Master and apprentice: Evidence for learning in palaeolithic portable art

These different categories of pieces may be tentatively assigned to different levels of experience in tool control and engraving techniques. The mean value of the technical index seems to be correlated with the type of medium and differs significantly in the various sites studied in the corpus. These data allow us to pose some hypotheses concerning the transmission of knowledge in Magdalenian societies, such as differential access to raw materials according to the engraver's experience, and different functionality of sites based on their production of decorated objects.