APAH notes on all images (kill me)

Apollo 11 stones

Namibia. c.25,500-25,300 BCE. Charcoal on stone. Global Prehistory

Form:

• Charcoal

• handsized

• brown/grey quartzite

• two stones

• moveable art

Content:

• Animal/human (unidentified)

• maybe a therianthrope (half human half animal)

• feline in apparence-human legs added later

• Shamanism- a religious and cultural tradition that involves practitioners called shamans, using altered states of consciousness to connect with the spirit world

• other paintings and carvings were found, ritual site?

Context:

• Found by W.E. Wendt in 1969

• Named after the Apollo 11 mission

• 3 years later the right side was found

• located in a dry gourge

• red colour in ostrich egg shells

• hunter gatherer society

Function:

• Unknown

• before writing

Great Hall of the Bulls

Lascaux, France. Paleolithic Europe. 15,000-13,000 BCE. Rock Painting. Global Prehistory

Form:

• Cave

• White calcite

• Non-pourous rock

• charcoal, ochre mixed with liquids to create paint

Content:

• loose lines, abstract

• carvings

• twisted perspective

• horses,deer,bison,elk,lions

• contour of animals

• holes in wall for scaffolding

• engraved overlapping forms

Context:

• 350 similar sites

• life was short, resources scarce

• cold climate

• unknown # of ppl who painted it

• discovered in 1940 by two young boys

• fossilized pollen was found

• artists worked deliberately

Function:

• animal fats to illuminate

• pure process of drawing and repetitive drawing-ritual?

• hunting magic or power over prey

• images communicate stories

• shamanism

• closed cave to keep preserved

Camelid sacrum in the shape of a canine

Tequixquiac, central Mexico, 14,000-7,000 BCE. Bone. Global Prehistory

Form:

• carved bone

• sacrum camelid, sacred bone of camel/alpaca

• fossilized

• 8-10”

Content:

• Dong face carved into bone

• holes for eyes and nostrils

• symmetrical

Context:

• discovered by accident in 1870 by an engineer when working on a drainage project

• dont know date, removed from original site, soil couldn’t be analyzed

• handmade with a sharp tool

• in the valley that is modern day Mexico city

Function:

• can not know, taken from original site

Running Horned Woman

Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria. 6,000-4,000 BCE. Pigment on rock. Global Prehistory

Form:

• pigments on rock

• caves hollowed out into many small shelters

• not dwellings

Content:

• female running, twisted perspective

• silhouette

• grain falling from her hands

• two horns, dots on body (scarification)

• wearing amulets and garters

Context:

• ‘found’ by LT. Brenans and later studied by Lhote

• Tuareg people knew the location long before and even guided early Europeans to the site

• thought to be inspired by the Egyptian (not)

• depiction suggests this was special

• not something hunter-gatherers would wear

Function:

• ritual/ceremony

• place of worship

• washing the rock to see it, ruined it