Finger fluting

They are also called tracés digitaux or finger tracings and (though these terms are also in part interpretative) meanders, macaroni, and serpentines.

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.

In terms of the field methodology, having become familiar with a cluster, an Internal Analysis of it is carried out, specially noting the directions of the flutings and their overlays.

In this, they record where possible whether the left or right hand made the unit under examination, as indicated by the presence of marks that the first or fifth finger – written F1 or F5 – would make.

Sharpe and Van Gelder's work has focused on flutings found in the French caves of Rouffignac, in the Dordogne, and Gargas in the Hautes Pyrenees.

They are seen, for example, as representing such things as the first scribbles by humans, though intuitive and random but serpentines (Breuil); water related (Marshack); entopic shapes or phosphenes (Bednarik); huts, comets, or rivers, or linear-phallic and male symbols in the statistical placement of signs within a cave (Leroi-Gourhan); snakes (and thereby associated with death) (Barrière); psycho-neurological archetypes (Gallus); hunting marks (Barrière); shamanic ritual (Lewis-Williams).

Investigators bring to their study and tie their methods to preconceived notions as to what is meaningful, what constitutes a pattern, and what they think is the origin of fluting making.