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.

26 February 2015

Report of a gemstone with human head and animal head qualities from Ratnapura, Sri Lanka

Kavinda Dharmisiri's zoomorphic and anthropomorphic yellow sapphire stone, Colombo, Sri Lanka

Interpreted as an animal head facing right by Kavinda. Because this stone is likely from the Lower Paleolithic it is not likely to be a dog but is more likely to be an animal present in Sri Lanka during that time.

"Dear Mr Johnston

I'm from Sri Lanka and I have this natural rock formation of a rough yellow sapphire rock which was found about 60 years ago from a gem mine in Ratnapura, Sri Lanka. It belonged to my grandfather who was a gem merchant. One side of the rock resembles a human face and the other side a dog's face which is quite interesting and I was searching about such findings on the internet and came across your blog about portable rock art and thought of submitting you these images of it hoping I could get a better understanding about it.. whether it's a natural rock formation or a portable rock art..

I believe it looks similar to the "one eye open, other eye closed" figure stone which i saw on your blog.

Dimensions(approx.):

Length = 6 cm

Width = 5.3 cm

Depth = 3.3 cm

These type of findings are not common in our country and this stone was quite popular back in the day that it even got published in local newspapers..

i understand that it might be difficult to comment on such a finding by just looking at the images.. though it would be great if you could express your opinion about this rock formation..

Thanks and Regards

Kavinda

A nose has been manufactured by a human by incising two lines which terminate at their intersection to form a "V" shape. The location in the nose area between the eyes and its precise execution argue strongly for this being an artifact. There may also be stone removal in the figure's mouth area as highlighted by the oval marking.

A second rough human head profile facing left appears when the stone is rotated slightly to the right from the orientation in the photo at top.

Third human face figuration is in Lower and Middle Paleolithic paleoart motif of "right eye open, left eye missing." The right eye is circled, the "missing" left eye is marked by the triangle, distortion of the left side of the face under the eye is characteristic of this motif and is made of an arching line, mouth circled at bottom.

2 comments:

UnknownFebruary 26, 2015 at 12:41 AM
Thank you very much for your interpretation.. very interesting indeed...
- Kavinda Dharmasiri
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AnonymousJuly 7, 2016 at 2:34 PM
I have discovered the same type of rock in michigan. They have a colored (mostly red) stone in the mouth area. I cant find any info. on these rocks.I believe the colored stone is a gem. the rocks look like joker type characters with a sneeky grin as if they were saying I fooled you.
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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

26 February 2015

Report of a gemstone with human head and animal head qualities from Ratnapura, Sri Lanka

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