Jim Regan - Site Reviews
Cave at Lascaux
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You may remember the cave from Junior High School history books -- discovered by four teenagers in 1940, it is considered one of the greatest archaeological finds of the 20th century. Images from the cave walls have been reproduced thousands of times (and have probably been seen by more people than existed on the planet when they were created) and now, France's Ministry of Culture and Communication has made the images of this, and other, Palaeolithic sites even more widely accessible to the world through the Web.
The primary areas of interest on the Cave at Lascaux site are Discover and Learn. Discover first locates the cave geographically and chronologically -- the latter via an illustrated timeline which also links to sites about two other caves (including the much older Chauvet cave) -- then recounts the more recent history of the site. Next, and the main reason for the visit, is the Virtual Visit.
Navigable by links or an interactive map, the Virtual Visit presents images from all of Lascaux's seven 'galleries', from the Great Hall of the Bulls, to The Shaft of the Dead Man. As you enter each gallery, the content frame (one of three, with navigation frames to the top and left) is itself subdivided into two new frames - thumbnails above, and larger images with text and a link back to the map page below. Finally, Discover concludes with the closing of Lascaux in 1963 (brought about to stop the deterioration caused by too many visitors) and the construction of a life-size copy of the cave's two largest galleries - opened in 1983 to satisfy the curiosity of modern pilgrims.
Learn explores the technical side of the discovery; dating methods, the use of Themes and Perspective in cave iconography, how the artists lit their work, and how dim, faded figures are made clearer for identification. A Test Your Knowledge section adds a multiple-choice quiz, and puzzles, based on the maddening sliding-tile games of childhood - those games that were destroyed in fits of rage and frustration more often than they were solved.
Other sections include information about Lascaux II's location and operating hours, and Help Finding Your Way. The latter is simply a site index, but it may be the best base of operation for users of small browsers.
While the content frames are 'liquid' and will reflow text to fit in any browser width, the navigation frames are inflexible, and certain options (such as the Home Page link, and "Dating Methods" in the Learn section) can be as well hidden as the cave itself was, lo, those many years - a quick perusal of the site index will alert you to any areas you may have missed. Additionally, JavaScript is required - and put to good use, highlighting dim images in the Learn section, and providing instant definitions for unfamiliar terms in the bottom of the browser window.
Fans of truly historic (or pre-historic) artists can find The Cave at Lascaux site at http://www.culture.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/.
Jim Regan provides 'Today's Links' to the e-Monitor. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.