Finger fluting

In prehistoric art, finger flutings are lines that fingers leave on a soft surface. Considered a form of cave painting, they occur in caves throughout southern Australia, New Guinea, and southwestern Europe, and were presumably made over a considerable time span including some or all of the Upper Paleolithic. Most are not obvious figures or symbols but, rather, appear to many observers as enigmatic lines. They are also called tracés digitaux or finger tracings and (though these terms are also in part interpretative) meanders, macaroni, and serpentines. The term finger fluting was coined by Robert Bednarik.

Generally they are made in a substance called moonmilk. Sometimes they are made through a thin clay film into moonmilk underneath or perhaps just into clay.

As Henri Breuil has published, finger flutings have been recognized since the early days of the 20th century in Europe as Paleolithic. Their recognition as having a similar antiquity outside of Europe lay chiefly in the hands of Sandor (Alexander) Gallus and then in Koonalda Cave in Australia. Many other sites both in Europe and Australia have been found, some of the more famous being Gargas and Baume Latronne caves in France and the cave of Altamira in Spain.

Bednarik continues to publish sites that contain flutings, but current forward research into finger flutings is mainly being carried out by Kevin J. Sharpe and Leslie Van Gelder. They have developed the following methods for this purpose. Their cornerstones include multiple examinations of the flutings under investigation, experimentation, and the initial and primarily setting aside of questions of meaning (as such assumptions can determine what investigators then see in the flutings). The physical data in the flutings themselves comprise what they seek: how the fluters constructed their flutings, how the flutings functioned with respect to one other and, if possible, how the flutings functioned for the fluters. Sharpe and Van Gelder use a specific terminology for their studies and call upon three analyses.

A fluter makes a fluting by sweeping his or her fingers across a soft surface; a unit comprises flutings drawn with one sweep of one hand or finger; the profile of a unit or a fluter comprises the silhouette of the finger tops left in the medium from the fluting; a cluster comprises an isolatable group of units that exhibit a unity, for instance because they overlay each other; and a panel comprises a collection of clusters that appears geographically or otherwise distant from other clusters or on a surface of reasonably uniform orientation.

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