Museum of the Origins of Man identifies Paleolithic human head sculptures similar to Oregon examples

Paleolithic human head sculpture from Savona, Italy, identified by Museum of the Origins of Man, Pietro Gaietto

"Fig. 4.14) Lithic sculpture. It represents a head of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis with neck, and look upwards .

Size: Height cm. 15. It is worked in both the sides, almost full-relief. It has a pointed nape. It is a classic Neanderthalian.

Place of origin: Valle del Vero, Toirano, Savona, Italy.

Material culture: Mousterian.

Collection Museum of the Origins of Man."

Sight line of eyes on human face depicted in this illustration by Pietro Gaietto

Irrigon, Oregon, sculpture standing in anthropomorphic position.  This sculpture has been the subject of an earlier posting with focus on its fish imagery when sitting on another of its flat, narrow, edges.

Side 2 of Irrigon, Oregon, sculpture

Portland, Oregon, anthropomorphic piece identified by Nona A.  It was found in the context of suspected crude stone tools and other art pieces.

Side 2 from Portland, Oregon, collection of  Nona A.

 

 

Portland, Oregon, from Nona A. collection

(click photos to expand)

 

Portland, Oregon, from Nona A. collection

(click to expand)

Savona, Italy, Museum of the Origins of Man

"Fig. 4.29) Lithic Sculpture. It represents a head of Homo sapiens sapiens with neck.

Size: Height cm. 27.

Place of origin: S.Pietro d'Olba, Savona, Italy.

Material culture: upper Paleolithc.

Worked from two sides, it is nearly a frontal representation. This type of sculpture, with high and robust neck, is present in several anthropomorphic menhirs at Carnac, with several types of Homo sapiens sapiens.

Collection Museum of the Origins of Man."

Museum of the Origins of Man, Pietro Gaietto founder and curator, Genova, Italy

Sculptures of the human head in Paleolithic sculpture

Phylogenesis of Beauty, Pietro Gaietto

The work of Pietro Gaietto of Genova, Italy, predicted the motif and location of a carved human head with a beard on one of the seven Ohio flint sculptures found together in a "hoard."  Please see the "Subtle Artifacts" link to read the article and see photos of these seven associated sculptures found in Licking County, Ohio.  

One of the seven Ohio sculptures was a stunning visual match to one of Gaietto's Italian sculptures and only after reading Gaietto I detected a man's head profile in the place on the Ohio sculpture where he said it would be on this type of artifact. Any person in a room with this sculpture can see the human head profile once it is brought to their attention, just as Gaietto brought it to my attention and helped me to understand what had been a strangely amorphous but obviously worked flint cobble until then.  This kind of "replication" of Gaietto's work has led me to conclude it might be very instructive on the subject of pre-sculpture and early sculpture- even in the Americas.  As crude, rough and strange as they seem, the forms and general aesthetic sense invoked by the sculptures identified and documented by Gaietto have also been independently detected by others as suspected artifacts in Eurasia and the United States.

 

Gaietto is author of "Phylogenesis of Beauty - A Unified Theory of Evolution" E.N.Z.A., 2008, Genova.

Subtle Artifacts: Seven Ohio Paleolithic flint sculptures   One of the seven Ohio sculptures is a morphological "match" to an Italian sculpture identified by Gaietto and has a human face profile where Gaietto's typology predicted.

Art on a stone flake: a translucent head shaped flint with two simple faces

Human head in left profile.  The flake was found by Dennis Boggs, Boardman, Oregon, in the valley floor potato fields growing right alongside the Columbia River near Irrigon.  The location is about 45 miles downriver from Kennewick, WA.

Side 1 again.  Click to expand, this is a nice photo.  Forehead, eye, nose, mouth, chin all seem to be present in micro-carving.  Click photo to expand.  The photo left side of the flake as shown here has been worked to take advantage of the translucence of the flint.  Shown above with morning light streaming from behind. The left edge of the flint has been re-touched by the artist to refine the facial features.  The features are highlighted when one holds the flake up to low angle sunlight.

Side 2 with natural morning sunlight illuminating from behind.  It depicts a face in right profile view.  A small incised line makes for a mouth in the bottom right of the artifact here, the dark spot is maybe a nose, right eye in center, part of left eye seen on other side of the nose on edge of artifact.

Side 2, artifact on a 1cm grid to provide scale

Right eye has been ground into the cortex surface. It is located in the center of the artifact here and the left eye is on the screen right edge of the flint looking like a crescent shaped gouge. Because of the left facial profile view presented by the artist, the left eye is seen only in part because it is partially hidden by the nose.  This seems to be a rather complex visual technique for the artist to accomplish.  Most all of the flint observable here is the rind from the original stone cortex- weather battered except for the two eye holes and an incision for a mouth.  Side 2 is from inside the core.

Side 2 as back lighted as a lithophane

Side 1, artifact as back lit in a dark room as a "lithophane."

Side 1, inside the cortex exposed by this flake removal were some beautiful crystal formations.  Artifact on centimeter(cm) grid for scale.  The flint fractures here appear to be well-weathered which attests to some combination of time and abrasive environmental forces acting on the piece.  All the crystal formations look like brains inside the head or maybe head hair.

This whole flint nodule, not just a flake made off one, is of the same material as the flake art piece and shows a precedent for making facial icons out of this beautiful orange/red translucent lithic material in the locale of the Columbia River, Irrigon, Oregon. A similar grinding technique was used to create all four eyes on the two figure stones.

http://portablerockart.blogspot.com/search?q=lithophane

Another earlier posting of a human head left profile utilizing translucent material, from L Jimmy Groen of The Netherlands.Artifact from Neanderthal strata ca. 45,000 to 55,000 years BP from L Jimmy Groen, stone tools expert from The Netherlands.  Ken Johnston detected what could be a human facial profile in the translucent material, Neanderthal in nature, and then it was confirmed the find context and site dating made it entirely possible.

http://portablerockart.blogspot.com/2011/02/neanderthal-cameo-from-netherlands.html

Columbia River valley fish sculpture may have been inspired by wavy inclusions in the rock material

Fish sculpture from Irrigon, Oregon, Columbia River valley may have been inspired by wavy sedimentary inclusions in the stone material itself.

Found and hypothesized to be humanly flaked reduction by Dennis Boggs, Boardman, Oregon. The artifact is interpreted as an intended fish sculpture by Ken Johnston after examination and study. The fish stands upright on a perfectly flat "belly." It also stands, albeit precariously balanced, upright on a short, perfectly flat, "tail," hinting toward human design in the piece, not just the hands of Mother Nature.

Please note the possibility of an eye and side fin as being depicted at one time in a dark pigmented material once in contact with this stone

Click photo to expand view to see wavy inclusions in the stone material which may have inspired the artist to make a fish.

View from above as the artifact stands upright on its flat belly

The fish sculpture is remarkable in that the base of the tail is at at a near 90 degree angle and the fish actually stands upright on the base of the tail in an anthropomorphic head and neck shape.

Click photo to expand

This is the same photos as the one above, only with mark-ups indicating possible residual material on the rock which may indicate a representation of a human face in a pigmented substance painted on this sculpture. The rounded upper eye orbits are also in contrasting surface relief on the stone.

Water-like waves in the rock material shown up close. It is hypothesized the waves were recognized as significant in pre-history and inspired the artist to make a water creature, a fish, out of the stone material.  The fish seems to have some salmonoid qualities and may have been representative of a particular fish species from the nearby Columbia River.  

Click photo to expand view to see these little waves up close.  Nature provides the starting ideas for many portable rock artists of the past.

Feline figure of head and neck may be portrayed in finger held pebble resembling a scimitar cat profile

Dennis Boggs collection, Irrigon, Oregon

interpretation as possible scimitar cat made by Ken Johnston

Animal neck and left head profile on pebble which is shaped for optimal finger holding and has a smooth, shiny, patina of possible human handling. Perhaps it was a little icon used by a child as a "toy" or perhaps to learn about animals in the surroundings. It is almost like a little finger puppet.  The long, narrow, neck is suggestive of Homotherium serum or the North American scimitar cat, a predator of Pleistocene megafauna, including humans.


This artifact was found in the context of other worked stone material including both crude stone tools and other suspected iconographic pieces. A significant amount of cultural information would need to be communicated regarding the appearance and behaviors of predatory carnivores like the scimitar cat.

Note the bump in the line of the lion's neck in the artifact photos.  This may be attempt to represent a visually prominent and distinguishing feature of the animal among other felines, seen in the Wikipedia illustration below as a "breast plate bump" at  the base of long, narrow neck.  

A possible face form is found on the front of the artifact, two eyes, nose, and mouth are worked into the pebble.  The face is shared by the lion head profiles on both sides of the artifact.

Based on the archaeological record of human skeletal remains, an estimated 7% to 10% of early humans lost their lives to animal predation.  A cultural focus on deadly animals in iconography, including the scimitar cat, would aid survival odds.  A piece such as this could have served to relay information to children about the deadly scimitar.  Here is a link to more information about this now extinct big North American cat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homotherium

Amateur archaeologists independently identify Oregon and Tennessee face-like icons exhibiting similar left-oriented, smiling, look

Sherry Hill find, Carter County, Tennessee

Dennis Boggs collection, Irrigon, Oregon

artifact is pictured on a centimeter(cm) grid for scale

In the first example, the lip begins just slightly right of the vertical center line of the face.  Most of the smiling lip line is oriented toward the left side of the face (right side of photo).  In the second example, the entire lip line is seen in this photo, all of it on the left side of this face stone. The suspected artifacts are about 6cm and 5cm in length respectively.

Mask-like stone has possible head effigy in place of right eye

Mask-like stone has head effigy in place of right eye

Dennis Boggs collection, Irrigon, Oregon, Columbia River valley

Close up of right eye area

Close up of quasi-anthropomorphic head facing left

With scale

Similar effigy example from collection of Jan van Es, Netherlands

A second head effigy from Netherlands, collection of Jan van Es

A bird icon with crested head, eye and beak is perched atop the head here.  This is a recurring motif in many of these facial profile depictions.

Translucent head-shaped flint nodule with worked face elements interpreted as a possible "Lithophane"

Translucent flint nodule with worked face viewed as a "Lithophane"

artifact from Irrigon, Oregon, USA, Dennis Boggs collection

click photos to expand size

Moving the stone slightly in relation to the hole allowing light to hit it from behind while in a dark room changes the image slightly.  I created a camera obscura in the strict sense of the words (a dark chamber) in order to see what the artifact might look like when illuminated from behind by the sun in a darkened hide tent.  I used a 75 watt full-spectrum bulb for the light source.

A circular flake was removed from the cortex to make a "wide open mouth" seen in the white creamy flint circle toward the bottom of the artifact as seen in photo right.  The horizontal crack in this creamy flint makes the lip line of the mouth.  The flint work on the core flake removal seems to be heavily "rolled" by environmental forces like soil and water. Please note how the mouth can take on different looks at different viewing angles as seen in the top and bottom photos.

click photo to expand size

In the first/top photo, the artifact is back lighted to demonstrate the translucent nature of the stone selection made by the artist here.  It would have been possible to achieve this type of back lighting by placing the stone over a hole in a very dark hide-based shelter and view it in darkness while lit by sunlight from outside the dark tent, much like a stained glass window.  I call these "lithophanes." 

The illuminated image seems to convey the "one eye open, one eye/ closed/missing" motif that the front-lighted version does not.  The eye and nose pits were ground into the stone material. There is a hair line or forehead line in darker flint in the top photo which is among the features not seen in broad daylight without the back lighting. 

The likelihood that there were opportunities for "discovery" of this type of back lighting (holes in tents), which could have been used for translucent flint pieces such as this one, is addressed in Matt Gatton's paleo camera theory. 

http://www.paleo-camera.com/

Close up view of the right eye when illuminated from behind as a "lithophane."  It appears a black, pitch-like, substance was applied to the hand-ground eye socket and residue is still found in the crevaces.

click photo to expand

reverse side in broad light

reverse side of face, as illuminated as a lithophane

A stone which light could pass through would likely have been an object of great interest to people of long ago.

-kbj