Exam Study Notes

Global Prehistory (30,000–500 B.C.E.)

  • Enduring Understanding: Culture, beliefs, and physical settings influence art creation, subject matter, and siting.
    * Learning Objective: Discuss how these factors influence art (e.g., Stonehenge).
    * Essential Knowledge:
    * Prehistoric art predates writing.
    * Climate change impacts prehistoric art.
    * Art found in practical and ritual objects.
    * Art reflects awareness from cosmic phenomena to commonplace materials.
  • Enduring Understanding: Locally available materials and processes influence art making.
    * Learning Objective: Discuss how materials, processes, and techniques influence art (e.g., Jade cong).
    * Essential Knowledge:
    * Oldest objects from Africa or Asia.
    * First art forms: rock paintings, geometric patterns, human/animal motifs, monuments.
    * Ceramics first produced in Asia; Pacific people bring ceramic techniques from Asia.
    * European cave paintings and megalithic monuments indicate ritual traditions.
    * Early American objects use natural materials for ritual objects; similarities to Asian shamanic practices.

Art Historical Understanding and Interpretation

  • Enduring Understanding: Art history is best understood through evolving theories and interpretations.
    * Learning Objective: Discuss how art interpretations evolve based on visual analysis and evidence (e.g., Running horned woman).
    * Essential Knowledge:
    * Scientific dating sheds light on use of prehistoric objects.
    * Archaeology increases understanding.
    * Art historical methods are foundational but evolve with new findings.

Understanding Prehistoric People

  • Prehistoric people were not primitive or ignorant despite lacking reading and writing.
  • Archaeological divisions:
    • Paleolithic (Old Stone Age): Hunter-gatherers.
    • Neolithic (New Stone Age): Cultivated earth and raised livestock.
  • Neolithic people lived in organized settlements with job specialization and constructed the first homes.
  • Creation predates abilities like writing, math, farming, domestication, or using metal.
  • The reason for early art is unknown, based on speculation, but it seems to have had a function beyond decoration or amusement.

Prehistoric Sculpture

  • Most prehistoric sculpture is portable, often small images of humans, particularly female.
  • Female figures emphasize enlarged sexual organs and diminutive limbs.
  • Cave wall carvings utilize natural wall modulations.
  • Sculptures made from bones, sandstone, or ceramics.

Camelid Sacrum in the Shape of a Canine

  • Form: Bone sculpture resembling a dog/wolf, from a camel-like animal.
  • Content: Carved to represent a mammal’s skull, sacrum symbolizes the soul in some cultures; bone at base of spine; natural form used to shape another.
  • Context: Mesoamerican idea of sacrum as a “second skull;” found in Valley of Mexico in 1870.
    *Cross-Cultural Comparisons:
    *Tuffery, Pisupo Lua Afe (Corned Beef 2000)
    *Muybridge, The Horse in Motion
    *Cotsiogo (Cadzi Cody), Hide Painting of a Sun Dance

Anthropomorphic Stele

  • Form: Anthropomorphic (resembling human form); belted robe; double-bladed knife/sword; double cords across body with awl unifying them.
  • Function: Religious or burial, perhaps a grave marker.
  • Context: Early known art from Arabia; found in area of ancient trade routes.
    *Cross-Cultural Comparisons:
    *Mutu, Preying Mantra
    *Female deity from Nukuoro
    *Braque, The Portuguese

Jade Cong

  • Form: Circular hole within a square; abstract designs of faces of spirits/deities, mask design with mouth, eyes, and headdress.
  • Materials & Techniques: Carved jade using drills/saws/sand; may have been heated or ritually burned.
  • Context: Jade placed in burials of high-rank individuals in elaborate rituals, some broken/burned; Chinese linked jade to durability, subtlety, beauty; Neolithic era in China.
    *Cross-Cultural Comparisons:
    *Mondrian, Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow
    *Relief Sculpture from Chavín de Huántar
    *Martínez, Black-on-black ceramic vessel

The Ambum Stone

  • Form: Composite human/animal figure (anteater head, human body); ridge line from nostrils to shoulders.
  • Theories: Masked human; anteater embryo (fertility symbol); pestle/tool-related; sacred; ancestral spirit/Rainbow Serpent.
  • History: Stone Age work found in Ambum Valley, Papua New Guinea; used as ritual object by Enga people; sold to Australian National Gallery; damaged in 2000, restored.
    *Cross-Cultural Comparisons:
    *Detail from the Lakshmana Temple
    *Tuffery, Pisupo Lua Afe
    *Buk (mask)

Tlatilco Female Figurine

  • Form: Flipper-like arms, large thighs, pronounced hips, narrow waists; detailed hairstyles/ornaments.
  • Technique: Made by hand (no molds).
  • Function: Possible shamanistic function.
  • Context/Interpretation: Some figures show deformities (Siamese twins, stillborn); bifacial images/defects may express duality; found in graves (funerary context); Tlatilco, Mexico, is noted for pottery.
    *Cross-Cultural Comparisons:
    *Veranda post
    *Power figure
    *Reliquary of Sainte-Foy

Terra Cotta Fragment

  • Form: Curved stamped patterns (dots, circles, hatching) inspired by tattoos; oldest human face in Oceanic art.
  • Materials: Lapita culture of Solomon Islands known for pottery; comb-like tool used for dentate stamping.
  • Technique: No potter’s wheel; white coral lime applied to make patterns pronounced.
  • Tradition: Continuous tradition; used in modern Polynesian tattoos/tapas.
    *Cross-Cultural Comparisons:
    *Hiapo
    *Malagan mask
    *Lindauer, Tamati Waka Nene

Prehistoric Painting

  • Surviving paintings are in caves; animal images dominate with black outlines.
  • Paintings appear unrelated, possibly executed over centuries.
  • Animals shown realistically; humans as stick figures.
  • Handprints (negative prints) abound; often left hands, possibly indicating voluntary mutilation (missing joints/fingers).

Apollo 11 Stones

  • Form: Animal in profile, possibly composite.
  • Materials: Charcoal.
  • Context: Oldest art (25,500–25,300 B.C.E.) found in Wonderwerk Cave, Namibia; stone fragments brought from elsewhere; cave shows 100,000 years of human activity.
  • History: Named after 1969 moon landing, the year cave was discovered.
    *Cross-Cultural Comparisons:
    *Grave stele of Hegeso
    *Tomb of the Triclinium
    *Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and three daughters

Great Hall of the Bulls

  • Content: 650 paintings, mainly cows, bulls, horses, deer; some animals shown pregnant.
  • Form: Bodies in profile; frontal/diagonal horns/eyes/hooves; twisted perspective of horns; overlapping figures.
  • Materials: Natural pigments (charcoal, iron ore, plants); walls scraped smooth; paint colors bound with animal fat; lamps lit interior.
  • Context: Animals placed deep inside cave; scaffolding visible; negative handprints (signatures?); caves not dwellings (migratory people); shelter at cave mouths. Discovered in 1940; opened to public after WWII; closed in 1963 due to damage from humans; replica opened nearby.
  • Theories: Ensure successful hunt; ancestral animal worship; narrative elements; shamanism (shamans contact nature forces in trancelike state).
    *Cross-Cultural Comparisons:
    *Tomb of the Triclinium
    *Leonardo da Vinci, Last Supper
    *Walker, Darkytown Rebellion

Running Horned Woman

  • Form: Composite view of body; some drawings naturalistic, some abstract; horned figure attending ritual.
  • Content: Livestock, wildlife, humans (hunting/harvesting).
  • Context: >15,000 drawings/engravings; area was grasslands (climate changes); painted by different groups over time.
  • Cross-Cultural Comparisons:
    *Aka elephant mask
    *Ikenga (shrine figure)
    *Malagan mask

Beaker with Ibex Motifs

  • Form & Content: Stylized aquatic birds, running dogs, ibex with abstract horns.
  • Materials & Techniques: Made on potter’s wheel/handmade; thin pottery walls.
  • Context & Interpretation: Clan symbol inside horn; perhaps identifies deceased’s group/family; near burial site with baskets/bowls/metallic items; Susa, Iran.
    *Cross-Cultural Comparisons:
    *Martínez, Black-on-black ceramic vessel
    *The David Vases
    *Koons, Pink Panther

Prehistoric Architecture

  • Shelters built from large animal bones.
  • Most famous structures for worship: menhirs (large individual stones) erected singularly/in rows.
  • Megaliths: Menhirs cut to rectangular shapes in prehistoric complexes.
  • Henge: Circle of megaliths with lintels, align with calendar dates.
  • Post-and-Lintel: Erected architecture fundamental in history architecture.

Stonehenge

  • Technique: Post-and-lintel construction; mortise and tenon system.
  • Context: Large megaliths (some >50 tons) imported from >150 miles away indicate sacred significance; perhaps took 1,000 years to build in three phases.
  • Tradition: Maybe inspired by previous wood circles; stone circles common in Great Britain.
  • Theories: Oriented toward sunrise at summer solstice/sunset at winter solstice (observatory); death/burial ceremonies; healing site.
    *Cross-Cultural Comparisons:
    *Chavín de Huántar
    *Pantheon
    *Great Mosque of Djenné

Multiple Choice Practice Questions

  • Lascaux Cave paintings purpose: (C) shamans entered trancelike state before painting.
  • Unusual Tlatilco anatomical shapes: (A) Unusual cluster of congenital abnormalities.
  • Masks, such as “running horned woman,” indicate interest in: (D) ritual presentations where participants paint bodies and dance.
  • Beaker with ibex motifs found in Susa indicates use: (A) as part of burial.
  • Funerary purpose seen in: (D) jade cong found in burial site.

Vocabulary

  • Anthropomorphic: Having human characteristics, though not human in form.
  • Archaeology: The scientific study of ancient people and cultures through excavation.
  • Cong: A tubular object with a circular hole cut into a square-like cross-section.
  • Henge: A Neolithic monument with a circular ground plan, used for rituals and marking astronomical events.
  • Lintel: A horizontal beam over an opening.
  • Megalith: A stone of great size used in prehistoric structures.
  • Menhir: A large uncut stone erected as a monument; a standing stone.
  • Mortise and tenon: A groove cut into stone or wood (mortise) shaped to receive a projection (tenon).
  • Post-and-lintel: Construction where two posts support a horizontal beam.
  • Shamanism: A religion where spirits influence good/evil, accessed by shamans.
  • Stele (pl. stelae): An upright stone slab used to mark a grave or site.
  • Stylized: A schematic, nonrealistic manner of representing the visible world.