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History of Art Survey
Lecture 2
Pre-historic Art
Gardner XI 1-15
A Paleolithic: c 32,000 - c 7000 BCE
B Mesolithic Europe 7000 - 4000 BCE
Neolithic Europe 4000 - 1500 BCE
C Mesolithic Near East 7000 - 6000 BCE
Neolithic Near East 6000 - 3500 BCE
1-
x a stone core tool
y a more refined core of flake tool
1 Waterworn pebble resemb human face, c 3,000,000 BCE 2 3/8” Makapansgat
(SA)
2 Animal facing left, Apollo 11 Cave, Namibia, c 23,000 BCE, 5” Windhoek(Namibia)
3 Human with feline head, c 30-28,000 BCE. 1’ Hohlenstein-Stadel
4 Venus of Willendorf, 4 1/2” 28,000 - 25,000 BCE Willendorf (Aust.)
* Lajja Gauri, 4’ Calukya 6-8th c CE, Badami
* Lajja Gauri, 3’ Calukya 6-8th c CE, Aihole
5 Woman holding a bison horn, 18” (Dordogne) 25,000-20,000 BCE Laussel
(Fr)
6 Reclining woman, rock relief, La Magdelaine cave, 12,000 BCE Tarn (Fr)
7 Two Bison, clay relief, Le Tuc d’Audouert, 2’, c 15-10,000 BCE
Ariege (Fr)
8 Bison with turned head, La Madelaine cave, 4” c 12,000 BCE Dordogne
(Fr)
9 Bison detail of painted ceiling, natural cave c12,000-11,000 BCE Altamira
(Spain)
9 Dead Bison, 8’ Altamira
10 Spotted Horses and negative hand imprints, 22,000 BCE Pech-Merle (Fr)
*11 Hall of the Bulls, left wall, c 15,000 - 13,000 BCE Lascaux (France)
12 Aurochs, horses, and rhinoceroses, Chauvet cave, 30-28,000BCE Ardeche (France)
13 Rhinoceros, wounded man, and disemboweled bison Lascaux (France)
Map Gardner 10th ec of Neolithic
14 Great stone tower, c 8000 - 7000 BCE Jericho
15 Human skull, c 7000-6000 BCE Jericho
16 Schematic reconstruction of a section of level VI, 6000-5900 BCE Çatal
Hüyük (Turk)
17 Deer hunt, det of wall level III, c 5750 BCE Çatal Hüyük
(Turk)
18 Landscape with volcanic eruption (?) level VII, c 6150 BCE Çatal Hüyük
(Turk)
* Li tripod, c 5,000-3,000 BCE Anyang, China
* Painted Beaker, c 4,000 BCE Susa, Iran
8-1 Jomon Vessel from Miyanomae, 2500-2500 BCE Nagano, Japan
19 Stonehenge, 97’ diam, 24’ high, c 2550 - 1600 BCE Wiltshire (England)
What is Pre-History? Before Writing
It is not uninteresting that a third of these dates have been changed since the Xth edition, in this chapter.
1 Waterworn pebble resembling a human face, c 3,000,000
BCE 2 3/8” Makapansgat (SA)
Australopithecus, a precursor of homo sapiens, did this pebble. I.e., it was made intentionally. They don’t say anything I’d call it an artifact. Or an accident.
What is Art? For this course, we’ll use the modern bourgeois definition art, as the most interesting visual images, often construed as the highest quality. I contest the quality part as a peculiar ideological leap of bourgeois idealism. But the most interesting is ok.Paleolithic hunting and gathering by homanids using tools go back two million years. Homo Sapiens Sapiens, the current human race, comes together and spreads out of Africa between 120,000 and 100,000 years ago. Tool making sophistication is contiual from that time. Prepared burial goes back to about 90,000. The picture making of the Upper Paleolithic begins around 30,000 BCE. Pottery making goes back to about 15,000.
We will take the “BC of our text as BCE (Before the Common Era), as we aren’t all Christians and this is the current trend in world history.
There is no Cro-Magnon art until c. 30,000 BCE. It is the Cro-Magnons
who took the step, beyond the Neanderthals and previous peoples [?], of making
imagery that goes beyond simple utilitarian tools.
It is still controversial whether Neanderthals became extinct or merged with Cro-Magnons.
The striking fact here is a homogeneity of style formulas and subjects, and regional focus of the two sets, the western European one, extending from northern Spain across the pyrenees to Switzerland, and the central european one, extending from Italy into the Balkans. There is nothing leading up to this outburst and nothing following it. It spreads from c 32,000 to 9,500 BCE. Mainly raindeer hunting small tribes living in natural shelters and hide tents, they disappear from our record as the raindeer recede north with the end of the Ice Age.
In the paintings raindeer not prominent, like big bisons, horses and other large game animals. Few. Carnivores, fishes or people are found. Certainly most of this art in perishable materials has been lost to natural decay.
Eighty painted caves are known, all in the Basque region, Pyrenees and Dordogne. Cave painting is found deep within caves,. With the exception of Lascaux and one or two others, none are in a space to gather. Rather they are mainly in inaccessible locations: in narrow passgeways and high above floors. None are in habitation sites.
There are seventy-one western, eighteen central, and fourteen miniature sculpture find sites. Mainly these small bone and ? pieces are found around hearths. There is a striking concentration found betwen 13,000 and 8,000, that is, at the end of the period
Venus figures usually less then three inches; about 150 are known. Only a few miniature males are found with them. All are carved in a schematic naturalism. Several were found in sets. All of these were created between 26 and 24,000 BCE.
2 Animal facing left, Apollo 11 Cave, Namibia, c 23,000 BCE, 5”
Windhoek (Namibia)
Among earliest surviving paintings. A conceptually rendered representation.
Almost every image from Paleo, Meso and Neolithic is in such [conceptual] profile.
It is the most information-filled view. Variety and originality comes later.
The remains in what is later the western edge of what we now call Europe
3 Human with feline head, c 30-28,000 BCE. 1’ Hohlenstein-Stadel
(Ge)
Ivory statuette of humanoid being. Very guess-filled def. Assembled of several
parts.
“Women in Paleolithic Art”
Most Paleolithic art depicts animals. Among the few human images, almost all
humans are female. Probably these result from preoccupation with fertility
and child bearing. If, as A. E. Hooten has noted, the major subject
has been “art for meat’s sake,” this minor subject seems to
be “art for procreation.” Nearly all clearly nude, and with emphasis
on sexual characteristics. Calling them “Venuses” is a misleading
reference to this. They seem fetility images of some sort.
4 Venus of Willendorf, 4 1/2” 28,000 - 25,000 BCE Willendorf
(Austria)
Typically, it is named after its find spot. It is limestone, in a ball shape,
possibly the artist’s response to stone’s original shape. Most are
slimmer, but still corplent. Most have emphasized hips and breasts, like the
next. The Carver didn’t aim for naturalism but rhythmical and symmetrical
identity. Emphasis is on fertility: genitals and bellies. The tiny arms
are also characteristic. The Pubic triangle is distinguished, while
many other details omitted.
In fact the most striking regularity among all Paleolithic imagery is the careful depiction of each animals species and gender. Fertility and identity were apparently important. Human’s today can’t look at each others without immediate, hardwired focus upon genitals.
We need to note esthetic regularity: symmetry, rhythmical proportions and repetition of forms. These are typical characteristics of this imagery.
And then there is the strangely patterned, featureless face!
Plato’s Cave Lajja Gauris from Badami and Aihole, India, 7-8th centuries CE
Here’s an Indian figure from historical times and my study. These are fertility goddesses. We know this partly from contemporary usage and partly from their in-situ survival. Here’s one from Badami which is a loose piece. Other life sized ones like this have survived from this particular culture and period. Here’s another from Aihole a few miles away which is rock cut and so, we can see, not set up vertically, but as a number of others found as loose stones like the Badami example, sited horizontally. That is, as altars. And you can see this one in the rock shelter, where it was carved, with the linga —phallus — associated with it: The linga is a god, so the female is too. If he is Siva, she is Gauri.
This is why some of us looking back today decide such a work is not merely an image but one with particular use in mind. Since most all the imagery of the time seems fertility conscious which is survival conscious: what is to be eaten and what reproduces, and since that is the most important and basic elements in life, this isn’t a wild speculation. Though it is speculation.
Here too is a face without human features. But here a lotus flower for a face, as is totally standard for these figures all over India from prehistoric or at least proto-historic times on. The lotus in all historic time is the goddess Lakshmi, wealth or even fertility.
Slatkin offers us some additional points to start us out with.
Female statuettes are one of the three major categories of Paleolithic remains
over 60 known, most between 25000 and 23000 she says [The
disagreement in numbers from my previous reference is a matter of the ambiguity
of definitions still found among this material.
Facelessness and lack of feet & hands is typical of the type. The
idea of mother goddess not tenable as there is no evidence of a shared religion
among the different peoples who made them. Personified, [universal] deities
are uncommon among small scale foraging societies. These are more likely fertility
enhancing images of some sort, related to sympathetic magic. But we can’t.
she says, treat them all as if they were a particular goddess.
5 Woman holding a bison horn, 18” (Dordogne) 25,000-20,000 BCE
Laussel (Fr)
Relief is imagery carved against a backdrop, not fully in the round, or freestanding.
The image has been cut off a much larger boulder, that stood outside a grotto
shelter. Like the Venus of Willendorf, it was once colored red in some parts.
.
Here too an anonymous featureless face.
Most interesting it carries a bison horn. Though we have no idea what it means.
6 Reclining woman, rock relief, La Magdelaine cave, 12,000 BCE Tarn
(Fr)
Here is a relief in a grotto wall that takes advantage of the formation’s
natural contours, which may have suggested the form to its makers. It is a rare
case of departing from pure profile.
Cave art is in materials that have survived because they are permanent and contiguous
with the surfaces on which we find them. That is, unseparated by any frame.
They are cultural forms still largely integrated with natural forms.
Breasts and pubic triangle are articulated.
7 Two Bison, clay relief, Le Tuc d’Audouert, 2’, c 15-10,000
BCE Ariege (Fr)
Here is an example, actually modeled out of clay added to a natural outcrop.
It is not rock in situ. This is also of a much later in period. Tool markings
show that not just hands were used for this modeling.
Modeling is built up form, not cut away or carved
from existing matter.
There must have been much more of this sort of creation which has been lost by natural wear and disintegration of softer materials. Easier to work with but less permanent. The caves I visited in the region of Lascaux, at Les Eyzies include Cap Blank (a shelter with clay modeled bison and humans), Les Combarelles a deep, narrow water course cavern with engravings of animal forms) and Font-de-Gaume, another watercourse cavern with painted images of animals. All were Magdelanian.
8 Bison with turned head, La Madelaine cave, 4” c 12,000 BCE
Dordogne (Fr)
Here is a fragnebt if carved raindeer horn, found in one of these grottos. There
is carving and inscribing. The work was done with stone tools. Even with the
profile rule followed, the artist turned the head 180 degrees. Here too shape
may have intervened. But it is a real, observable, pose. There is thought here.
9 Bison detail of painted ceiling, natural cave c12,000-11,000 BCE
Altamira (Spain), 9 Dead Bison, 8’ Altamira
Here are life sized images, not miniature or small scaled ones (as above) done
in large room of a grotto.
Our book points out how a little girl saw them even before her father. What’s important for us is not that she saw them, but that he recognized them as prehistoric and of this amazing antiquity. So amazing they were doubted for a great long time. Many had certainly “discovered” them in the intervening years. What counts for us is that they were recognized for what they are.
Each is shown conceptually. The also seem dead to some observers,
though I don’t see this or why they think so. Do you wonder? Ask!
“The painting has no setting., no background, no indication of place.
The Paleolithic painter was not at all concerned with where the animals were
or with how they related to one another, if at all. In stead, several separate
images of bison adorn the ceiling, perhaps painted at different times, and each
is as complete and informative as possible—even if their meaning remains
a mystery.” (8)
This may be true most of the time, but here there is a care not to overlap,
and we could see the set as relateable in composition if not in scene. A connected
fact is their being painted over natural bulges in the rock ceiling.
Artists used lamps of burning fat to see inside these deep caves. Colored powders
were used to draw. Some pigments were composed of several materials for the
purpose. The color was applied by hand or stick or frayed stick, or blown on
through a reed.
10 Spotted Horses and negative hand imprints, 22,000 BCE Pech-Merle
(Fr)
Here is pigment blown on. Even a hand print
in negative. There are also marks that suggests symbols, checks, circles, etc.
And there are suggestions of pointed tools (arrows or traps). Positive hand
prints are known also. Are these signatures?
It depends on what you mean by signature. Personal identities for others to recognize as one person rather than another: no. But as the social mark of men associated with the creation they do establish a certain sort of identity for who manufactured and maybe who is expecting the manufacture to have some particular result.
The “hunting-magic” theory suggests they were used
to control animals in order to hunt them more effectively.
Magic here suggests rituals to control animal behavior. That would be equal to prayer in contemporary America. This is a possibility. Another, maybe more useful possibility, is planning. That is, diagrams tmay be used to familiarize selves with different species and to point out to each other where to aim for in an attack, what gender to kill, and when it was mature as contrasted with young and needing to grow first. These are ssues hunters take account of today and historically.
No single explanation is likely to cover all these variously made and located
designs.
Les Combarelles & Font-de-Gaume, Les Eyzies
I have visited three of these Magdelanean caves in the region of Les Eyzies, a day’s walk south of Lascaux. Abri du Cap Blanc was an overhang with clay reliefs of bison like those at Le Tuc d’Audouert, and people too. Font-de-Gaume and Les Combarelles were both long narrow wandering caverns, formed eons before by underground water courses. The first had clusters of painted drawings of large animals. The second had drawings scratched into the walls.
My considered understanding of these long long winding caves with their scattered and bunched depictions of animals is that they were much like the tatoos we see on people’s bodies all over the world today. They are markings of identification. One makes a representational diagram and it refers to what it depicts. This doesn’t necessarily imply a ritual or magical use. But like the writing of names on our bodies in tatoos in Ames today, they connect the maker of the representation in some way with what they represent.
The three major functions of visual imagery are communication, decoration and identification.
Almost all the images are depictions of identifiable species. This is an example of communication.
When we look at these images we also see the third basic function of visual imagery: decoration or esthetic enjoyment. However disorganized the combinations of images and crude some of them, there are almost always symptoms of design interest. The images are often enjoyably rhythmical . Series of animals of the same scale, lined up in a row or posed symmetrically, like confronted species are common.
The narrowness of these caves and the irregularity of the locations, mostly at convenient eye level, but some high up in places that are not easy to reach or see, suggest that their making was more important than their display, another parallel with contemporary American tatoos.
To understand these images at all we need to go beyond the most attractive, or by bourgeois standards artistic images and consider the entire design type.
Lascaux, layout
“The region of Montignac” There are many caves in this region. They
were done over long periods of time and some at more than one time. It was a
local tradition. And these were all sorts of media: engraved, modeled,
carved and painted as well as combinations of these. This sort of work does
not survive from every Paleolithic culture. this tradition is quite concentrated
in this region of southwestern France and northern Spain.
The paintings located are a ways in from the opening, as is typical. For preservation
or secrecy? Privacy?
11 Hall of the Bulls, left wall, c 15,000-13,000 BCE Lascaux (Fr)
There are grooves in the wall 7’ over the floor, “probably”
for scaffolding.
After visiting Lascaux II, the carefully constructed reproduction of the Hall of Bulls, I have the more distinct understanding, than before, that this was a peculiar unusual example of the type. Lascaux was created with display as one of its purposes. I take this in part from the fact that its images are lined up on the walls of an unusual widening out of the cave creating a space large enough for numberst to gather. In most other caves there is hardly more than a space to move through single file. The second clue comes from the organization of the imagery on the walls It is not spread around irregularly and randomly. Rather the figures are lined up on a single level, strongly established in the wall by a largely natural groove that runs above shoulder level. The artists used this horizon consciously as a ground line and as a framing device.
The replica of the Hall of the Bulls has been constructed for tourists, since the cave is now off limits to all but a few specialist visits each year. It reproduces this quite closely. The original was being destroyed by visitors’ breath. And now the copy also is deteriorating from the same cause!
What is particularly unique here is the grouping as an ensemble unit and the location in a room large enough for many to gather and see them. This is art to be seen and enjoyed, not just assemblage of images to be recognized for some practical use.
“Running of the bulls” your author suggests, then says not likely.
Here they may see a scene to some extent. Not only bulls. Many cows as well.
Silhouettes as well as outlines. Probably painted at different
times. Sizes also vary.
“Twisted perspective” profile head but both horns visible. An approach
that is more descriptive than optical.
13 Rhinoceros, wounded man, and disemboweled bison c 15-13,000 BCE
Lascaux (France) (Stockstad plan)
“Narration” Here is the oldest known painting of a man. Here is
also a carefully constructed rhinoceros. There are two rows of dots below. On
the right is a disemboweled bison entrails hanging and hair bristling. Between
is a bird-masked (?) man with four fingers and outstretched arms. He has a prominent
penis. Is he wounded or standing? Is his penis erect? There is also a bird topped
staff.. There is a spear.
Which disemboweled the bison, man or rhino? Which animal possibly knocked the
man down. IS THIS A STORY?
12 Aurochs, horses, and rhinoceroses, Chauvet cave, 30-28,000 BCE Vallon-Pont-d’Arc,
Ardeche (France)
“World’s oldest painting.” This should point out how various
but “interesting” is our definition of art. Radiocarbon dating of
the black carbon in pigment is source of date. Based on rate of radioactivity
decay in carbon 14 that has been burnt.
Most interesting here is the inclusion of animals not part of the normal diet
[or painting]. Lions and bears. This is a cave where 50 Bear skulls were found.
So it is assumed they hibernated here. A pair of rhinoceroses are confronted.
This is likely a first As everything else here. Confrontation is found in a
number of cases and places many animals here aren’t complete, but just
fore parts!
This breaks the Paleolithic rule.
It remains characteristic if rarely broken
The Neolithic
B Mesolithic Europe 7000 - 4000 BCE
Neolithic Europe 4000 - 1500 BCE
C Mesolithic Near East 7000 - 6000 BCE
Neolithic Near East 6000 - 3500 BCE
Ice age recedes c 9000 BCE
If the Paleolithic is marked by tool use and eventually abstract thinking,
as seen in the invention of visual images, the Neolithic is marked
by the beginning of domesticated crops and animals and the development of crafts
impossible before the sedentary living made possible by domesticated agriculture
crops that were planted and harvested, not just collected or gathered. Most
significant is the invention of fired ceramics. Food production replacing food
gathering. This is first seen in the Near East.
“Near East” Here is my growing interest. First of all we are being, as most people have been, defining the world in terms of ourselves. We are the center and those to our sunrise side are east of us. We count these others as a farther east –China, etc. – and those closer to us as a nearer east.
Not that there is anything wrong with that in itself. My question comes when we construct these people as distinctly different. These aren’t two separate regions or cultures. These are two ends of a connected cultural development. The Neolithic revolution of polished stone tools, domestication of crops and animals and incipient metal smelting with growth of community settlements begins in Iran 9-8,000 and slowly spread westward to Europe and ending in the British Isles around 4,000. It is a connected cultural development.
The map in the 10th ed. actually said this. We are now seeing this division softened by those scholars, like me, who have recognized this division as a particular sort of “racism” called “Orientalism.”
These people lived in mud brick houses gathered in villages. Paleolithic peoples lived mostly as unsettled nomads in natural shelters. It was only after settling in more or less permanent locations that the crafts of civilization beyond the simplest stone tools could be evolved. Pottery, woodwork and weaving, the most important of these crafts, come only after even more basic skills of basketry and sewing. Larger communities lead to more developed patterns of social life and intersction.
The earlies proofs we have of cloth production are in the domestication of associated material souces. Wool and flax are the earliest sources of thread and so woven textiles. Sheep and goats, the are domesticated between 9,000 and 6,000 in the Mesopotamia. Flax seed is domesticated by 6,000. plant dyes are ubiquotous. Red, blue and yellow cloth are found at Çatal Hüyük (6500-5500 BCE).
Ancient Near East “Today’s Middle East”
“The dawn of civilization”
People seem to have concentrated in “fertile crescent” along Tigris
and Euphrates in Mesopotamia, the modern area of Syria and Iraq. Here are the
oldest settled communities found so far. With domesticated crops of first wild
then domesticated wheat and barley and goats, sheep and pigs.
Once settled we get not only farming but pottery, metal smelting, weaving,
calculation, [fixed] measurements, writing religion, laws.
And settled habitation. began in Mesopotamia and spread to
Syria.
Calculation already in Paleolithic. Not likely religion lacking.
[Irrigation, towns and temple centers come later in next period.] Trade, even long distance trade in some attractive stones and shells, and more developed crafts now appear. Among tools we have most important, the plow and the bow and arrow emerge, surpassing the spear and throwing stick.
14 Great stone tower, c 8000 - 7000 BCE Jericho
A long time in growing on this spot, not an import or all at once. A 10 acre
site by 8,000 BCE Mud brick houses, with earth over branch frame roofs. Over
stone foundations in ovalish outlines. By 7,500 population of 2,000 people.
Surrounded by a 5’ ditch and 5’ thick wall.
This tower 28’ high and 35’ diameter. With an inner stairway. What
was it for?
15 Human skull, c 7000-6000 BCE Jericho
The site was abandoned and the occupied later by others.
Why? We don’t know. But towns aren’t built in interesting spots, but where there is some important local phenomena or most often, where trade routes cross._________________________
Dict of Art, Textiles, Anc. Near East.
Skulls with some features reconstructed in plaster and shell eyes. Paint added features. Possibly even specific individualized features. Afterlife associations. ??
different from anything in earlier times.
16 Schematic reconstruction of a section of level VI, 6000-5900 BCE
Çatal Hüyük (Turkey)
12 levels excavated. 7-5000 BCE. Covering 30 acres more or less. These excavations
are still quite incomplete. This reconstruction reveals no streets!
?
Houses were entered through openings just under roofs, no doors. So quite defensible
as a series of cells, no open spaces to enter.
Mud brick with timber frames. Walls plastered and painted.
Shrine rooms distinguished by size and furnishing, not different structures.
Bulls horns, female [fertility] symbols and breasts.
The site was opened in mid 60’s by a British team, then halted by Turks with claim that the Brits were stealing antiquities from the Turks. A major claim about the British from their Imperial times, Major international controversies with them and US too continue.
All nations fear our collectors and power.
17 Deer hunt, det of a copy of a wall level III, c 5750 BCE Çatal
Hüyük (Turkey)
Unlike Paleolithic this Neolithic painting is filled with people. And it seems
to be an organized hunting party. Human heads are seen from the side. As conceptual
as Paleolithic. Torsos, by contrast, are shown from the front. Conceptual composite
views do not show a simple profile, but most characteristic aspects.
Until Classical-age-Greeks this “composite view” was [almost?] universal.
18 Landscape with volcanic eruption (?) level VII, c 6150 BCE Çatal
Hüyük (Turkey)
“The first landscape” This is a typical looking-back and defining
the past in terms of our interests in the present. “LANDSCAPE” is
not a natural concept but a human construction. A reasonable one, though certainly
not common to all societies. Therefore, when we get to it, it should be interesting
to explain it.
So, what’s a landscape? “a natural setting in its own right, without
any narrative content.” (14)
Then it says here, this is an eruption of a volcano from the two peaked volcano
behind a city, probably this one. Behind Çatal Hüyük is the
only twin peaked volcano in Anatolia. It must have religious meaning, because
it was found on the wall of a shrine. It is the first depiction devoid of humans
and animals. Another definition of L/S I suppose, since this doesn’t fit
the first: being a story.
Plato’s Cave Li Tripod, Anyang (China) 5-2,000 BCE
Ceramic vessels are a mojor develoment of the latest Paleolithic. They allowed
not only preserving and transportation of liquids, but cooking of them over
a fire. The discovery of ceramics is likely the result of accidental burning
of clay added to a to make it water tight, a refinement on elemental basketry.
Ceramic wares are common in the Paleolithic from around 15,000 BCE on.
This plain grey ware fabric is typical of Neolithic China. It is in a form later
designated a Li, tripod. It reminds us that much of the earliest ceramic vessel
production was in pointed shapes that could be stuck into the ground for stability.
This is a particularly ingenius shape, which allows placement on irregular ground
or a flatened surface such as the Neolithic floor may have been. It is also
peculiarly efficient for boiling, with its multiplied exterior surfaces.
Plato’s Cave Painted Beaker, Susa (Iran) c. 4,000 BCE
Here is a well known painted beaker, or cup, from Neolithic Susa, Iran. As the
previous piece and a good percentage of early ceramics, its decoration includes
horizontal and vertical markings of a sort that may carry risidual reference
to the basketry weaving that was a common container shape of the period. Here
we find a handsomely painted imagery based in part on such horizontal and vertical
markings and part on abstractions of animal motifs. Here the apparently abstract
decoration, turns out, on inspection to feature not only a wonderful gazelle
central image, but a ring of hunting dogs (?) above it, and a register of long
necked birds above that.
19 Stonehenge, 97’ diam, 24’ high, c 2550 - 1600 BCE Wiltshire
(England)
There is no comparable Neolithic survival in Western Europe. So why separate
dates? There are some great stone assemblages going back as far as 4000 BCE.
Stones in a circle are a cromlech or a henge.
Outer ring nearly 100’ tallest 24’ Beams and lintels.
Individual stones up to 50 tons. They are organized in part at least to note
the Summer solstice if certain stones are sited through. Built in 2 phases it
seems.
Interest in celestial bodies, especially the sun and moon are clearly recorded
in the Paleolithic moon cycles and Neolithic structures like Stone Henge.
I am going back and reading my notes at the sites and being reminded of a number of design distinctions worth noting.
Prehistoric art, as indicated in the caves involve a number of design charachteritics,
1 the most important of which is its situation in nature
as a context rather than separated into a distinct cultural context.
Nature is the frame. Things are scratched or painted on a wall without a separating
border. Lumps of the wall are taken into the coposition. # imagery is contextualized
as part of nature..
2 there are several elements of design present
location ....anywhere in nature, without framing separation k
coordination ....things lined up or organized x y z g h
symmetry ....things paralleled or opposed VV or ><
mass ....shading at edges, deeper incision at edges
color regularity
repitition ....... 8383838383838888833337744
consistancy of scale
perspective overlap ....one thing then in front of another
perspective by pose ....animal turning
3 subject matter is insistant on representation of specific
species
species
gender
season
actions o