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.

Showing posts with label van Es. Show all posts

07 October 2013

Little mammoth figure with human face icon in bas relief on its side

Little mammoth figure with human face in bas relief on its side

Find by archaeologist Jan van Es, The Netherlands

The human/mammoth combination seen in Hans Gram's sculpture featured in the prior posting and in other sculptures featured on this blog is also seen here on this small pebble with a mammoth form including eye, with a simple human face icon on its side. The mammoth is facing right and the human face is looking straight-on, perhaps smiling. The photo at right shows human stone removal to define the oval-shaped human head.

American paleolithic sculpture example of a smiling human face on the side of a mammoth

This North Carolina mammoth shaped sculpture (in profile facing left) identified by Buzzy Boles was interpreted in an earlier posting on this blog as having a carved smiling human face mask, a bison head looking right and a lion face in the lower left as illustrated here.

10 July 2011

Old Acheulean ape figure from Boukoul, Netherlands, has similarities with ape-like face from Columbia River valley, Oregon

Old Acheulean ape figure from Boukoul, Netherlands, collection of Jan van Es, has similarities with smiling ape-like face from Columbia River valley, Oregon

White line indicates incised extension of mouth line of ape face, the red stone at the end of the line possibly intended to represent the mouth of the ape face

White line indicates incised mouth line of face visage.

Irrigon, Oregon, Dennis Boggs collection

Original March 2011 posting of the Oregon ape-like face, before the Netherlands similar piece was identified as having some visual similarity:

http://portablerockart.blogspot.com/2011/03/face-on-front-of-abrading-stone.html

22 June 2011

Soft detail of lips, in correct placement, suggests artistic intent on angular rock from The Netherlands

Soft detail of lips, in correct placement, suggests artistic intent

on this angular rock.

Jan van Es collection, Netherlands

Archaeologist Jan van Es has been studying stone iconography from sites he has worked in The Netherlands for exactly forty years. The artist's differential treatment, or recognition of differences in the natural stone, of the right and left eye areas may be an expression of the "one eye open, one eye closed/missing" motif described by James Harrod, Ph.D. in his "Four memes in the two million year evolution..." article (link found on right screen panel). Other artifacts already posted in this blog may reflect this same motif. A link to Jan van Es' web site is found at the bottom of the portablerockart.com page.

Alan Day of Cambridge, Ohio, has written an excellent article on facial recognition in lithic artifacts. It may be found here:
http://daysknob.com/Face_Recognition.htm

26 May 2011

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.

10 May 2011

Two translucent "head with face" art pieces from Boukoul, Netherlands, presented as back-lighted lithophanes

From the collection of archaeologist Jan van Es, Netherlands

Artifacts from his site at Boukoul, Netherlands

This sculpture stands up on its designed base

"Duivel"

Thank you Mr. van Es for your generosity with your photographs.

22 March 2011

Motif persistence and transition from Low Paleolithic to early Upper Paleolithic observed by Jan van Es

From Jan van Es, The Netherlands

"At the right of the photo the well-known corpulent Venus of Willendorff; 29.000 BC.

At the left the Low Paleo, strong patinated face/Venus (Beegden, The Netherlands). It's a find of 1981 and I found it together with Low Paleo artifacts (350.000-450.000 BC).

"The man's face is also representing a skull with gaunt eyes and an open mouth spitting out an egg."

-kbj)

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