Artifacts, animals and art: a phenomenological approach to René Neuville’s rock art

In this paper, we focus on an enigmatic finding from Oumm Qatafa cave, that was published as a news release by René Neuville in 1932, namely the presence of Paleolithic rock art depicting animals on the cave wall. These images wererecognized by Neuville and his team at the end of the 1932 excavation season. Subsequently, this claim disappeared fromthe archaeological literature, apparently having been refuted by the 1960’s, if not earlier. Our research, investigates thisincident in the context of the history of research as well as a reconstruction of the lighting conditions in the cave on thatday, and offers several possible explanations for this perplexing ‘discover