1940

2

04/09/2024

ARH201 - Paleolithic Art

Prehistoric art is divided in 3 parts:

Paleolithic - ? to 8000BCE

Mesolithic - 8000 to 6000BCE

Neolithic - 6000 to 2000BCE

Vocab key:

Lithic = stone

Paleo = old

Meso = middle

Neo = new

in 1940, young teenagers went into forest with dog and cognac (alcohol)

Dog disappears under fallen tree

Dog found crack underneath fallen tree which was a crack in the cave ceiling

Teenagers got flashlight and descended down into cave → cave was then discovered

They went down in the great hall of the bulls (orange area on top)

They don’t know where the entrance is

They walked around and touched things so evidence was ruined (THEY KNOW DO NOT

KNOW WHAT THE ROOMS WERE USED FOR)

Caves are seen as going back into mother earth (sacred)

Lascaux cave was used for war hiding, keeping things,...

The 1925 Scopes Trial = Darwin vs Biblical notions of time

Picasso signed his art with a bull - people fought that Picasso did all that and it was not

authentic

How to measure the age of an archaeology site: Carbon 14 Dating

Scraping a piece and running under tests to find out its age

The hall of bulls:

Largest bull above is 11 feet 6” long

Paintings start at site line and extend into the ceiling

Bulls and other animals seen as sacred as they were painted on the ceiling (the

heavens)

Staring was seen as confrontational → ancient art always was in profile

You can manifest them but they don’t see you, or “coming into your realm”

Paint was made in mouth and then blown through a boiled bone onto painting

Using flickering oil lamp, the animals looked like they moved with the light and dark

Red was a warning/danger/sin sign (example of iconography)

State got worse because of the humidity people brought in when visiting

Now is protected

Vocab Key:

Tectiforms (dots)

Claviforms (hatch lines)

Scutiforms (net shapes)