Rockport, Arkansas, portable rock art site on the old family farm

'Bird in flight' figure stone

 Patrick Wilson and family finds, The Stone Wall Site

Rockport, Hot Spring county, Arkansas. Near the Ouachita River, a Mississippi River tributary.

'Mammoth body and human head facing left'

This is a 'mammoth and human' combination sculpture exhibiting two motifs already described on this blog. First, this view may be seen as a human head and face looking left, with a mammoth form cresting its forehead and where the mammoth 'trunk' and the human's 'nose' are the same element in the stone. It is like the mammoth's 'head bump' and its arched back and posterior are the human's 'hairdo.' 

Blue line illustrating mammoth form combined with the human head with their 'eyes' circled. The mammoth shares it's 'trunk' with the human's 'nose' which is seen in many other examples. The human's eye has been created using a Paleolithic rock art convention of jamming a manufactured square pebble into a crevice of a stone to define and give depth to an 'eye,' or to add 'teeth' to a 'mouth' etc.

Drawing Copyright (c) 2015 Bradley Lepper, Ohio History Connection.  Lepper has traced a European cave art depiction of a figure with both human and mammoth qualities. This same fundamental combination (mammoth and human sharing forehead) is seen in this Rockport, Arkansas, sculpture example. 

The second significant common motif exhibited by this sculpture may be seen when the sculpture is reversed. A human head looking left may be seen here, where the human's face is also the 'posterior' of the mammoth figure.

Mammoth in profile facing left with rear legs defined

A human-like image faintly visible on this stone looks like a human bust with shoulder and arm in left 3/4 profile. The human's 'head' is in the upper right part of the stone. I placed the interpreted human face in a box. Images like this may be many thousands of years old and sometimes they look like hauntingly faded photographs on stone.

Close up of human face image which was made by an artist selectively altering the rock's surface to create eyes, nose and mouth

Human face in retouch work looking left on a large flint

'Sleeping duck stone figure with head turned onto its back'

Illustration of duck's 'bill' and worked fully circular 'eye' in a Paleolithic art convention and in correct anatomical placement.

A sleeping duck in nature

A sitting anthropomorphic figure (troll-like) looking right with arm raised to its mouth area.

Bird head with eye

Bottom of underside of the bird head (by the floor here) has a human head with worked eyes, nose and mouth. Pietro Gaietto of Italy has described this motif in Paleolithic sculptural art there and it is seen in other United States examples.

Assorted finds from the site by Patrick Wilson and family, Rockport, Arkansas, indicate the presence of Stone Age humans curating and concentrating stones which resemble humans.

Novaculite outcrops throughout the area have attracted humans for millennia. Photo by Patrick Wilson. Patrick's grandpa first noticed an abundance of worked and iconic stones on his property many years ago.

Arkansas novaculite translucent banded knife blade found by Patrick Wilson