Episodes of ice age cave artists - analyses of human spoor with indigenous knowledge and western science

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Based on three pilot studies (2013 to 2015) the research project proposed here will focus on late Pleistocene and early Holocene human spoor in painted caves in southwestern France. Indigenous trackers from Namibia will investigate spoor in selected caves with their own methods. The same spoor will be analysed with actual western methods within the frame of the research project proposed here in order to compare the expected results from both fields of knowledge. The analyses of human spoor in painted caves are desiderata in prehistoric research since the 1970s although they provide important information about the use of painted caves. The research project proposed here has three main goals: 1. evaluation of the results produced in 2013, 2. generation of new data from selected painted caves, and 3. layout of a hybrid science for the interpretation of human footprints. The last point will be developed in close connection with the other two projects applied for in package Archaeology and indigenous knowledge (DFG 944/1) with Tilman Lenssen-Erz (Köln) and Peter Breunig (Frankfurt).Especially the setup of a hybrid science of reading human spoor with indigenous knowledge and with western scientific methods will spread sustainably into the archaeological sciences and also into the wider public.