Art History to 1400 first quiz

Prehistoric

Before writing exsisted

Paleolithic

“Old Stone Age” about 2.5mya to 10,000BCE. People moved with the seasons, art is small and portable/cave paintings.

Neolithic

“New Stone Age” roughly 6000—3000BCE shifting by region. People farm, settle, and build.

Pleistocene

Earth’s calender. An epoch about 2.58mya to 11,000ya, the stretch with repeated ice ages. Our’s is the Holocene.

Neolithic Revolution

The shift to farming and herding. About 11,500ya.

Therianthrope

An imagined being part animal, part human.

Twisted perspective

Example: Egyptian art. A body from multiple angles.

Post-and-lintel

Two uprights holding a third stone on top, like a table.

Trilithon

Same as post-and-lintel, but using specifically massive stones.

Henge/sarsen/bluestone

Henge: the ring-shaped ditch and bank

Sarsen: the big local sandstone

Bluestone: smaller stone hauled from Whales

Bi and cong

Bi: flat stone disc with a small center hole

Cong: squared stone tone tube with a round hole through it

Bannerstone

A carved stone drilled straight through the middle. Name is a 1800s guess, never proven.

Radiocarben dating

Measuring carbon decay in something once alive.

NAGPRA

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. 1990 US law requiring museums to return Native remains and burial objects.

Lion Man

c. 40,000 years old—Stadel cave, Germany, mammoth ivory, 31 cm

Apollo 11 cave stones

Buried c. 25,000ya—Namibia, painted quartzite slabs, hand sized. Oldest known figurative art from Africa.

Hall of Bulls, Lascaux

c. 15,000 BCE France. Room sized chamber, found by teenagers and a dog.

Sulawesi warty pig

at least 45,000yo, Indonesia. Oldest dated picture on Earth.

Bhimbetka rock shelters

Paleolithic Onward, India. One of the earliest art sites found in southwest asia.

Kakadu rock art

40,000+ yo, Australia. Living communities remain connected to this tradition.

Running horned woman

c. 6000—4000 BCE, Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria. Horned figure with body decoration, form a sahara that was then green. Falsely assumed and faked to be an Egyptian goddess.

Jericho skull

c. 8200-7500 BCE, Jericho. A real skull with a face rebuilt in plaster

Jade cong

c. 3300-2200 BCE, Liangzhu culture, China. Ground down with wet sand and buried with the dead.

Susa beaker

c. 4000-3500 BCE, Susa, Iran. Holds nearly a gallon, made for display and burial