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.

09 September 2012

Accidental find interpreted as "...a serious and meaningful carving of a fish of some kind" rejected with certainty by petroglyph art web publisher as "not Indian"

Mary Garmon find, Whatcom County, WA

This find is without the context of any other suspected artifacts. Mary Garmon of Texas was struck by this zoomorphic face looking at her from the rock on the ground and took a closer look at it. The area context is strong for prehistoric human visitation, being near an 88 foot waterfall and the Pacific Ocean in north west Washington.

According to Mary, "Its shape on front gives the impression of a shark or large fish."

"I found it on the Nooksack river in Washington State near a large waterfall."

Carved parallel lines create the mouth of the creature. Vertical slash marks are carved along the horizontal lines, perhaps to represent teeth.

When I saw this photo, I noted what looked like a small face in the figure's right eye and mentioned it to Mary.

Mary replied to me "I just looked closely at the left eye and it is a small bird in profile... It doesnt just look like it, it is. Unbelievable." Maybe the fish 'is seeing' its common predators?

Back of the stone with scale in inches

Mary Garmon continues writing, "I have contacted museums in the area as well as the Nooksack Indian tribe and had no response. A gentleman who lives in Seattle who publishes online about Indian petroglyphs in the area told me he is certain this carving is not by Indians in that area nevertheless it came from that river, of rock very similar to other stones on that river, and it was not a section of river frequented by the public. I would have to hear that from some concurring experts to believe it. I suppose it could have been carried as well from another location. What do you think? I feel that it is a serious and meaningful carving of a fish of some kind."

Mary, I agree with your assessment.

Here is a 9 year old's drawing of the "face reflected in the eyes" concept, expressed like fractals through 5 levels, one going off the paper and out of the frame of reference. A similar kind of representation is also seen in portable rock art. Another example of a face within an eye identified by Alan Day can be seen here.

-kbj

2 comments:

UnknownSeptember 12, 2012 at 12:31 AM
Ken, I also see the fish image. What I see on the left eye is the image of a very primitive man...possibly millions of years ago. It seems to resemble an image found on one of my rocks on my website called "Sasquatch." The image on the right eye could be the image of a primitive baby. Could it be the self-image of the artist?
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UnknownSeptember 18, 2012 at 10:35 PM
I found another image in the eye of the fish... the full body of an upright eagle faces facing the viewer. In the middle of the body is an image of a primitive man.
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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

09 September 2012

Accidental find interpreted as "...a serious and meaningful carving of a fish of some kind" rejected with certainty by petroglyph art web publisher as "not Indian"

2 comments: