A microlithic owl figure from a new Kansas portable rock art site (with 2nd bird nested on its left side)

'Owl figure'

Timothy Banninger find, Kansas

There is a small face realized on the owl's face below its left eye. This face figure is worked to expose the two stone inclusions as 'eyes' with added retouch to make a nose and mouth. 

I contend this is the face of a bird at the eye and beak of the owl. It has a fully expressed body of a bird in profile. This is a motif developed in other examples on this blog.

Standing bird sculpture from Hardin County, Tennessee

Jason Lamont find, Hardin County, Tennessee

This stone has been sculpted and stands upright on a flat base. The bird head up close seems to intentionally depict something roundish being held in the bird's beak.

Jason has suggested this piece may depict a 'bird emerging from its egg' and I think that is very possible. The bird is raptor-like with the curvature of the upper beak being quite pronounced.

Many figures in a motif of 'bird with head turned back' have been featured on this blog. They typically feature water birds like ducks with the head turned back and beak tucked to their back in a 'preening water bird' position.

This sculpture was found in a portable rock art context identified by Jason Lamont in Hardin County, Tennessee, and featured in other postings on this blog.

Bird stone figures with heads turned back from Piacenza, Italy, demonstrate trans-Atlantic art similarities

Water bird with head turned back and tail feathering at far right

Luigi Chiapparoli finds, from Piacenza, Italy

Ken Johnston illustration of the bill of the duck looking back to the right with a circle around a human face depiction and a circle around the head of a creature facing right as if emerging from the duck's 'tail feathers.' This animal resembles a 'seal.'

(Left) A flaked bird figure with eye divot and bill tucked into its back feathers and alternately interpreted as a bird with beak pointed right. (Right) a duck figure with its head turned back. This art motif is described as early as the Lower Paleolithic ca. 500,000 BP by Mrs. Ursel Benekendorff of Germany who has called it the "preening water bird." I have referred to it as the "sleeping duck" motif as well.

There are commonalities with some Italian and North American finds like this which suggest a trans-Atlantic cultural connection in the Stone Age. See the prior posting of similar birds from Virginia's Arkfeld Site.

Luigi Chiapparoli is a recognized independent rock art investigator working in the Piacenza locale. Numerous stone figures and landscape rock art features have been identified by Lug and featured earlier on this blog.

Piacenza locale, northern Italy

Montarsolo, near the portable rock art finds. Photograph by rock art investigator Luigi Chiapparoli.

A solid central Virginia Paleolithic art and tool site has been identified by another amature archaeologist who is told he has found "river rocks"

'Bird figure stone'

Adrian Ellis finds, central Virginia

'Bird in hand with eye and beak detail'

Hook-billed bird head (like an eagle) with stone removal to make the beak identified by Adrian. Bird heads and bird figures are commonly found at these kinds of archaeology sites.

Bird forms and quasi bird forms from the site

Three animal head sculptures identified by Adrian Ellis who has an MFA degree in sculpture from UCLA and has studied stone sculpture. The top two look like felines and the bottom one is more vague but likely feline too. They all have worked 'eyes.'

Illustration of the worked eye areas on the three animal head sculptures

A Levallois-like point from this central Virginia site

A geometric point

Worked and then worn through use rhomboid shapes identified by Adrian

Oldowan rhomboids, Netherlands, 700,000 to 200,000 BP, from originsnet.org for comparison to Virginia examples above found by Adrian Ellis.

A simple Oldowan Mode I Lithics cobble tool from Virginia with two breaks to create a sharp edge. These simple cultural materials with such light modification are too often overlooked in American Archaeology.

A worked stone survey from the site. There is a noticeable lack of flint among the artifacts at the site. This may indicate a preference for non-flint materials because flint is often tied to the landscape in very specific places. It may indicate a people not very familiar with the flint tool stone resources in the area who have to make do with what they have at hand. It may indicate a people with Asian tool making traditions which favored coarse stone materials because flint and chert materials are relatively scarce there.

"I also want to share with you how poorly I've been treated by the archaeological community... Still cannot believe that I have been told these are only river rocks, if you have half a brain, you can see they are tools." -Adrian Ellis, Virginia

Central Virginia location of these featured artifacts found and identified by Adrian.

The field of Archaeology continues to squander opportunities to identify new patterns of lithics behavior on the landscape by its inability or unwillingness to take some very astute and observant non-professionals like Adrian Ellis seriously.

Opposing animal heads, human heads and birds makes six creatures on a quartz crystal-studded figure stone from Flint Ridge

Ken Johnston find, Flint Ridge, Licking County, Ohio

Animal 1 is interpreted as a 'horse head looking left' where the crystals serve as the horse's mane. The arrows illustrate the interpreted 'sight lines' of the horse and human head profile figures.

Detail of the human head 1 in left profile at within the 'neck' of the horse head figure.

Side 2. Stone measures 6,3.5cm

Side 2 interpreted 'feline head looking right' with, again, the human head as its 'neck.' The arrows illustrate the interpreted 'sight lines' of the creatures.

Side 2 human head left profile detail. It has a deliberate removal in the place for an 'eye' and the back of the head is beveled to round it off.

View of the interpreted feline head with illustration showing approximate locations of eyes and mouth on the figure.

Feline head in another perspective 

View from TOP. The 'feline' is on the ground crystals side and the horse is on the side with the crystals untouched. The crystals seem to have been removed from the view of the feline's head but retained to serve as the 'mane' of the horse figure.

When the horse head figure is rotated 90 degrees left a bird figure with faint eyes and resembling an owl may be seen. The human is seen as looking skyward to the left at the bottom of the stone in this perspective.

Bird number 2 becomes visible when the feline head is rotated 180 degrees. It has a long beak and hunched back like a vulture's.

In summary,

The piece is an artifact with evidence of focused human retouch action all over it.

It was found in strong context of other figurative pieces seen on this blog which incorporate natural quartz crystal formations in the stone.

It has no apparent use wear as a tool and no tool attributes I can detect.

It has quartz crystals attached to the flint which would have made the raw material attractive for an object designed for visual properties.

There are two zoomorphic forms on opposite sides of the stone. The animals share 'mouths' along a bi-facial edge on the sculpture.

There are two anthropomorphic head forms on opposite sides of the stone. Like the animals, the humans share 'mouths' along a bi-facial edge on the sculpture.

The piece includes the known Paleolithic art motif of combining the heads of humans and animals- and does so twice.

In a third visage of the stone in a vertical position is a likely intended long-beaked bird figure.

In a fourth visage of the stone of the opposite side in a vertical position is a second bird figure.

This makes a total of six creatures represented on this one extraordinary flint figure stone. The artist's pairing of a feline with a horse could be a recognition of their predator-prey relationship or even an appreciation for the feline's work at delivering horse kills to scavenge.

Perhaps horses were desired for felines so felines would be less likely to predate on humans. We can only speculate with futility on the specifics but we can indeed recognize what must have been visual patterns of meaning in portable rock art from the past.

An African Cheetah and a Przewalski's wild Asian horse lounging at The Wilds conservation preserve in south east Ohio may be as close to the 'lion/horse drama' of the Ohio Ice Age which we can observe here today. Ken Johnston photos, Cumberland, Ohio, May 7, 2016.

A Levallois-like blade and pointed scraper found at the Flint Ridge location of portable rock art finds supports the idea of the presence of a Middle Paleolithic-based art and tool complex. The pointed scraper has evidence of use wear consistent with animal hide or soft tissue processing.

A two-sided turkey vulture head with two human face profiles incorporated onto its backside from Flint Ridge, Ohio

'Two-sided turkey vulture head with two human face profiles incorporated onto its backside.'

Ken Johnston find, Flint Ridge, Licking County, Ohio

Side 2 of a likely turkey vulture head depiction. The material is Vanport chert.

Human face right profile on the back of the vulture head.

Close up of human face right profile reveals intense flint work on a very small scale. These artifacts call for extremely close scrutiny of worked stones near major stone quarry sites like Flint Ridge for iconic properties.

The face has received flint work attention which cannot be accounted for in an endeavor to make a tool. This stone seems wholly unsuitable as tool stone. It has been deliberately shaped, it resembles a bird head on two sides and has two human face likenesses when they have already been associated with the backs of bird figures on this blog here and also here. This Ohio flint bird is very similar to one from Italy, described by Paleolithic sculpture author Pietro Gaietto.

The Ohio bird was found in the same general location as several other flint bird head figures.

I have also described human facial profiles worked on flint edges. This is an example in the Flint Ridge material with a profile on each side of the stone like this one.

It should be noted that Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes specifically described bird heads as among the iconic materials he found alongside tools in the Somme valley of France in the mid 19th century.

Turned upside-down the turkey vulture head resembles a sitting bird with beak turned up to accept feeding

The flint compared with a turkey vulture head

Here is another human facial profile, looking leftward, worked into the flint on the backside of the bird head. Note the prominent brow ridge which suggests a more robust human type.

In its totality this object and its context proves a Stone Age art enterprise at Flint Ridge which, among many motifs, incorporated combined bird and human forms.