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.

15 August 2012

Bill Waters identifies animal and people rock figures in mid-Missouri archaeologist's burden stones

"The horse head," flint work identified as an intended horse head figure by Bill Waters of Keithville, LA

Bill Waters find, mid-Missouri. This is a scraper tool, interpreted as also portraying a human head and face in right profile view.

Bill Waters find, Missouri, interpreted as face in left profile

Bill Waters illustration of his interpretation of this face on a flint flake

Bill Water's "Five faces," artifacts with 'nose-like' protrusions

Could these be forms of lateral rostrocarinates also incorporating anthropomorphic imagery?.
Bill Waters writes "I live in Keithville, Louisiana, and these stones come from mid-Missouri and are found near a creek. Some tools like this scraper are found also, but the cool thing about this scraper is the art work on it too, some stones are clearly not tools and have art and some stones have art and have a deep cup on them so I figure they could also be used as a cup.

I have an elderly Friend who was an Archaeologist. I work chores for him and I accept Artifacts as payment, I barter, Well He gave me many boxes of these small stones which he believed to be removals, I noticed the removals had extra work done on them and I soon discovered the excellent miniatures, because I was looking for miniatures as my discovery of how to read the ancient markers and grips. I believe the miniatures are overlooked because they were not looking for miniature art, it is easy to overlook the small art works. In the boxes he gave me are maybe a thousand of these and I will send you more picts as I have the time to work on them.

The fellow I buy these from collects them because of the strange circular marks which 3 different geologists confirm as human modification and that is the reason I started buying them because I quickly realized the marks were man made. I always wanted to know why they put the marks on the stones and I discovered the marks are markers and when the markers are in the correct position the art is seen. I use this method to locate the art. I see the markers first, there are also grips which are hard to show but are perfect in my hand and this one of the most compelling features. This discovery excites me and I have found over 40 works of art. I hope someday for my discovery to be known.

Thank You, Bill Waters"

Geologists identified human manufactured cups on stones collected by Bill Waters. These types of cups in stones (not to be confused with fire starters, nutting stones, cupstones, cupules, etc.) may have been used as communication devices by early Americans as will be demonstrated in a future posting on this blog.

Another animal head figure (horse?) in right profile, identified by Bill Waters

1 comment:

NadiaAugust 16, 2012 at 11:42 AM
Hi Ken,
All these from Missouri are pretty much similar to what I have found. This is amazing. I am so grateful that you continue posting pictures and information of these different finds. Miniature art, maybe that's a good word for it. I am curious about Bill Waters' markers. I pick up many rocks and yes, when it fits in the hand, it is obvious-to me- that it is a tool, or if one side of it has been thinned or rounded. Sometimes I pick up a rock and I just know there is something different about it, some rounded part, some angle that does not look natural. Then I see a face or a head of an animal right away or not. Sometimes it takes several days and different kinds of light shining on it- natural or not. Still despite all that looking, observing, pondering,I often have the feeling that I have not seen it all.
Nadia
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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.

Denisovan Ancestry in East Eurasian and Native American Populations

15 August 2012

Bill Waters identifies animal and people rock figures in mid-Missouri archaeologist's burden stones

1 comment: