Hair, Stone, and Memory: A 27,000-Year-Old Figurine from Northern France

In the windswept plains of northern France, archaeologists have uncovered¹ a face from deep prehistory. It is not a fossil or skeleton, but a figurine carved in limestone some 27,000 years ago. Found at the site of Amiens-Renancourt 1, about 140 kilometers north of Paris, the statuette bears a striking detail: a carefully rendered head with long, patterned hair.

Carved figure of a face from the Amiens-Renancourt 1 site in France Stephane Lancelot/Inrap

For a culture that left little more than stone tools, bones, and scattered campsites, such images are rare. Yet this figurine suggests that Gravettian people—hunter-gatherers who roamed Ice Age Europe from 33,000 to 26,000 years ago—paid close attention not only to survival, but to appearance, ritual, and identity.