Centipede Rock Ranch Site near Austin, Texas, reports iconic finds in concentrated numbers near an insect fossil outcrop

Flint fish figure with "eye" on a point found by Texas Rancher near Austin

"I found this montell point which are one of the most popular arrowheads in Texas. They aren't as commonly found as say a pedernales but they aren't rare either. They are one of my favorites and supposedly date back 7,000 years. Anyways, this ancient knapper made this Montell into a perfect fish! Everything is spot on to resemble blue gil/sun perch even the top spiny spikey fins on the top and the eye is perfect."

Ken Johnston interpretation of a possible human head left profile image in the middle of the artifact. Was this human likeness noticed in prehistory? Perhaps. Was it intentionally worked to tease the image out of the stone? Perhaps. Did it inspire an artist to make a fish figure of an arrowhead? Perhaps. Could this piece represent the fish and fisherman? Perhaps. Only by exploring these possibilities and setting the stage for future examples can we learn about portable rock art.

PAC-MAN like zooanthropomorphic stone identified by Texas Rancher

Texas Rancher writes: "This is my favorite one so far. There's a buffalo with his head pointing right. I also think there might be a bear facing the other way but I'm not certain. I believe the indention made on the buffalo's face is not an eye rather a horn - if you zoom in and look closely - it's in the shape of a horn (more of a tear drop shape rather than a round circle.)" 

"What makes it such a cool piece is how the cortex was left on to show the buffalo's fur. The cortex is spot on with how a real buffalo's fur looks. Especially how the yellow fur goes all the way down to their front leg then kinda turns to a different color and then the hair stops just like on my rock and then their ass is completely bald. " Photo comparison by Texas Rancher.

"The photo of the smooth opposite side of the rock really shows the bear." -Texas Rancher.

A standing two-sided head sculpture, a bear figure and some stone tools from Mammoth Spring, Arkansas

 Flaked profile of human head looking left, two eye divots made in the stone, Jeff Vincent find, Mammoth Spring, Arkansas. Sculpture stands upright on a flat base in these orientations.

On side 2, a profile of a human or animal head with wide open mouth looking right, similar to the PAC-MAN form

Bear figure

(toy? educational? spiritual? naturalistic?)

I see this as a possible spiritual item where a human skull is depicted looking left on the posterior of the bear. This is faintly visible on this figure. Birds, mammoth, bison and bear in portable rock art sometimes have humans and human skulls incorporated into their bodies and facing opposite, Janus-like. This may imply a possible culturally significant singularity among human and animal domains in the Stone Age past.

Illustrated outline and then outline with eyes and mouth of interpreted human skull image on the bear's posterior (click photos to expand)

Awl like tools in the vicinity of the iconic pieces

A possible bird head or bird head tool, Jeff Vincent finds, Mammoth Spring, Arkansas

"Rabbit and shout" combination figure from Missouri site is a second example to be considered alongside earlier Tennessee rabbit+shout interpretation

Stacy Dodd and Rod Weber find, The Old Route 66 Zoo Site, 23JP1222, near Joplin, Missouri

Ken Johnston illustration of the combined shout and rabbit forms. The rabbit is depicted as standing upright. There are two incised cuts in the stone to create a clear demarcation between the shout and rabbit sides of the sculpture. There may be some red ocher staining visible near this line.

The two shout+rabbit figures were found about 675 miles apart near Joplin, Missouri, and near Johnson City, Tennessee

"Shout and rabbit head with ears folded back" interpretation made of a Tennessee figure stone in a November 1, 2014 posting on this blog

It is proposed here the combination of the rabbit and the shout PAC-MAN like images had a special cultural meaning to some Stone Age North Americans.

Pietro Gaietto describes the very early origin of what have been called PAC-MAN like anthropomorphic sculptures as "The shout of Homo erectus"

"The Man of the Romandato" find by Paleolithic art author Pietro Gaietto 

Gaietto writes: "Fig. 4.9) Lithic Sculpture. It represents the head of a hominid with great opened wide mouth.
Size: Height cm. 23.5, width cm. 29, width cm. 18.5. The mouth is wide cm. 17 in the inside and cm. 7 in the tip of the jaw, and is deep cm. 11. Obtained from a large nodule of silex. Weight kg. 11.5.
Place of originrigin: Torrent Romandato, Rodi Garganico, Foggia, Italy.
Material culture: Acheulean or middle Clactonian, or perhaps more recent.
The sculpture has been obtained from a nodule of silex, in which the cavity that constitutes the open mouth is part of the shape original of the nodule.
The strong expression has been interpreted in the typology like " scream ". The stylistic deformation is based, exactly, on the scream.
A study on this sculpture and others two similar, by Pietro Gaietto, (Fig. 4.7 and 4.10) entitled " The shout of Homo erectus " is published on " Paleolithic Art Magazine ",(2000).

Collection Museum of the Origins of Man.

 "The man of Spinacchi" find by Pietro Gaietto

ANTHROPOMORPHIC PALEOLITHIC SCULPTURE by Pietro Gaietto, Genoa, Italy

Texas ranch owner becomes yet another United States site reporting PAC-MAN like stone figures in portable rock art contexts

Last week I received a note from a Texas ranch owner which included the following. I added the emphasis in bold type.

"There is a huge limestone rock approx 75 lb with a big centipede fossil stretching across the entire rock. Near that rock are massive metates weighing over 200 lb. I found a Metate/mortar weighing approx 30 lb that had a lot of wear and in the middle of the bowl are two perfectly drilled holes about 4 inches apart that go all the way thru the rock. I'm guessing it's for drainage which is interesting as I've never seen a Metate with holes. Near that Metate I found a large piece or nodular flint with the bottom being completely flat to where it can stand up perfectly. After examining the rock I noticed that it was one large owl statue with a lot of smaller owl faces that look almost subliminal. Every single rock I pick up in this area, no matter if it's limestone, flint or quartz, has some kind of art on it. Every single one. Mostly owls, buffaloes and weird faces.

You're going to think this is weird but I have found a couple of these faces that look exactly like pac-man. It's the damnedest thing I've ever seen.

I think this was a worship or ceremony site as it's unlike anything I've ever seen. I think it's possible they were worshiping that centipede fossil. Anyways, I just want to thank you because I thought I was losing my mind until I ran across your site. There's not much online that covers this subject except for you. Just wanted to say thanks and see if you might have any insight or if you've ever heard of anything like this?" -Texas ranch owner

Austin, Texas, PAC-MAN like anthropomorphic stone found in a strong portable rock art context helps confirm it as a widespread motif

 PAC-MAN like anthropomorphic stone, David Boies find, Austin, Texas

This sculpture found by David Boies near Austin, Texas, is yet another example of a recurring form from portable rock art bearing sites which have been featured on this blog.  This one helps confirm this PAC-MAN like form as a broad formal motif which must have had a cultural significance to the people who made and used them. They have been described from Oregon, Tennessee and Mississippi- and now Texas.

Tennessee example in center with two Oregon examples at the ends

The subject of stone toys has been raised here before and its seems possible these simple heads could have used for child play or puppetry. David Boies noted this figure's resemblance to a frog.

1) At far left are flake removals, possibly made to accommodate a human grip of the stone.

2) The lines forming a funnel shape indicate an area which may have been used and patinated by a human finger in the grip of the object. It could also be that the sharp corner of the figure's mouth was used as a scraper tool and this caused the wear and patination in the funnel area.

3) The circle around the eye may indicate a natural stone feature which was exploited or it could be human made pigmentation by birch bark resin or the like.

4) The black line indicates an approximate edge of this stone before it was humanly modified. A large hunk of the stone was removed at an approximate 100 degree angle to depict an open or laughing mouth.

The flake removal at left and the mouth at right indicate this is an artifact and not a natural coincidence. Several individual stone removal points with the same or similar patination are highly unlikely on a natural rock. Natural scars on stones have differing patinas because they are so spread out in time.

"Topplehead" anthropomorphic PAC-MAN like stone stands upright in a perfectly precarious position and may be symbolic of a breaching whale

Dennis Boggs find near Boardman, Oregon, identified as an anthropomorphic head sculpture by Dennis in this iteration of a typology he identified in his collection.

Profile view of anthropomorphic head sculpture with scale

In this short video, the stone topples over after a puff of air is applied from an off-camera air can, demonstrating the tolerances to which it is balance-engineered.

-Interpretation of the "engineered to balance precariously" aspect by Ken Johnston, curator of the Boggs collection.  The stone can balance and topple over with the slightest movement or vibration or force applied to it as in the example of the air puff here.

-This is a PAC-MAN like anthropomorphic stone engineered to the tipping point. The PAC-MAN stone sculptures have been identified by several North American amatuer archaeologists in addition to Dennis Boggs.

-Prepared tripod base allows forward roll of stone

-Large, sculpted "eye" area on one side

-Open mouth anthropomorphic imagery, as in a shout or laugh. Possible breaching whale imagery.

-Similar to other PAC-MAN like stones identified by Dennis Boggs in the Columbia River Valley.

-Similar to a stone identified as a balanced laughing stone figure or "Bobblehead" from the Boggs collection. The bases on the two sculptures have both been engineered in the same way.

Profile views of the PAC-MAN like anthropomorphic balancing stone. Could it have been a novelty or a toy? Or an earthquake early warning detector?

My hypothesis is that this object represents a whale figure which has been given a smiling human quality and that it stands and falls over in a symbolic demonstration of the whale breaching and smacking the water. To make the stone topple, the puff of air from the air can must be applied to the approximate area of the whale figure's "blow hole."

Another Oregon whale sculpture has already been described from the Boggs collection.

Nature photography Copyright (c) Jon Cornforth.  Click photos to expand.

Please note the anthropomorphic smiling quality on the face of this breaching humpback whale off the Pacific North American coast.  Compare the "smiles" of the whale and the whale sculpture. This human-like quality in the gigantic animal was realized in the manufacture of this Oregon portable rock art sculpture.

"Human head mixed to animal head" is a primary sculpture motif of the Lower and Middle Paleolithic according to Pietro Gaietto:

Report from Fayette, Mississippi, of another worked PAC-MAN like zooanthropomorphic head figure from apparently Pleistocene soils (including mastodon remains)

Dylan Fazzio of New Orleans, Louisiana, find from Fayette, Mississippi on November 8th, 2014. Measurements: 3" length, 3/4" width, 2 1/4" height. Photos courtesy of Dylan Fazzio.

Ken Johnston illustration of worked part of the stone.

This is the fifth report of this kind of figure from North American observers including one just featured last week. I have speculated in the past that these figures could be symbolic of simple hand shadow puppets where the top of the head as pictured here are the fingers and the bottom of the head, or jaw here, is the thumb, of a hand as if in a mitten.

The figure stands upright on a flat base in this position

Another conspicuous visually interesting stone with an eye-like fossil inclusion Mr. Fazzio found at Fayette, Mississippi

Jan van Es interpretation of a face and animal polymorphic figure stone exploiting a fossil inclusion, Lower Paleolithic, The Netherlands.

Mississippi stone compared to Netherlands stone

Dylan Fazzio of New Orleans writes: "The area I was walking is the bottom of a creek bed. Certain times of the year it floods out other times it's dry. New things are always being unearthed. The creek walls are about 20 ft high and the stones were only 5 to 10ft apart. My friend who lives up there found a mastodon tooth in the same area when he was around 10 years old in 1990. He made the front page of the local paper. He has a collection of fossils, Indian artifacts, pottery and petrified wood. 

His mother told me that when Jim found that tooth the old man was around 80 at the time said when he was a young man he found the skull and skeleton to the mastodon but never gave it much thought. He said years later he went back but never found anything. I will be back up in Mississippi this weekend hunting and I plan to do some more looking around. This is all new to me but very exciting I hope to find more and share them with you." 

Shout and rabbit

. 

Rabbit neck and head looking left with ears folded back and combined with the "Shout" motif

Sherry Hill find, Doe River valley, far east Tennessee, 7cm

This figure stone was identified by Sherry as a quasi-anthropomorphic piece due the mouth-like notch on its end which results in a simple PAC-MAN like human head form. It stands upright in this position. Another similar find by Sherry was featured earlier on this blog and has been compared to finds from other sites. A recent posting also covered finds similar to Sherry's from Denver, Colorado.

I discovered a rabbit head and neck profile looking left while rotating the stone inspecting for areas of human modification. I think this stone is a combination of the "Shout" motif and a hare or rabbit. This may be interpreted as a combination of predator and prey symbolism. A "Shout" flint stone from the Pleistocene (proto-) Thames River valley, U.K., was also interpreted as combining a possible prey animal and may be seen as comparable to Sherry's find.

Side 2

"Shout and rabbit"

Interpretations of the eye, nose and mouth of the rabbit image and the area of the stone which has been sculpted.

PAC-MAN and another "Shout" motif worked stone identified by Sherry Hill in the same context, 12cm, seen in a 2011 posting

Side 2 of the Tennessee figure stone illustrating an eye feature composed of a circular shape in a similar position to the PAC-MAN eye.