Prehistoric art is today the focus of continued interest, as shown by the several books, papers, conferences, and projects each year devoted to the subject—and, perhaps more importantly, by the millions of visitors that all over the world visit sites, replicas, and museums exhibiting such imagery. If, at first sight, this figure may seem exaggerated, visitors to the Chauvet cave replica alone have reached almost 600,000 in the first year of opening (Midi Libre, 2016). Hence, adding figures from other prehistoric rock art attractions in Europe such as the caves, museums, and interpretation centres located in the Franco-Cantabrian region, the open-air sites of Valcamonica (Italy), Alta (Norway), Tanum (Sweden), or the Côa Valley (Portugal) to visitor numbers at extra-European sites may render the aforementioned number quite unproblematic to consider.

Thus, Images of the Ice Age, a revised and extended third edition of a book originally published in 1988 and co-authored by the late French cave art photographer Jean Vertut, is a most-welcome publication, further confirming Bahn's ability to write with flare and scientific rigour. The author is a well-known expert on prehistoric art, especially that originating from the European Upper Palaeolithic. For over three decades he has been writing insightful pieces that have the merit of clearly framing contemporary debates regarding prehistoric art, notably that arising from the Ice Age.

After presenting the necessary historiographical account of how prehistoric art was first recognised in Europe, with the discovery in the 1800s of the first decorated artefacts and caves in France and Spain (Chapter 1, ‘The Discovery of Ice Age Art’), Bahn proceeds to discuss whether only ‘anatomically modern humans’ (p. 32) had art (Chapter 2, ‘The Oldest “Art” in the World’). The case presented, drawing on a small but convincing number of finds from the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic, suggests that the capacity for art and aesthetic appreciation of objects is not to be attributed solely to H. sapiens sapiens. Indeed, as Bahn points out, Lower Palaeolithic hand-axes are tools that gain limited practical benefit from possessing an aesthetic dimension. Nevertheless, the discussed examples do possess aesthetic attributes, patent in their symmetrical shapes (pp. 21–24). Further evidence is discussed with reference to finds that have been unearthed at, among other sites, Gibraltar's Gorham Cave. These suggest that complex thought processes leading to the capacity for abstraction and art were present in early modern humans as well as in Neanderthals, and perhaps (why not?) in Denisovans or in the fourth intermingling subspecies whose traces have so far been only identified in DNA; all Eurasian contemporaries during the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic transition. Further discoveries will no doubt contribute to more thorough mapping and attribution of the ‘invention’ of art to predecessors of H. sapiens sapiens, further confirming that no ‘human revolution’ occurred (pp. 32‒33). On the contrary, the prehistoric surfacing of innovative attributes such as art, more than arising as ‘just’ another competitive evolutionary advantage, has been part of the long process by which humans have become (and see themselves as) (modern) humans. There was no great ‘eureka’ moment, but a succession of such small instants, which may or may not have been chained together (pp. 32‒33).

The notion of ‘independent invention of art’ can also be applied to the wealth of prehistoric art finds throughout the world, as concisely detailed in Chapter 3 (‘A Worldwide Phenomenom’), more than sufficient to substantiate the argument for abandoning once and for all the suggestion of an exclusively European ‘discovery’ of art (p. 35). Indeed, the extraordinary collection of prehistoric artistic treasures found in the (sub)continent and the set of historical circumstances that led to Western-dominated scientific development, namely in the creation of archaeology as a discipline, perhaps explain why it was here that these finds first occurred and were valued by scientific discourse. However, around the same period art with remarkably similar themes to European ones (hand-stencils, zoomorphic depictions), was being made at tropical locations on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia (Aubert et al., Reference Aubert, Brumm, Ramli, Sutikna, Saptomo, Hakim, Morwood, van der Bergh, Kinsley and Dosseto2014). Moreover, as other locations throughout the world have supplied more Pleistocene dates, it is expectable that as research progresses more ‘age-astounding’ parietal art finds surface in different points of the globe, Europe included.

A thorough review of methodological matters is instrumental to the correct framing of the debate: what can be considered as prehistoric art? How to document and date it? Chapters 4‒9 examine such questions. As there are many different forms of prehistoric artistic manifestations (for instance, portable and ‘immovable’ art; statuettes and bas-reliefs; finger flutings, paintings, and engravings; located in the open air and in caves) the methods to document and interpret it differ widely. Especially insightful is the discussion on the subjectivity of documentation work (pp. 80‒84) when noting that each research period has valued different techniques and produced records that emphasize diverse traits, on occasion of the same art object, following the preferred interpretative model of the time (pp. 329‒31). Nevertheless, direct contact methods are fortunately being abandoned, taking advantage of possibilities offered by advances in digital recording techniques. Even if new and less intrusive materials are available for casts (p. 71), the current tendency in opting for non-contact procedures should continue to be followed by researchers when carrying out documentation work.

Controversies regarding dating matters are addressed in Chapter 5. Bahn is correct to point out that no data should ‘be accepted unquestioningly’ but rather valued within consistent models that also resort to style as a valid indicator of prehistoric artistic cycles (p. 107). After all, considering a case-study such as the major rock art complex at the Côa Valley, it is clear that the site, as others, possesses different artistic cycles (Upper Palaeolithic, Iron Age, contemporary period, to mention just some; see Baptista, Reference Baptista2009). So, perhaps the long heralded death of style (see discussion in Lorblanchet & Bahn, Reference Lorblanchet and Bahn1993) as an age indicator has not yet arrived. When combined, where feasible, with other currently available dating methods, it can lead to a broad rapprochement of rock art research practices.

One of the sections that has benefited from extensive (and needed) revision is Chapter 9, ‘Art in the Open Air’. The discovery in 1994 of the open air Côa Valley complex led to an important shift in paradigms for understanding Ice Age art as it signalled that the exclusive use of the historiographically more traditional term cave art is misleading. Discoveries of other open air sites in Europe (e.g. Gonnersdorf, Germany) and in the Mediterranean basin (e.g. Qurta, Egypt) in the last twenty years further confirmed what the magnitude of the Côa Valley (some 500 engraved outcrops featuring Pleistocene art comprising over a thousand individual motifs) already implied: during the Upper Palaeolithic rock art was being made in caves but also in the open air. These finds illustrate the highly adaptative character of the human mind: within a wide cultural context that spanned from the south of France to the banks of the Côa, passing through the Picos de Europa mountain range in northern Spain, where the depicted large herbivores constituted ‘common’ symbolic canons, communities used what nature provided locally. The fact that there were no caves at Côa didn't stop humans from placing their significant symbols on the smooth vertical schist diaclases and granite canyon walls available on the margins of the Portuguese river.

The most stimulating sections of the volume (Chapters 10‒12, ‘What Was Depicted?’, ‘Reading the Messages’, and ‘Conclusion’) are those where Bahn is indeed brave enough to tackle the most difficult question in rock art studies: ‘But what does it mean?’. The author offers a helpful debate on the theories proposed through the years (pp. 275‒312). Moving forward from traditional views encompassing art for art's sake, hunting magic, or shamanism, Bahn addresses the significant contribution to the debate mainly arising from Leroi-Gourhan's (Reference Leroi-Gourhan1964) and Laming-Emperaire's (Reference Laming-Emperaire1962) work. These structuralist authors suggested that there is almost nothing haphazard in Upper Palaeolithic rock art as shown by the choice of depicted themes (overwhelmingly large herbivores), the precise spots selected for engraving and/or painting, or the stereotypical nature of motifs. Finally, more recent contributions applying information technologies, neuropsychology, and mnemonics to rock art interpretation are also reviewed. Bahn rightly points out that the insights drawn from these contributions are somewhat unexciting (pp. 331‒36), ultimately fostering circular debates.

It has previously been suggested that ‘in a way, it does not matter what the images meant. Rather, it is a case of how today they are perceived to have meant to their creators’ (Fernandes, Reference Fernandes, Chittock and Valdez-Tullett2016: 28). In fact, if past beliefs and intentions shaping rock art production are indeed impossible to attain, then any attempt to interpret prehistoric imagery is quite pointless. Even an extremely reductionist view—e.g. ‘there is something engraved/painted on that stone surface but I couldn't say what it is’—in itself offers some degree of interpretation since ‘there is something’. Nevertheless, attempts do keep occurring to interpret concepts whose possession by past rock art producing societies cannot be ascertained today. For instance, no researcher describes Upper Palaeolithic zoomorphic rock art imagery as ‘just animals’; species is always referred to, in an attempt to interpret these images as broadly as possible. But how is it feasible to know whether a concept equal or even analogous to that today understood by ‘horse’ or ‘deer’ (let alone that of ‘depiction’) existed in the minds of original artists and in the common thought processes shared by the societies to which they belonged?

The drawback of such considerations is the danger of becoming trapped in an ultra-relativistic vertigo where ‘anything goes’ regarding interpretation. The list of interpretative hypotheses aptly discussed by Bahn, some more forcefully defended and embraced than others, is bound to keep on expanding. Indeed, if every rock art research age has clung to the theory best-suited for those particular times (pp. 329‒31), perhaps the major insight that can continue to be derived from the instrumental work initiated by Leroi-Gourhan and Laming-Emperaire is the acceptance that rock art meant (and continues to mean), rather than attempting to know what it meant. Thus, Bahn's caution is understandable.

Hence, is ‘any serious attempt at interpretation […] a waste of effort’, as some authors advocate (p. 336)? Perhaps not, and Bahn offers clues regarding a way forward when suggesting that ‘the complex phenomenon of Palaeolithic art’ can be studied ‘on three principal levels: individual sites […]; regional groupings […]; and as a whole’ (p. 341). If the latter option is currently ‘losing favour’ (ibid.), perhaps future research will be able to derive from the two first options stronger insights that can help to value ‘homogeneity and regularity’ (ibid.) traits in rock art as a whole. This effort ‘may help to bridge the gap between purely mechanical “cause-effect” approaches to rock-art interpretation and the mere description of motifs’ (Fernandes, Reference Fernandes, Chittock and Valdez-Tullett2016: 28).

In conclusion, this splendidly illustrated volume, informative and thought-provoking but straightforward to read, will appeal to the specialist and to the general public alike. It is a highly recommended read on the alluring yet quietly majestic art of the Ice Age, but primarily a reliable and wide-ranging guide when venturing out on any search for meaning in such imagery.