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 2016

Another amateur archaeologist dismissed by The Cleveland Museum of Natural History "knows better"

'Human head left profile in translucent stone material'

Christian Kotze finds of Lake County, Ohio. These Ohio finds have been discounted by the archaeology curator at Cleveland Museum of Natural History as natural despite his having no knowledge about portable rock art.

Side two is a human head right profile worked in the same detail. Yes, good ole' Mother Nature putting delicately detailed human faces on two sides of a remarkable cryptocrystalline rock specimen. It appears to be carnelian agate which has been seen in other portable rock art pieces on this blog, but only from the state of Oregon.

A beautifully sculpted human head left 3/4 profile in typical portable rock art form where the artist is exploiting the natural shape and properties of the stone by working it to tease out the desired visual properties. Click photos to enlarge.

Because North American archaeologists have never been educated about it and don't operate like real scientists, they are unable to see these objects as anything but natural rocks. They have never taken the time to have these objects examined by petrologists because they are so certain human crafted objects like this do not exist.

Its time they stop wasting all these archaeological heritage cultural resources by telling people they are just rocks when they have no business making such executive determinations from ignorant positions of authority.

Christian writes, "This piece I found in Trumble County more than 30 years ago. I always have thought it resembled a horse. On what appears to be the mane it has serrated edges."

The source of the stone material here appears to Flint Ridge, Ohio, which is about 120 miles from the location where Christian found it.

Some have thought zoomorphic shapes like this may be animal representations with a built-in handle to hold the figure like a 'stone puppet.' To me, the first side may depict a feline head and the opposite side of the stone may depict a human.

Possible human head representation on the puppet-like stone

Christian identified an anthropomorphic head profile on the left edge of this stone, among many, many others. These simple forms are sometimes faint, faded and worn and may have been much more visible to an observer in the Stone Age. I think this piece is symbolic of a mammoth body profile facing right with a human facial profile incorporated onto its posterior in a well documented motif seen on this blog.

"Here is a piece I found near Willoughby, Ohio. It is made of brown and grey chert. The left side depicts a mans face, it fits into the right hand comfortably. The top is a scraper."

Dear Mr. Johnston, my name is Christian Kotze. I live in Mentor Ohio (Lake Co.) I have a large collection of artifacts that contain effigies on them some of animals others of humans. From what I have seen on your site I believe mine are more defined some are perfect and there are multiple pieces that are the same.

I have talked to people associated with the museum some who appeared to be amazed and took pieces with them to show Dr. Brian Redmond who discounted them as natural but I know better. I have been studying these for a long time and used special lights, microscopes and other tools. These pieces are from all over the state. I would like to show them to others who might also have similar art in their collection.

-Christian Kotze, Mentor, Ohio

2 comments:

UnknownAugust 15, 2016 at 9:33 PM
Me,my wife,kids,family and friends r totally amazed by the portable rock art I have found in the past year. I have over 200 ranging from quarter size to 3 ft tall. Some perfect with tattooing perfectly done on them of the same thing the rocks r carved into. Bears,indians,bufflo,birds,boar,horse,exc. Made from all kinds of rocks. I would say what is most plentiful in this area. Tennessee. I would like to see more of what u have found in Ohio and let u see what I have found. My name Michael Lancaster.
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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 2016

Another amateur archaeologist dismissed by The Cleveland Museum of Natural History "knows better"

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