AP Art History Unit 1: Prehistoric to Ancient Art

A set of vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical periods, and required artworks from Unit 1 (30,000 BCE - 0 BCE) of AP Art History.

Paleolithic

The oldest period of the Prehistoric Era, characterized by a food-gathering culture and artwork centered on animals, with few human depictions.

Mesolithic

The middle period of the Prehistoric Era, during which human culture focused on intensified food gathering.

Neolithic

The newest period of the Prehistoric Era, marked by a transition toward a domesticated lifestyle with farming, settled communities, and domesticated animals.

Parietal Art

Prehistoric artwork created directly on cave walls and ceilings.

Mobiliary Art

Small, portable prehistoric art objects often found buried at habitation sites.

Venus of Willendorf

A 4 ¼ inch tall limestone prehistoric sculpture (28,000 - 25,000 BCE) found in Willendorf, Austria, featuring stylized fertility attributes, a featureless face, and traces of red pigment.

Apollo 11 Stones

Hand-sized stone fragments from Namibia (25,500 BCE) painted with charcoal and ochre pigments, depicting animals and a supernatural 4-legged hybrid animal.

Great Hall of the Bulls

A massive Paleolithic rock painting complex (15,000 BCE) in Lascaux, France, spanning over 100 yards with over 2,000 images of animals, humans, and symbols using twisted perspective.

Camelid Sacrum in shape of a Canine

A Neolithic American artwork (7,000 BCE) from Tequixquiac, Central Mexico, carved from the sacrum bone of an extinct camelid relative to resemble a dog or coyote head.

Running Horned Woman

A Neolithic rock painting (6,000 BCE) in Algeria, Africa, depicting a large woman figure with body paint or scarification, horns, and raffia decorations overlapping smaller figures.

Beaker with Ibex Motifs

A painted terracotta funerary vessel (4200 BCE) from Susa, Iran, featuring registers with long-necked water birds, elongated dogs, and an ibex with oversized circular horns framing a clan symbol.

Cuneiform

The earliest known writing system, developed by Sumerians in Mesopotamia around 3200 BCE, using wedge-shaped marks pressed into soft clay with a reed stylus.

Ziggurat

A high stepped platform built at the center of Ancient Near Eastern city-states as a symbolic mountain connecting humans with the gods.

White Temple and its Ziggurat

A Sumerian mud-brick religious complex (3500 BCE) in Uruk, Iraq, whitewashed with plaster and built on a 40-foot platform with a bent axis ramp and tripartite plan dedicated to Inanna.

Tripartite Plan

An architectural layout consisting of a long rectangular central hall flanked by two side rooms, as seen in the White Temple at Uruk.

Jade cong

A square, hollow carved jade tube (3300 BCE) from the Liangzhu culture in China, featuring detailed facial and geometric carvings, typically found in royal tombs.

Anthropomorphic Stele

A 3-foot tall sandstone grave marker (3000 BCE) from the Arabian Peninsula featuring human-like traits, double-bladed daggers, diagonal cords, and an Aramaic inscription.

Palette of King Narmer

A 2-foot tall Predynastic Egyptian greywacke carving (3000 BCE) from Hierakonpolis that utilizes registers, hieroglyphics, and twisted perspective to celebrate King Narmer.

Statues of Votive Figures

Gypsum Sumerian statues (2700 BCE) from Eshnunna, Iraq, depicting standing worshippers with wide, unblinking inlaid eyes holding offer beakers to continuously honor the gods.

Seated Scribe

An Old Kingdom Egyptian painted limestone statue (2600 BCE) from Saqqara depicting a literate official sitting cross-legged with realistic fat folds and crystal eyes.

Standard of Ur

A Sumerian wooden box (2600 BCE) from the Royal Tombs at Ur, inlaid with shell, lapis lazuli, and red limestone, depicting three registers of War on one side and Peace on the other.

Great Pyramids and Great Sphinx

An Old Kingdom 4th Dynasty complex (2550 BCE) in Giza, Egypt, built of over 2.3 million cut limestone blocks perfectly aligned to cardinal directions and Orion.

King Menkaura and Queen

An Old Kingdom 4th Dynasty greywacke dyad statue (2490 BCE) from Giza depicting Pharaoh Menkaura alongside his queen or a goddess, both stepping forward with their left feet.

Victory Stele of Naram-Sin

An Akkadian pink sandstone stele (28,000 - 2254 BCE) from Iran depicting King Naram-Sin wearing a horned helmet and climbing a mountain over defeated foes in a non-registered landscape.

Code of Hammurabi

A Babylonian basalt stele (1792 BCE) carved with 300 cuneiform laws, topped with a relief depicting King Hammurabi receiving authority symbols from the enthroned sun god Shamash.

Palace at Knossos, Toreador Fresco (Bull-Leaping)

A Minoan buon fresco (1700 BCE) from Crete, Greece, portraying an acrobatic ritual game of jumping over a bull, characterized by profile views and narrow waists.

Stonehenge

A Neolithic European monument (1500 BCE) in Wiltshire, England, constructed from sarsen stones and imported bluestones using post-and-lintel architecture aligned with the summer solstice.