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Chapter 1: Prehistoric Art

Key Notes

  • Time Period

    • Paleolithic Art : 30,000–8000 B.C.E.

    • Neolithic Art : 8000–3000 B.C.E.

  • Culture, beliefs, and physical settings

    • Prehistoric art existed before writing.

    • Prehistoric art has been affected by climate change.

    • Prehistoric art can be seen in practical and ritual objects.

    • Prehistoric art shows an awareness of everything from cosmic phenomena to the commonplace.

  • Art-making

    • The oldest objects are African or Asian.

    • The first art forms appear as rock paintings, geometric patterns, human and animal motifs, and architectural monuments.

    • Ceramics are first produced in Asia.

    • The people of the Pacific are migrants from Asia, who bring ceramic-making techniques with them.

    • European cave paintings and megalithic monuments indicate a strong tradition of rituals.

    • Early American objects use natural materials, like bone or clay, to create ritual objects.

    • Similarities with Asian shamanic religious practices can be found in ritual ancient American objects.

  • Art history

    • Scientific dating of objects has shed light on the use of prehistoric objects.

    • Archaeology increases our understanding of prehistoric art.

      • Archaeology: the scientific study of ancient people and cultures principally revealed through excavation

    • Basic art historical methods can be used to understand prehistoric art, but our knowledge increases with findings made in other fields.


Prehistoric Background

  • Two Eras in Pre-History

    • Paleolithic Era: the Old Stone Age

      • People were hunter-gatherers

    • Neolithic Era: the New Stone Age

      • People cultivated the earth and raised livestock.

      • They lived in organized settlements, divided labor into occupations, and constructed the first homes.

  • People created before they could write, cipher math, cultivate crops, domesticate animals, invent the wheel, or use metal.

  • They painted before they had anything resembling clothes or lived in anything resembling a house.

  • The need to create is among the strongest of human impulses.


Prehistoric Sculpture

Camelid Sacrum in the Shape of a Canine

  • Details

    • 14,000–7000 B.C.E.

    • From Tequixquiac, Central Mexico

    • Located at the National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City, Mexico

    • Preserved in 1870 in the Valley of Mexico.

  • Materials

    • Bone sculpture from a camel-like animal.

    • The bone has been worked to create the image of a dog or wolf.

  • Content

    • Carved to represent a mammal’s skull.

    • One natural form is used to take the shape of another.

    • The sacrum is the triangular bone at the base of a spine.

  • Context

    • Second skull: A Mesoamerican idea

    • The sacrum bone symbolizes the soul in some cultures, and for that reason it may have been chosen for this work.

  • Image

Anthropomorphic Stele

  • Details

    • 4th-millennium B.C.E.

    • From Arabian Peninsula

    • Mainly made of sandstone

    • Preserved in National Museum, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

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

  • Form and Content

    • Anthropomorphic: having characteristics of the human form, although the form itself is not human.

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

    • Double cords stretch diagonally across body with an awl unifying them.

  • Function: Religious or burial purpose, perhaps as a grave marker.

  • Context

    • One of the earliest known works of art from Arabia.

    • Found in an area that had extensive ancient trade routes.

  • Image

Jade Cong

  • Details

    • c. 3300–2200 B.C.E.

    • From Liangzhu, China

    • Made from a carved jade

    • Preserved in Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, China

    • Cong: a tubular object with a circular hole cut into a square-like cross-section

  • Form

    • The circular hole is placed within a square.

    • Abstract designs; the main decoration is a face pattern, perhaps of spirits or deities.

    • Some have a haunting mask design in each of the four corners—with a bar-shaped mouth, raised oval eyes, sunken round pupils, and two bands that might indicate a headdress—which resembles the motif seen on Liangzhu jewelry.

  • Materials and Techniques

    • Jade is a very hard stone, sometimes carved using drills or saws.

    • The designs on congs may have been produced by rubbing sand.

    • The jades may have been heated to soften the stone, or ritually burned as part of the burial process.

  • Context

    • Jades appear in burials of people of high rank.

    • Jades are placed in burials around bodies; some are broken, and some show signs of intentional burning.

    • Jade religious objects are of various sizes and found in tombs, interred with the dead in elaborate rituals.

    • The Chinese linked jade with the virtues of durability, subtlety, and beauty.

    • Made in the Neolithic era in China.

  • Image

The Ambum Stone

  • Details

    • c. 1500 B.C.E.

    • From Ambum Valley, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea

    • Made from graywacke

    • Preserved in National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

  • Form

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

    • Ridgeline runs from nostrils, over the head, between the eyes, and between the shoulders.

  • Theories

    • Masked human.

    • Anteater embryo in a fetal position; anteaters thought of as significant because of their fat deposits.

    • May have been a pestle or related to tool making.

    • Perhaps had a ritual purpose; considered sacred; maybe a ­fertility symbol.

    • Maybe an embodiment of a spirit from the past, an ancestral spirit, or the Rainbow Serpent.

  • History

    • Stone Age work; artists used stone to carve stone.

    • Found in the Ambum Valley in Papua New Guinea.

    • When it was “found,” it was being used as a ritual object by the Enga people.

    • Sold to the Australian National Gallery.

    • Damaged in 2000 when it was on loan in France; it was dropped and smashed into three pieces and many shards; it has since been restored.

  • Image

Tlatilco Female Figurine

  • Details

    • c. 1200–900 B.C.E.

    • From Central Mexico, site of Tlatilco

    • Made out of ceramic

    • Preserved in Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey

  • Form

    • Flipper-like arms, huge thighs, pronounced hips, narrow waists.

    • Unclothed except for jewelry; arms extending from body.

    • Diminished role of hands and feet.

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

  • Technique: Made by hand; artists did not use molds.

  • Function: May have had a shamanistic function

  • Context and Interpretation

    • Some show deformities, including a female figure with two noses, two mouths, and three eyes, perhaps signifying a cluster of conjoined or Siamese twins and/or stillborn children.

    • Bifacial images and congenital defects may express duality.

    • Found in graves, and may have had a funerary context.

  • Image

Terra cotta fragment

  • Details

    • 1000 B.C.E.

    • From Lapita, Reef Islands, Solomon Islands

    • Made from incised terra cotta

    • Preserved in University of Auckland, New ­Zealand

  • Form

    • Pacific art is characterized by the use of curved stamped patterns: dots, circles, hatching; may have been inspired by patterns on ­tattoos.

    • One of the oldest human faces in Oceanic art.

  • Materials

    • Lapita culture of the Solomon Islands is known for pottery.

    • Outlined forms: they used a comb-like tool to stamp designs onto the clay, known as dentate stamping.

  • Technique

    • Did not use potter’s wheel.

    • After pot was incised, a white coral lime was often applied to the surface to make the patterns more pronounced.

  • Tradition

    • Continuous tradition: some designs found on the pottery are used in modern Polynesian tattoos and tapas.

  • Image


Prehistoric Paintings

Apollo 11 Stones

  • Details

    • c. 25,500–25,300 B.C.E.

    • Painted using charcoal on stone,

    • Preserved in State Museum of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia

  • Form

    • Animal seen in profile, typical of prehistoric painting.

    • Perhaps a composite animal rather than a particular specimen.

  • Materials

    • Done with charcoal.

  • Context

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

    • Several stone fragments found.

    • Originally brought to the site from elsewhere.

    • Cave is the site of 100,000 years of human activity.

  • History

    • Named after the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, the year the cave was discovered.

  • Image

Great Hall of the Bulls

  • Details

    • 15,000–13,000 B.C.E.

    • From Paleolithic Europe

    • A rock painting,

    • Found in Lascaux, France

  • Content

    • 650 paintings: most common animals are cows, bulls, horses, and deer.

  • Form

    • Bodies seen in profile; frontal or diagonal view of horns, eyes, and hooves; some animals appear pregnant.

    • Twisted perspective: many horns appear more frontal than the bodies.

    • Many overlapping figures.

  • Materials

    • Natural products were used to make paint: charcoal, iron ore, plants.

    • Walls were scraped to an even surface; paint colors were bound with animal fat; lamps lighted the interior of the caves.

    • No brushes have been found.

      • May have used mats of moss or hair as brushes.

      • Color could have been blown onto the surface by mouth or through a tube, like a hollow bone.

  • Context

    • Animals placed deep inside cave—some hundreds of feet from the entrance.

    • Evidence still visible of scaffolding erected to get to higher areas of the caves.

    • Negative handprints: are they signatures?

    • Caves were not dwellings, as prehistoric people led migratory lives following herds of ­animals; some evidence exists that people did seek shelter at the mouths of caves.

  • Theories

    • A traditional view is that they were painted to ensure a successful hunt.

    • Ancestral animal worship.

    • Represents narrative elements in stories or legends.

    • Shamanism: a religion based on the idea that the forces of nature can be contacted by intermediaries, called shamans, who go into a trance-like state to reach another state of consciousness.

  • History

    • Discovered in 1940; opened to the public after World War II.

    • Closed to the public in 1963 because of damage from human contact.

    • Replica of the caves opened adjacent to the original.

  • Image

Running Horned Woman

  • Details

    • 6000–4000 B.C.E.

    • A pigment on rock,

    • Found in Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria

  • Form

    • Composite view of the body.

    • Many drawings exist—some are naturalistic, some are abstract, some have Negroid features, and some have Caucasian features.

    • The female horned figure suggests attendance at a ritual ceremony.

  • Content

    • Depicts livestock, wildlife, and humans

    • Dots may reflect body paint applied for ritual or scarification; white patterns in symmetrical lines may reflect raffia garments.

  • Context

    • More than 15,000 drawings and engravings were found at this site.

    • At one time the area was grasslands; climate changes have turned it into a desert.

    • The entire site was probably painted by many different groups over large expanses of time.

  • Image

Beaker with Ibex Motifs

  • Details

    • 4200–3500 B.C.E.

    • From Susa, Iran

    • Painted terra cotta

    • Found in ­Louvre, Paris

  • Form and Content

    • Frieze of stylized aquatic birds on top, suggesting a flock of birds wading in a Mesopotamian river valley.

    • Below are stylized running dogs with long narrow bodies, perhaps hunting dogs.

    • The main scene shows an ibex with oversized abstract and stylized horns.

    • Stylized: a schematic, nonrealistic manner of representing the visible world and its contents, abstracted from the way that they appear in nature

  • Materials and Techniques

    • Probably made on a potter’s wheel, a technological advance; some suggest instead that it was handmade.

    • Thin pottery walls.

  • Context and Interpretation

    • 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.

    • Found near a burial site, but not with human remains.

    • Found with hundreds of baskets, bowls, and metallic items.

    • Made in Susa, in southwestern Iran.

  • Image


Prehistoric Architecture

  • Menhirs: Large individual stones, erected singularly or in long rows stretching into the distance.

  • Megaliths: a stone of great size used in the construction of a prehistoric structure

  • Henge: a Neolithic monument, characterized by a circular ground plan. Used for rituals and marking astronomical events

  • Lintel: a horizontal beam over an opening

  • Post and Lintel Architecture: The most fundamental type of architecture in history.

Stonehenge

  • Details

    • c. 2500–1600 B.C.E.

    • Made out of sandstone, Neolithic Europe,

    • Found in Wiltshire, United Kingdom

  • Technique

    • Post-and-lintel building; lintels grooved in place by the mortise and tenon system of construction.

      • Mortise and tenon: a groove cut into stone or wood, called a mortise, that is shaped to receive a tenon, or projection, of the same dimensions

    • Large megaliths in the center are over 20 feet tall and form a horseshoe surrounding a central flat stone.

    • A central horseshoe is surrounded by lintel-connected megaliths.

    • Hundreds of unidentified stones surrounded the monument.

    • Builders lacked wheels and pulleys. Stones may have been transported on logs or a greased sleigh.

  • Context

    • Each stone weighs over 50 tons, reflecting the structure's intended permanence.

    • Some stones were imported from over 150 miles away, suggesting they were sacred.

  • History

    • Perhaps took 1,000 years to build; gradually redeveloped by succeeding generations.

  • Probably built in three phases:

    • First Phase: circular ditch 36 feet deep and 360 feet in diameter containing 56 pits called Aubrey Holes, named after John Aubrey who found them in the 18th century.

      • Today the holes are filled with chalk.

    • Second Phase: wooden structure, perhaps roofed.

      • The Aubrey Holes may have been used as cremation burials at this time.

      • Adult males were buried at these sites, generally, men who did not show a lifetime of hard labor, signifying it was a site for a select group of people.

    • Third Phase: stone construction.

  • Tradition

    • British Isles forests may have inspired wood circles.

    • Stone circles are still common in Britain, indicating Neolithic popularity.

  • Theories

    • As an observatory, it may predict eclipses and be oriented towards the summer and winter solstices.

    • According to a new theory, elite males were buried at Stonehenge.

    • An alternative theory suggests it was a healing site.

  • Image

    Chapter 2: Ancient Near Eastern Art

悅

Chapter 1: Prehistoric Art

Key Notes

  • Time Period

    • Paleolithic Art : 30,000–8000 B.C.E.

    • Neolithic Art : 8000–3000 B.C.E.

  • Culture, beliefs, and physical settings

    • Prehistoric art existed before writing.

    • Prehistoric art has been affected by climate change.

    • Prehistoric art can be seen in practical and ritual objects.

    • Prehistoric art shows an awareness of everything from cosmic phenomena to the commonplace.

  • Art-making

    • The oldest objects are African or Asian.

    • The first art forms appear as rock paintings, geometric patterns, human and animal motifs, and architectural monuments.

    • Ceramics are first produced in Asia.

    • The people of the Pacific are migrants from Asia, who bring ceramic-making techniques with them.

    • European cave paintings and megalithic monuments indicate a strong tradition of rituals.

    • Early American objects use natural materials, like bone or clay, to create ritual objects.

    • Similarities with Asian shamanic religious practices can be found in ritual ancient American objects.

  • Art history

    • Scientific dating of objects has shed light on the use of prehistoric objects.

    • Archaeology increases our understanding of prehistoric art.

      • Archaeology: the scientific study of ancient people and cultures principally revealed through excavation

    • Basic art historical methods can be used to understand prehistoric art, but our knowledge increases with findings made in other fields.


Prehistoric Background

  • Two Eras in Pre-History

    • Paleolithic Era: the Old Stone Age

      • People were hunter-gatherers

    • Neolithic Era: the New Stone Age

      • People cultivated the earth and raised livestock.

      • They lived in organized settlements, divided labor into occupations, and constructed the first homes.

  • People created before they could write, cipher math, cultivate crops, domesticate animals, invent the wheel, or use metal.

  • They painted before they had anything resembling clothes or lived in anything resembling a house.

  • The need to create is among the strongest of human impulses.


Prehistoric Sculpture

Camelid Sacrum in the Shape of a Canine

  • Details

    • 14,000–7000 B.C.E.

    • From Tequixquiac, Central Mexico

    • Located at the National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City, Mexico

    • Preserved in 1870 in the Valley of Mexico.

  • Materials

    • Bone sculpture from a camel-like animal.

    • The bone has been worked to create the image of a dog or wolf.

  • Content

    • Carved to represent a mammal’s skull.

    • One natural form is used to take the shape of another.

    • The sacrum is the triangular bone at the base of a spine.

  • Context

    • Second skull: A Mesoamerican idea

    • The sacrum bone symbolizes the soul in some cultures, and for that reason it may have been chosen for this work.

  • Image

Anthropomorphic Stele

  • Details

    • 4th-millennium B.C.E.

    • From Arabian Peninsula

    • Mainly made of sandstone

    • Preserved in National Museum, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

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

  • Form and Content

    • Anthropomorphic: having characteristics of the human form, although the form itself is not human.

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

    • Double cords stretch diagonally across body with an awl unifying them.

  • Function: Religious or burial purpose, perhaps as a grave marker.

  • Context

    • One of the earliest known works of art from Arabia.

    • Found in an area that had extensive ancient trade routes.

  • Image

Jade Cong

  • Details

    • c. 3300–2200 B.C.E.

    • From Liangzhu, China

    • Made from a carved jade

    • Preserved in Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, China

    • Cong: a tubular object with a circular hole cut into a square-like cross-section

  • Form

    • The circular hole is placed within a square.

    • Abstract designs; the main decoration is a face pattern, perhaps of spirits or deities.

    • Some have a haunting mask design in each of the four corners—with a bar-shaped mouth, raised oval eyes, sunken round pupils, and two bands that might indicate a headdress—which resembles the motif seen on Liangzhu jewelry.

  • Materials and Techniques

    • Jade is a very hard stone, sometimes carved using drills or saws.

    • The designs on congs may have been produced by rubbing sand.

    • The jades may have been heated to soften the stone, or ritually burned as part of the burial process.

  • Context

    • Jades appear in burials of people of high rank.

    • Jades are placed in burials around bodies; some are broken, and some show signs of intentional burning.

    • Jade religious objects are of various sizes and found in tombs, interred with the dead in elaborate rituals.

    • The Chinese linked jade with the virtues of durability, subtlety, and beauty.

    • Made in the Neolithic era in China.

  • Image

The Ambum Stone

  • Details

    • c. 1500 B.C.E.

    • From Ambum Valley, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea

    • Made from graywacke

    • Preserved in National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

  • Form

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

    • Ridgeline runs from nostrils, over the head, between the eyes, and between the shoulders.

  • Theories

    • Masked human.

    • Anteater embryo in a fetal position; anteaters thought of as significant because of their fat deposits.

    • May have been a pestle or related to tool making.

    • Perhaps had a ritual purpose; considered sacred; maybe a ­fertility symbol.

    • Maybe an embodiment of a spirit from the past, an ancestral spirit, or the Rainbow Serpent.

  • History

    • Stone Age work; artists used stone to carve stone.

    • Found in the Ambum Valley in Papua New Guinea.

    • When it was “found,” it was being used as a ritual object by the Enga people.

    • Sold to the Australian National Gallery.

    • Damaged in 2000 when it was on loan in France; it was dropped and smashed into three pieces and many shards; it has since been restored.

  • Image

Tlatilco Female Figurine

  • Details

    • c. 1200–900 B.C.E.

    • From Central Mexico, site of Tlatilco

    • Made out of ceramic

    • Preserved in Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey

  • Form

    • Flipper-like arms, huge thighs, pronounced hips, narrow waists.

    • Unclothed except for jewelry; arms extending from body.

    • Diminished role of hands and feet.

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

  • Technique: Made by hand; artists did not use molds.

  • Function: May have had a shamanistic function

  • Context and Interpretation

    • Some show deformities, including a female figure with two noses, two mouths, and three eyes, perhaps signifying a cluster of conjoined or Siamese twins and/or stillborn children.

    • Bifacial images and congenital defects may express duality.

    • Found in graves, and may have had a funerary context.

  • Image

Terra cotta fragment

  • Details

    • 1000 B.C.E.

    • From Lapita, Reef Islands, Solomon Islands

    • Made from incised terra cotta

    • Preserved in University of Auckland, New ­Zealand

  • Form

    • Pacific art is characterized by the use of curved stamped patterns: dots, circles, hatching; may have been inspired by patterns on ­tattoos.

    • One of the oldest human faces in Oceanic art.

  • Materials

    • Lapita culture of the Solomon Islands is known for pottery.

    • Outlined forms: they used a comb-like tool to stamp designs onto the clay, known as dentate stamping.

  • Technique

    • Did not use potter’s wheel.

    • After pot was incised, a white coral lime was often applied to the surface to make the patterns more pronounced.

  • Tradition

    • Continuous tradition: some designs found on the pottery are used in modern Polynesian tattoos and tapas.

  • Image


Prehistoric Paintings

Apollo 11 Stones

  • Details

    • c. 25,500–25,300 B.C.E.

    • Painted using charcoal on stone,

    • Preserved in State Museum of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia

  • Form

    • Animal seen in profile, typical of prehistoric painting.

    • Perhaps a composite animal rather than a particular specimen.

  • Materials

    • Done with charcoal.

  • Context

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

    • Several stone fragments found.

    • Originally brought to the site from elsewhere.

    • Cave is the site of 100,000 years of human activity.

  • History

    • Named after the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, the year the cave was discovered.

  • Image

Great Hall of the Bulls

  • Details

    • 15,000–13,000 B.C.E.

    • From Paleolithic Europe

    • A rock painting,

    • Found in Lascaux, France

  • Content

    • 650 paintings: most common animals are cows, bulls, horses, and deer.

  • Form

    • Bodies seen in profile; frontal or diagonal view of horns, eyes, and hooves; some animals appear pregnant.

    • Twisted perspective: many horns appear more frontal than the bodies.

    • Many overlapping figures.

  • Materials

    • Natural products were used to make paint: charcoal, iron ore, plants.

    • Walls were scraped to an even surface; paint colors were bound with animal fat; lamps lighted the interior of the caves.

    • No brushes have been found.

      • May have used mats of moss or hair as brushes.

      • Color could have been blown onto the surface by mouth or through a tube, like a hollow bone.

  • Context

    • Animals placed deep inside cave—some hundreds of feet from the entrance.

    • Evidence still visible of scaffolding erected to get to higher areas of the caves.

    • Negative handprints: are they signatures?

    • Caves were not dwellings, as prehistoric people led migratory lives following herds of ­animals; some evidence exists that people did seek shelter at the mouths of caves.

  • Theories

    • A traditional view is that they were painted to ensure a successful hunt.

    • Ancestral animal worship.

    • Represents narrative elements in stories or legends.

    • Shamanism: a religion based on the idea that the forces of nature can be contacted by intermediaries, called shamans, who go into a trance-like state to reach another state of consciousness.

  • History

    • Discovered in 1940; opened to the public after World War II.

    • Closed to the public in 1963 because of damage from human contact.

    • Replica of the caves opened adjacent to the original.

  • Image

Running Horned Woman

  • Details

    • 6000–4000 B.C.E.

    • A pigment on rock,

    • Found in Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria

  • Form

    • Composite view of the body.

    • Many drawings exist—some are naturalistic, some are abstract, some have Negroid features, and some have Caucasian features.

    • The female horned figure suggests attendance at a ritual ceremony.

  • Content

    • Depicts livestock, wildlife, and humans

    • Dots may reflect body paint applied for ritual or scarification; white patterns in symmetrical lines may reflect raffia garments.

  • Context

    • More than 15,000 drawings and engravings were found at this site.

    • At one time the area was grasslands; climate changes have turned it into a desert.

    • The entire site was probably painted by many different groups over large expanses of time.

  • Image

Beaker with Ibex Motifs

  • Details

    • 4200–3500 B.C.E.

    • From Susa, Iran

    • Painted terra cotta

    • Found in ­Louvre, Paris

  • Form and Content

    • Frieze of stylized aquatic birds on top, suggesting a flock of birds wading in a Mesopotamian river valley.

    • Below are stylized running dogs with long narrow bodies, perhaps hunting dogs.

    • The main scene shows an ibex with oversized abstract and stylized horns.

    • Stylized: a schematic, nonrealistic manner of representing the visible world and its contents, abstracted from the way that they appear in nature

  • Materials and Techniques

    • Probably made on a potter’s wheel, a technological advance; some suggest instead that it was handmade.

    • Thin pottery walls.

  • Context and Interpretation

    • 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.

    • Found near a burial site, but not with human remains.

    • Found with hundreds of baskets, bowls, and metallic items.

    • Made in Susa, in southwestern Iran.

  • Image


Prehistoric Architecture

  • Menhirs: Large individual stones, erected singularly or in long rows stretching into the distance.

  • Megaliths: a stone of great size used in the construction of a prehistoric structure

  • Henge: a Neolithic monument, characterized by a circular ground plan. Used for rituals and marking astronomical events

  • Lintel: a horizontal beam over an opening

  • Post and Lintel Architecture: The most fundamental type of architecture in history.

Stonehenge

  • Details

    • c. 2500–1600 B.C.E.

    • Made out of sandstone, Neolithic Europe,

    • Found in Wiltshire, United Kingdom

  • Technique

    • Post-and-lintel building; lintels grooved in place by the mortise and tenon system of construction.

      • Mortise and tenon: a groove cut into stone or wood, called a mortise, that is shaped to receive a tenon, or projection, of the same dimensions

    • Large megaliths in the center are over 20 feet tall and form a horseshoe surrounding a central flat stone.

    • A central horseshoe is surrounded by lintel-connected megaliths.

    • Hundreds of unidentified stones surrounded the monument.

    • Builders lacked wheels and pulleys. Stones may have been transported on logs or a greased sleigh.

  • Context

    • Each stone weighs over 50 tons, reflecting the structure's intended permanence.

    • Some stones were imported from over 150 miles away, suggesting they were sacred.

  • History

    • Perhaps took 1,000 years to build; gradually redeveloped by succeeding generations.

  • Probably built in three phases:

    • First Phase: circular ditch 36 feet deep and 360 feet in diameter containing 56 pits called Aubrey Holes, named after John Aubrey who found them in the 18th century.

      • Today the holes are filled with chalk.

    • Second Phase: wooden structure, perhaps roofed.

      • The Aubrey Holes may have been used as cremation burials at this time.

      • Adult males were buried at these sites, generally, men who did not show a lifetime of hard labor, signifying it was a site for a select group of people.

    • Third Phase: stone construction.

  • Tradition

    • British Isles forests may have inspired wood circles.

    • Stone circles are still common in Britain, indicating Neolithic popularity.

  • Theories

    • As an observatory, it may predict eclipses and be oriented towards the summer and winter solstices.

    • According to a new theory, elite males were buried at Stonehenge.

    • An alternative theory suggests it was a healing site.

  • Image

    Chapter 2: Ancient Near Eastern Art

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