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

Here comes Peter Cottontail....

Peter Cottontail
click photo to expand size

Polymorphic rabbit/feline/bear/deer/human sculpture
from Licking County, Ohio USA

lithic material is from Flint Ridge

photos taken on a CM grid for scale and perspective

This photo is an aide to refer back to the above to see a feline visage as highlighted here in blue.  Relax your focus, "look through your eyelashes," or stand at a distance from the screen to best see the big cat.

Closer view of rabbit's head

This is back half of the rabbit.  Back of the ear tip is seen in black material in upper left corner.  Two animal head images are seen here, taken to be a lion face and bear head in right profle.  Because they share common features in the stone, it may be difficult to percieve.

This is a bear head in right profile view.  Here, I have whited out a portion of the lion's face which is distracting to the bear image because they share features.  Orange arrow points to ear (serves also as the right eye of the second lion visage).  Blue arrow points to tip of nose.  Purple arrow points to tip the bear's chin.

 Short faced bear (Arctodus)

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

   

The tip of the bear's face may also depict the face of a man in right profile so this could be taken as a "synthesis of man's face with a bears head."  The man and bear share the same mouth. If one pays visual attention to the front of the faces like shown in this photo, the human depiction becomes more clear.  It looks like the face has a mournful frown.   

Pink and black are lion's eyes, yellow is the nose.  The nose also looks like a caprid (deer?) icon with its head turned as if looking behind it.  It appears there is a chunk or "bite" out of the hind quarter of the deer.  The deer is squarely in the eyes of the lion, being its nose.  Blue is the snarling mouth of the lion.
  

The maroon band of flint which is the face-on lion's snarling mouth, also seems to serve as red hairdo, or a turban style wrap, atop a grinning woman's face.  There appears to be an ear decoration on the woman, like an earring.  Maybe the woman is being consumed by the lion, the lion's red lips grasping her head to begin a meal?

Arrow points to earring looking stone feature.  I hypothesize the frowning man's face (fourth photo above) is mourning the loss of his partner, shown here at the lion's mouth, to predation.  Based on the paleo-anthropological record of skeletal remains, it is estimated 6% to 10% of early humans died at the jaws, paws and claws of carnivores.  So, humans were more in the food chain than solely at the top of the food chain in pre-modern times.

In final, the interpretations of images here are of two lion faces, a bear head, a man's face, a woman's face, one deer and one two-sided rabbit.  A third lion image, with paw extended toward the viewer and a tooth showing, has not been marked up in the photos.  Can you find it?

North American lion (Panthera leo atrox) reconstruction

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

Photo looking down on artifact as it stands on its base.  Without recognition, art pieces like this are being overlooked, forsaken by archaeologists, passed off as debitage or other debris, suitable for the pile of "burden stones."  

A similar looking sculpture with animals on two sides.  This side looks like the artifact featured in this post.  Also from Licking County, Ohio.

This side looks like a rabbit with a crystal inclusion perhaps representing the "magic womb" of the reproductive proclivity of this animal.  This is one of seven sculptures found in immediate proximity (a hoard) in Licking County Ohio and featured at the web site: http://subtleartifacts.com

Side two of the featured figure stone (on CM grid)

Side two again

Flint Ridge is the source for the raw material in this post.

Click photo to expand size

-kbj

A Neanderthal-looking translucent human head profile "lithophane"

Possible Homo sapiens neanderthalensis flint figure from The Netherlands

L. J. Groen, an archaeologist with interest in paleobotany and lithics of The Netherlands and Belgium, made his artifact collection available to me for internet survey so I could learn more about stone working technologies and techniques in Europe.  While looking at part of his collection (just a few of 30,000 artifacts) I came upon a suspected flint tool which seemed to have several correlations to the prominent features of a human facial profile and rotated the picture to optimal viewing orientation.  

The likely intent of the iconography becomes more obvious when interpretative lines are added to the photo to demonstrate all the ‘correct’ edges and angles created to make the face.  

The material is translucent toward the left side where all the facial detail is. I consider this piece a "Lithophane" or a glass art piece passing light. There is a cluster of crystals on the forehead just above the brow line.

"And when I see what you made of my (artifact) ... it is remarkable. With your additional lines it really looks like a Neanderthal! And, made of Eluvium flint it dates from a possible Neanderthal period.... ( 50.000 - 58.000 BP)." -L Jimmy Groen

-kbj

Cartoon-like human head right profile

Human head facing right, with a grin and a dimple

Allen Deibel of Canfield, Ohio, U.S.A., identifies this worked pebble as "almost comical."  The artifact seems foretelling of the illustrations of early-mid 20th century humorist, illustrator and cartoonist James Thurber of The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post.  It is known that prehistoric peoples used cartoon-like exaggeration to convey more meaning than otherwise possible in the often small and rounded medium of stone.  For cave art examples, please see figure 4.24 in Barbara Olins Alpert's book The Creative Ice Age Brain, including the Roc Saint Cirq caricature head and more.

If one moves viewing angle slightly and shifts visual attention from the cartoon face to translate the "dimple" and the "base of nose circle" as eyes, a feline-like visage emerges where the feline and the human are sharing the same mouth and chin, feline facing straight on toward viewer on a vertical pole orientation of 5 and 11 o'clock.  Allen has identified significant use of feline motifs, in particular, in the Mahoning River valley and surrounds and has amassed a collection of hundreds of pierre-figures from north-east Ohio.

Deibel has composed a fine collection of line drawings of his artifact interpretations.  These line drawings will be of great assistance to anyone new to the portable rock art subject. If you are looking at artifacts here and thinking "I don't see it," the drawings will illustrate how the visages are interpreted by Allen and others.  The images are often comprised of combinations of color and relief in the stone material and are sometimes difficult to capture and communicate in photos.

http://s813.photobucket.com/albums/zz56/kenbjohn/Diebel%20Cat%20Drawings/

He has also perfected the technique of figure stone presentation using chopsticks, a fine example of this innovation seen above.  Work of James Thurber below.

"What's Come Over You Since Friday, Miss Schemke?"

-kbj