Prehistoric Art: Overview, Periods, and Key Works
Prehistoric Art Introduction
Prehistory Definition: Encompasses human existence before the advent of writing.
Original Purpose: Early creations (tools, images, shelters) were for survival and function, not purely "art" as understood today.
Art Historical Value: Offers critical clues for understanding early human life and culture for archaeologists and anthropologists.
Interpretation: Prehistoric art meanings are speculative and dynamic, varying by context and individual.
Dating Methods: Used to determine artifact age.
Relative Dating: Establishes chronological relationships between objects at sites.
Absolute Dating: Determines a precise calendar age using methods like:
Radiocarbon (Carbon-14) Dating: For organic materials up to 30,000–40,000 years old (e.g., pigments, animal bones).
Uranium-Thorium Dating: Measures uranium decay in calcium carbonate deposits, determining minimum age of paintings.
Potassium-Argon Dating: For materials over 1 million years old.
Thermo-luminescence Dating: For fire-subjected materials like pottery.
Electron Spin Resonance: For materials like tooth enamel.
The Stone Age
Divisions: Divided into Paleolithic ("old stone"), Mesolithic ("middle stone"), and Neolithic ("new stone") periods.
Human Migration: Modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) spread from Africa across continents between 100,000 and 35,000 years ago.
Paleolithic Period (Old Stone Age)
Cognitive Leap: Homo sapiens sapiens' ability to think symbolically distinguishing them from Neanderthals (e.g., creating representational analogies) marks the origin of art.
Earliest Art: Engraved ocher blocks and perforated shells from Blombos Cave, South Africa (c. 77,000 years ago), used for personal adornment and drawing.
Shelters: Ingenious structures from light branches/hides to mammoth-bone houses (Ukraine, c. 16,000–10,000 bce).
Sculpture in the Round: Three-dimensional figures.
Lion-Human (Hohlenstein-Stadel, Germany, c. 40,000–35,000 bce): Composite creature (human-feline), suggesting symbolic thought beyond natural observation.
Female Figures: Most human figures are female.
Woman from Willendorf (Austria, c. 24,000 bce): Exaggerated female attributes; interpretations include health/fertility, or as a nonverbal communication signaling alliance/shared values among groups.
Woman from Dolni Vestonice (Czech Republic, c. 23,000 bce): Fired clay figures often intentionally exploded in kilns, representing early performance/process art.
Woman from Brassempouy (France, c. 30,000 bce): Abstract ivory head, capturing the "memory image" of a head, indicating stylized representation.
Cave Painting: Sophisticated images on cave walls in central/southern France and northern Spain.
Discovery: First discovered at Altamira, Spain, in 1879, initially dismissed as a hoax.
Techniques: Spraying pigment (using hands as stencils), drawing with fingers/ocher blocks, daubing with hair/moss brushes. Often used natural rock formations and engraved lines.
Meaning Hypotheses: Debated theories include sympathetic magic for hunting success, rites for clan bonds/animal fertility, teaching hunting information to novices (Steve Mithen), or shamanism and trance-induced visions (David Lewis-Williams).
Significant Sites:
Chauvet Cave (France, c. 32,000–30,000 bce): Hundreds of dramatic animal paintings (horses, rhinos, mammoths), handprints, geometric markings.
Lascaux Cave (France, c. 15,000 bce): Hall of Bulls depicting cows, bulls, horses, deer using composite pose (horns/eyes frontal, bodies in profile); also features a "Bird-Headed Man with Bison" in a shaft, suggesting a narrative scene.
Altamira Cave (Spain, c. 12,500 bce): Bison painted using red/brown ocher and black, utilizing natural rock contours for sculptural effect.
Neolithic Period (New Stone Age)
Fundamental Changes: Climate warming leading to domestication of plants (wheat, barley) and animals (sheep, goats, cattle, pigs).
Architecture: Shift to durable, lasting structures and settlements.
Construction Materials: Clay, mud, dung, straw interwoven with wooden posts; stone foundations, sun-dried bricks.
Lepenski Vir (Serbia, 6300–5500 bce): Trapezoidal buildings with stone foundations, human-fish sculptures; suggests ritual activities linked to death and wild worlds.
Çatalhöyük (Turkey, 7400–6200 bce): "Tell" site with densely clustered mud-brick houses entered through roofs; interiors decorated with bucrania (cattle skulls/horns) and wall paintings depicting violent scenes, human/animal interactions. Burials under floors, sometimes with skulls removed or reburied, indicating houses as centers of community history and spirit. Challenges traditional focus on Mother Goddess cults.
Intentional House Destruction: Evidence (e.g., eastern/central Europe) suggests ritualistic burning of houses to mark social rupture, not invasions.
Megalithic Architecture: Huge stone structures in western/northern Europe.
Purpose: Ceremonial structures and tombs (reflecting death/burial rituals as public performance).
Construction: Post-and-lintel (two uprights supporting a horizontal element).
Types: Dolmens (simple burial chambers), Passage Graves (narrow passages to central room).
Newgrange (Ireland, c. 3000–2500 bce): Elaborate passage grave with corbeled vault and engraved linear designs (rings, spirals), possibly entoptic/hallucinatory effects for tomb visitors.
Stonehenge (England, c. 3000–1500 bce): Complex henge (circle of stones/posts) with multiple construction phases using bluestones (transported 150 miles) and sarsen stones. Features trilithons (three-stone post-and-lintel units) and mortise-and-tenon joints. Current theory connects it to death/burial ceremonies, linking to nearby wooden settlement (Durrington Walls) and the Avon River, symbolizing worlds of living and dead.
Ceramics: "Pot revolution" – ability to make fired-clay vessels.
Techniques: Coiling, pressing, potter's wheel (developed in Egypt c. 4000 bce).
Firing: Kilns used to heat clay; earthenware (at least 500^ ext{o}C), stoneware (between 1200^ ext{o} and 1400^ ext{o}C).
Significance: Independent invention globally; early pottery (e.g., Franchthi Cave, Greece, c. 6500 bce) used experimentally for ritual, later for daily activities like cooking.
Sculpted Human Figures: Thousands of miniature figures.
Interpretation: Moved from fertility cults to marking the human body as core to identity; diverse functions (toys, portraits, votives).
Çernavodă Figures (Romania, c. 4500 bce): Seated woman and thoughtful man, discovered in a grave.
Ain Ghazal Figures (Jordan, c. 6500 bce): Large human figures (up to 90 cm) made of plaster over bundled twigs, with shell eyes. Buried in pits, distinct yet connected to house burial practices, suggesting ceremonial function.
Metallurgy: Emergence of metalworking, closely allied with ceramics.
Early Use: Copper, gold, tin mined and worked from c. 4000 bce; initially for ornamentation (jewelry, garment appliques).
Varna Cemetery (Bulgaria, c. 3800 bce): Gold-adorned masks and scepters in special burials indicate displays of status and authority, even without a physical body.
Bronze Age
Bronze Alloy: Mixture of tin and copper, creating a stronger, harder material than pure copper.
Impact: Transformed tools and weapons (daggers, swords), shifting power bases, increasing trade and intergroup contact due to limited tin distribution.
Rock Carvings (Northern Europe, c. 1500–500 bce):
Technique: Scratching outlines, pecking, grinding rock surfaces.
Motifs: Over 40,000 images in Bohuslän, Sweden, including boats (most common), animals, people, wheeled vehicles, weapons.
Interpretation: Location near water suggests connection between sky, earth, sea, or a boundary between worlds of living and spirits. Effort involved suggests critical symbolic importance. Orientation of symbols provided the means for people in the prehistoric era to remember and recall knowledge of the natural world essential to their survival.