Archaeology of Portable Rock Art

Subjectivity in Stone Age art works such as figure stones, engravings, sculptures, effigies and curated manuports. See how images and icons have been realized in portable rock media since the dawn of humanity. Here, archaeologists and art historians are becoming aware of these forsaken artifacts. “And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing." -in W. Shakespeare, As You Like It, 1599.

20 May 2012

Hoard #6 of 7: an "n-sculpture" form like ones identified by Boucher de Perthes, in 1847, and recently described by author Pietro Gaietto

Buckeye Lake sculpture hoard #6 of 7 has been interpreted as an example of a Janus-like figure depicting a jawless skull and a bearded man facing away from each other, one in left profile and the other in right profile view, seen respectively above. This form was originally described by Jacques Boucher de Perthes in France and has been further described most recently by art scholar and author Pietro Gaietto of Italy.

side 2 of hoard sculpture #6 of 7

A gouged and drilled hole demonstrating the artificiality of this flint object

An image of a bearded (goateed) man in right profile view was found on the sculpture only after I read Gaietto's interpretation of this sculpture form as having two human heads. When I looked, this face was seen as predicted by Gaietto's work. The rough oolithic surface of the flint was ground until it was smooth to create the skin component of the face in the image. Gouges have been made in place for an ear and an eye, and there is an incised line in the place of the mouth. Please see illustrations below for markups of these features.

A fair visual comparison of Ohio votive hoard sculpture #6 here to Gaietto’s #5.24 example of the same letter “n" shaped type, demonstrates even further compelling evidence of a European cultural influence on the maker(s) of the Ohio sculptures. According to Gaietto, it represents a skull without jawbone with a second human depicted on the rear of the skull, facing away, Janus-like.

I thought Buckeye Lake hoard #6 of 7 had some quasi-zoomorphic features and a gouged and then drilled hole on side 2 of the piece which demonstrated its artifactuality. When I came across this piece identified as an intended sculpture by Gaietto, I recognized the strong similarity to the Ohio sculpture. They both share a snout-like aspect on the left in these views, an arched gap in the base line and a squared off aspect on the right end.

The Ohio #6 sculpture cannot exist wholly independent, however far in time and distance, of influence from the peoples who made sculpture #5.24 found at Campo, Liguria, in northern Italy. The morphology is too complex, so tied to deep culture, spirituality-- and so very similar, that Ohio #6 cannot be an artifact of independent invention or coincidence.

SCULTURA ANTROPOMORFA PALEOLITICA (2012) by Pietro Gaietto

(click photos to expand and compare)

Gaietto's descriptions of letter “n" shaped or "two-headed" sculptures, first identified by Jacques Boucher de Perthes in 1860, helped identify a bearded man right facial profile image on #7, which was not detected prior but found in place by Johnston as predicted by Gaietto. The successful interpretation of the Ohio sculpture using previously described methods helps confirm its status as a European influenced American art sculpture. Likewise, Gaietto's descriptions of proto-art, pre-sculpture and early sculpture of hominins, which is not accepted by mainstream archaeology, is validated by being applicable (replicable) and informative to this case and must be so credited and duly recognized.

Original illustrations by Boucher de Perthes (1847) of the letter 'n' shaped sculpture form.

Number 18 illustration of Boucher de Perthes demonstrating similarity to the Buckeye Lake sculpture hoard #6 of 7

"Common sense tells us that the primitive people who made haches and tools were able to make figures... ...As to the Symbols and Figures, although I have gathered of these some types which may be seen at my house to-day, numbering about fifty analogous shapes on which the human work is evident, I have converted very few people, and of the number, not one Englishman. Why-they say to me-are you the only one who finds Figure Stones ? Have they never been found anywhere else than at Abbeville ?-and-mention one collection besides your own in which they have been seen ...To-day, Sir, your examples will be questioned, I do not say that I shall have gained my cause, but Truth will have made one more step, and will strike forcibly by coming from two sides."

- From a lettter from Jacques Boucher de Perthes to Victor Chatel, Oct 20th, 1866

The "two sides" Boucher de Perthes was referring to are of the English Channel, France and England. I propose the "two sides" may now be expanded to be taken as "two sides of the Atlantic Ocean" to include Europe and North America.

Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes

-kbj

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Warren K. Moorehead on the imperitive to collect "rough and rude" art

“… The museums are full of axes, celts, pipes, banner stones, discoidals, hematites, tubes, slate ornaments and ceremonials, pestles, hammers, etc. What the museums need (as of great value to Archaeological Science) are collections from a single locality including everything found in that locality. They want the finds of the village site, the studies in unfinished specimens, the poor and the good, the imperfect as well as the perfect. In this regard, the collectors make a great error. Most of them do not save everything but cling to the ‘pretty relics’ and discard the rough and the rude. Personally, I would give more for a collection, provided it contained all the types, all the finds of a certain valley than for just the fine, perfect objects of that valley. From a collection of the latter, I would be misled, for if I accepted it as indicative of the people of that valley, I would say they made the most beautiful works of aboriginal art, nothing rude or unfinished being turned out by their artisans. In such a statement, I would be unpardonably wrong.”

Warren K. Moorehead, 1884

Sculptor Henry Moore

"The most striking quality common to all primitive art is its intense vitality. It is something made by people with a direct and immediate response to life. Sculpture and painting for them was not an activity of calculation or academism, but a channel for expressing powerful beliefs, hopes and fears.

Primitive art is a mine of information for the historian and anthropologist, but to understand and appreciate it, it is more important to look at it than to learn the history of primitive peoples, their religions and social customs…But all that is really needed is response to the carvings themselves, which have a constant life of their own, independent of whenever and however they were made, and remain as full of sculptural meaning today to those open and sensitive enough to receive it as on the day they were finished." --Henry Moore, 1941

Ursel Benekendorff is recognized in the vanguard of Stone Age art inquiry and study

(This image is Copyright (c), Ursel Benekendorff, All Rights Reserved. May not be copied or distributed in any way. Used here with permission of Ursel Benekendorff for purpose of linking to her web site Schafftwissen) Stone age art pioneer Ursel Benekendorff has 2000 photographs and demonstrates standardization in the production of the world's oldest art. “My work was a pioneer work, without help of curators or technical experts. Self developed methods helped me, to stay on top of thousands of pieces of extraordinary shapes, excavated by digging machines. I was fast but not that fast and not all artifacts could have been rescued, still Menhir sizes, microlithic material, handsize stones and Un- PORTABLE sized stones were documented. That was more than most collectors assembled or documented, as I learned later on. I had invited large numbers of people to my site, so I know how they go about it all, they operate on a personal preferences, thus a wide open field, possessing is the goal, not so much the unsolved research questions. You see it was not my goal to find the best but the goal was, to clear misleading pictures and find those, who got repeated. This needed a large variety of stone types to detect the repetition by former artists. (Not looking pictures into the stones). But I wanted and still want to know, how the logo face stone on my website created his surrounding.” -Ursel Benekendorff

A book on Siberian portable rock art could provide clues to North American possibilities

Early art of the northern Far East : the Stone Age, by M. A. Kiriyak. This book is about the portable rock art of the Russian north east area. It was written in Russian but has been translated to English by the United States National Park Service's Shared Beringia Heritage Program. The hundreds of iconographic artifacts described and pictured here should inform North American archaeologists regarding the possibilities for art modalities having arrived via Beringia during peopling of the Americas migrations. The book is available for preview at the link here.

Archaeology of Portable Rock Art

Denisovan Ancestry in East Eurasian and Native American Populations

20 May 2012

Hoard #6 of 7: an "n-sculpture" form like ones identified by Boucher de Perthes, in 1847, and recently described by author Pietro Gaietto

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