Unit 1 notes

Paleolithic- Old Stone Age

• hunters/gathers

• small portable structures

Mesolithic- Middle Stone Age

• Period of settled communities

• Inventions like the bow and arrow, pottery, domestication of animals

Neolithic- Stone Age

• People cultivated the earth and raised livestock

• Lived in organized settlements

• Divided labor into occupations

• Constructed first homes

• Climate stabilized

• People created/drew

CAMELID SACRUM

• In the shape of a canine

• 14000-7000BCE, bone, National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico

• Bone Sculpture from a camel-like animal

• Sacrum is a triangular bone at the base of the spine

• Bone has been worked to create the image of a dog or wolf

• One natural form used to take the shape of another

• Mesoamerican idea that sacrum is a second skull

• Found in 1870

• Later artwork and literature of Mesoamerica includes dogs associated with burial and sacrificial rituals as well as in creation myths

ANTHROPORPHIC STELE

• 4th millennium BCE sandstone, Pergamon Museum, Berlin

• One of the earliest known works of art from Arabia

• Found in an area that had extensive trade routes

• Religious burial purpose

• Belted robe from which hangs a double-bladed knife or sword

• Anthropomorphic: Resembles human form but is not

• Stele: An upright stone slab used to mark a grave or site

JADE CONG

• 

  From Liangzhu, China, 3300-2200 BCE, jade, Zhejiang Institute of Archaeology,
  Hangzhou

• A circular hole placed within a song (square)

• Abstract designs, main decorations is a face pattern, perhaps of spirits or deities

• 4 corners of the cong usually carry mask-like images with pronounces eyes and a fanged mouth

• Jades appear in burials of people of high rank

• Jade religious objects found within tombs, interred with the dead in elaborate rituals

• Chinese linked jade with virtues such as durability, subtlety, beauty

• Placed in a burial around bodies, some broken, some show signs of international burning

• Made in a Neolithic era in China

THE AMBUM STONE FROM PAPUA NEW GUINEA

C. 1500B.C.E., greywacke, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

• Stone Age work, artists used stone to carve stone (Oceanic)

• Composite human/animal figure; perhaps an anteater head and a human body

• (Composite: made up of various parts or elements)

• (Zoomorphic: having or resembling animal forms)

Theories:

• Masked humans, spirit beings, or ancestors

• Anteater embryo in fetal position

• Anteaters are thought of as significant because of their fat deposits

• It may have a ritual purpose

  • Stylized eyes, ears, and nostrils are depicted in relief (Stylized art is a form that has moved away from natural forms and shapes.)

TLATICO FEMALE FIGURES

C.1200-900 B.C.E, ceramics, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton

• Tlatilco, Mexico, noted for pottery

• Many shapes & forms: male & female, couples, genre scenes, ball playing games, animals, imaginary creatures, etc.

• Found in graves amidst remains.

• Female figures show elaborate details of hairstyles, clothing, & body ornaments

• Many show deformities including the 2-headed females: perhaps signifying a cluster of conjoined twins; stillborn

• Theories that they show bifacial images, & therefore would show the first evidence of congenital defects

• May have had a shamanistic function

• Style: flipper-like arms, huge thighs, pronounces hips, narrow waists, unclothed except for jewelry; arms extend

TERRA-COTTA FRAGMENT (laptipa, from the solomon islands

1000B.C.E., terra cotta, University of Aukland, New Zealand

• Lapita culture of the Solomon Islands, known for their pottery

• May have been used for serving or storing food

• Characteristics use of curved stamped patterns: dots, circles, hatching

• Outlined forms: used a comb-like tool to stamp designs onto the clay

• One of the oldest human faces in Oceanic Art

PREHISTORIC PAINTING

• Images of animals dominate with black outlines, sometimes deeply recessed from their openings. Images appear to be placed about the cave surface with no relationship to one another.

• Animals are depicted realistically & 3-dimensionally while humans are depicted as stick figures with little anatomical detail.

• Handprints found mostly negative prints. (meaning that a hand was placed on the wall & paint blown or splattered all over it, leaving a silhouette.)

• Handprints occasionally showed missing joints or fingers indicating that prehistoric people practiced voluntary mutilation, however, the thumb, the most essential finger, was never harmed.

APOLLO 11 STONES, ocher on stone, State Museum of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia

c. 25,000-25,300 B.C.E.

• Some of the world’s oldest works of art, found in
  Wonderwerk Cave in Namibia

• The profile of an animal is seen in the profile and done in charcoal.

• Several stone fragments were found

• Named after Apollo 11 moon landing; a cave was discovered at the time of the moon landing.

• The location supports the idea that humans began in Africa.

What were they used for?

LASCAUX CAVES, (HALLS OF BULLS

C15,000-13,000 B.C…

• generational artwork

• scaffolding

• Natural products used to make paint; charcoal, Iron ore, plants 650 paintings: most common are cows, bull, horses, & deer (2,000 painted figures over 2,000 years)

• Animals were placed deep Inside the cave, some hundreds of feet from the entrance

• The animals are rendered In what has come to be called "twisted perspective," In which their bodies are depicted in people while we see the horns from a more frontal viewpoint the images are sometimes entirely linear -Iine was drawn to define the animal's contour.

• frontal or diagonal view of horns, eyes, & hooves; some animals appear pregnant

• Evidence still visible of scaffolding erected to get to higher areas of the caves (holes in walls)

• Caves were not dwellings because prehistoric people led migratory lives following herds of animals; some evidence exists that people sought shelter at the mouths of caves Walls were scraped to an even surface; paint colors were bound with animal far; lamps lit the interior of the caves; flat stones served as palettes

• There are many theories about the reasons for the paintings:

  ~ Used to ensure a successful hunt (express the importance of animals to human survival) Almals deplated larger than men-size matters?

RUNNING HORNED WOMAN

6,000-4,000 B.C.., rock painting, Tassili n'Ajjer, Algeria

• 15,000 + drawings & engravings found at this sight

• Composite view of the body (twisted perspective)

• Depicts livestock (cows, sheep, etc.); wildlife(giraffes, lions)

• humans (hunting and harvesting)

• Some drawings are naturalistic (derived from nature or real life, or imitating it closely); some are abstract (not based on real life or realistic)

• found on an isolated rock whose base was hollowed out Into several small shelters that could not have been used as dwellings. This remote location, coupled with an Image of marked pictorial quality-

• depicting a female with two horns on her head, dots on her body probably representing scarification, and wearing such attributes of the dance as armlets and garters-suggested to him that the site, and the subject of the painting, fell outside of the everyday. More recent scholarship has supported the belief in the painting's symbolic, rather than literal, representation. Egyptian influence

BUSHEL WITH IBEX MOTIFS

4,200-3,500B.C.E., terra-cotta Louvre, Paris

• Found near a burial site, but not with human remains or funerary object

• Found with hundreds of baskets, bowls, & metallic items

• Use of the potter’s wheel, a technological advance

• Stylized ( non-realistic manner of representing the visible world & its contents) aquatic birds on top; below stylized running dogs with long narrow bodies
  In the middle of the horns is a clan symbol of family ownership
  Perhaps the image identifies the deceased as belonging to a particular group or family Made in Susa, in Southwestern Iran

• over anayzed old sippy cup

STONEHENGE

c.2500-1600B.C.E., sandstone, Wiltshire, England

what we see today is the result of at least 3 phases of construction?

• 2 Building components are...Post and Lintel structure

• The People Buried at Stone Henge: analysis of these bones has revealed that nearly all the burials were of adult males, aged 25-40 years, in good health and with little sign of hard labor or disease. No doubt, to be interred at Stonehenge was a mark of elite status and these remains may well be those of some of the first political leaders of Great Britain

• Some stones were over 50 tons and were Imported from areas over 250 miles away

• Generally thought to be oriented toward sunrise on the longest day of the year; may also predict eclipses

• New theory: the center of ceremonies concerning death & burial

• Henge: Neolithic monument characterized by a circular ground plan