian, implying a broad chronological framework from -40,000 BP to -12,000 BP. To conduct research on early art is a bit like exploring a "library" of images, portable art and parietal, the corpus of the first complex symbolic expressions. To consider the study of art as secondary in a global reflection on Paleolithic societies is a major error; because it would be equivalent to considering research on religions or spirituality as insignificant in the history of proto and historical societies. However it is in the depths of the caves or on modest fragments of bone or stone, that these hunters who were also artists, left a part of their vision of the world, a bestiary, signs and hermetic symbols, leaving us also for delicate but ambitious mission to find one or several meanings. The image, as soon as it is socially invested, becomes an allegory that we must know how to interpret in order to understand the narrative of collective arrangement that it carries. In recent years, I have chosen to reorient my research towards an approach that is much more open to other interpretive fields (cultural anthropology, psychology of form, cognitivist psychology, Gouldian perspectives, etc.) in order to propose an "Anthropology of Paleolithic art". My objective is indeed to understand the psycho-social matrices that created the cultural collectives of the Upper Paleolithic. The graphic expressions and the myths they illustrate are the keys to the strong links that unite humans and non-humans. The image translates a perception of the world, a representation of the past, the present and the future; it is a human memorial heritage, transmitted from generation to generation. Through the study of Paleolithic art, I propose a cultural anthropology of these societies.