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
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

   

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

   

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

   

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

 

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

   

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

 

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

   

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