AP Art History: Global Prehistory 

Apollo 11 Stones

• Location: Namibia (Southern Africa)
• Date: ca. 25,500-25,300 BCE
• Material: Charcoal and ochre on stone
• Art mobilier: small examples of Prehistoric art that could be carried from place to place
• Total of 7 fragments, all featuring animal drawings
• Animal’s head is to big for body and skinny legs
• Discovered by German archaeologists in 1969, in a small rock shelter.
  • Cave was inhabited for more than 100,000 years
• Unclear what is depicted in the stones
• Oldest known examples of figurative art in Africa
• Emphasis on animals is common in Prehistoric art
• Charcoal and stone were also common in Prehistoric art
• Named after the Apollo 11 spaceship
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Camelid Sacrum in the Shape of a Canine

• Location: Tequixquiac, Mexico (central mex)

• Date: ca. 14,000 - 7,000

• Material: Bone

• Art Mobilier

• Sacrum: The sacral spine (sacrum) is located below the lumbar spine and above the tailbone

• Nostrils and mouth added by the carver to make the object appear like the head of a canine

• Discovered accidentally by a worker on a drainage project: 40 feet below the ground in Mexico City, 1870

• Not excavated using archeological methods, difficult to figure out date or content

• Study and depiction of animals was common in prehistoric art

  

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Running Horned Woman

• Location: Tassili n’Ajjer, Nigeria

• Date: 6000 - 4000 BCE

• Materials: Pigment on rock

• Painted with feathers. weeds, and fingers

• Large female figure with horns caught running.

• White dots on woman could represent scarification (modifying one’s body to create designs)

• Armlets and garters used for decoration

• Function: emphasized the importance of survival; possibly created as part of religious worship

• Found in secluded and difficult to find area, suggests place of worship

• Thousands of other cave paintings found in the same area and around the same time period

  

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Great Hall of Bulls

• Location: Lascaux, France - Paleolithic Europe

• Date: ca. 15,000 - 13,000 BCE

• Materials: Charcoal and ochre on rock

• Rock Painting

• Depicts bulls, deer, elk, horses, bison, lion, rhino, and bear

• Overlapping animals

• Twisted Perspective

• Painted in a very remote area of the cave with very little visibility

• Animals could be part of the culture’s religion

• Animals are a source of food → painting represents a symbolic hunt, capturing the animals

• Hundreds of stone tools found in the cave

• Overlapping and repeated animals = more successful hunts

• More than 350 cave sites in the region between Spain and France

• Cold climate and scarce resources could be why animals are such a popular subject in prehistoric art

• Some paintings are up to 5 meters long

• HUGE

  

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The Ambum Stone

• Location: Papua New Guinea

• Date: ca. 1500 BCE

• Material: Greywacke Stone

• About 8 inches tall

• Possibly a sculpture of an echidna

• Animal possibly seen as sacred

• Function unknown: possibly religious, maybe a (motor) and pestle

• Neolithic, settled in communities more time for sculpting

• Currently in National Gallery of Australia

  

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Anthropomorphic Stele

• Location: Arabian Peninsula

• Date: 4th millennium BCE

• Material: Sandstone

• Relief Sculpture

• About three feet high

• Details raised from the surface of the stone

• Tall, verticle, upright

• Minimalist

• Facial features, clothing, and accessories

• Function: MAYBE a grave marker - no written record to confirm

• Content: Human figure, male

• Found on a trade route in the Arabian Desert

• Settled communities that farmed, more time for art and trade

• Anthropomorphic = having human characteristics

  

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Stonehenge

• Location: Salisbury, England

• Date: c. 2550 - 1600 BCE

• Bluestone - durable stone

• Large rectangular stones arranged in a circle

• Possibly funerary

• Arranged in two circles - one inside the other

• Originally made of 30 trilithons

• Trilithon: a structure consisting of two large vertical stones supporting a third stone set horizontally across the top

• Could be a calendar (religious)

• Could have been moved with a contraption of rope and logs on a flat surface

  

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Jade Cong

• Location: Liangzhu, China

• Date: 3300 - 2200 BCE

• Material: Carved Jade

• Square hallow tube

• Lines and circles form faces

• Engravings are very precise/uniform

• Engravings are sanded

• Could represent dead ancestors/deities

• Jade is hard to manipulate so lots of time is needed to create things

  • Shows how important the culture believed congs were

• Function: Shows power/wealth - could protect someone in the afterlife as they were found in graves

  

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Beaker with Ibex Motifs

• Location: Susa, Iran

• Date: ca. 4200 - 3500 BCE

• Materials: painted terra cotta

• Cup made of baked clay with animal figures and geometric patterns

• Neutral colors

• Many different geographical shaped and animals, such as goat and dog-type animals

• Function: Used for burial, buried w/ the deceased

• Bushel with Ibex motifs from Susa Iran in the Susa I period was common

  

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Terra Cotta Fragment

• Location: Lapita, Soloman Island, Reef Islands

• Date: 1000 BCE

• Material: Incised Terra Cotta

• Molded terra cotta

• Stones, clam shells, fingernails, bird bones all used for designs

• Clear anthropomorphic figures, faces, geometric designs

• Pottery was a large part of the Lapita culture

  • widespread
  • Cultural significance

• Discovered in New Caledonia Islands

  • 85,000 indigenous peoples lived on the islands

  

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