Art History 101 Vocab

Archeology

Scientific study of human history through the recovery, documentation, analysis of human remains and landscapes.

Naturalism

A style of art that aims to depict the natural world as it appears.

Megalithic Architecture

Structure created with large roughly shaped stones

Hieratic Scale

An artistic technique in which the importance of figures is indicated by size, so that the most important figure is depicted as the largest.

Stele

An upright stone slab or pillar, sometimes with a carved design or inscription.

Ziggurat

Stepped pyramid like, temple tower built in ancient Mesopotamia, staircases and a temple on top

Cuneiform

The wedge-shaped characters made in clay by the ancient Mesopotamians as a writing system.

Neolithic Revolution

Wide scale transition from nomadic hunting and gathering to settled agriculture and domestication

Mastaba

An ancient Egyptian tomb, rectangular in shape, with sloping sides and a flat roof. It covered a chapel for offerings and a shaft to the burial chamber.

Stepped Pyramid

Architectural structure that uses flat steps to form a pyramid; one step pyramid of Djoser is build by the first recorded architect.

Pyramid

Built for royal tombs and mortuary complexes, evolved from mastabas

Composite Perspective

Artistic technique that combines multiple viewpoints of a single subject in one representation