From the U.K.'s Pleistocene Thames River, likely a two-headed sculpture in a Lower Paleolithic format as described by early art author Pietro Gaietto

Find by amateur archaeologist David King, Colne Valley, England, in a Lower Paleolithic tool context on the banks of the Pleistocene Thames River

Interpretation of anthropomorphic head facing left split with a horned caprid head facing right by Ken Johnston. It is as if the animal heads are joined at the nape of the neck, like in the two heads of Janus. They eyes are circled and the mouths are in red in the illustration above. The anthropomorph is depicted with its mouth wide open, perhaps as in a yell.

Perhaps a animal such as the Sable is being depicted looking right on the sculpture

Paleolithic Art author Pietro Gaietto identified 8 sculpture types of the Lower and Middle Paleolithic, Number 5 on his list here includes this piece with a human like head and animal head joined together at the back of their heads:

Sculptures of lower and middle Paleolithic are eight types: 

1) human head 

2) animal head 

3) human head two-faced 

4) animal head two-faced 

5) human head joined for the neck at the head of animal 

6) human head mixed to animal head 

7) naked woman (Venus)

8) head of animal with human body.

(Gaietto, 2012) Anthropomorphic Paleolithic Sculpture, From Homo habalis to Homo erectus and from Neanderthal Man to Modern Man (in English)

Recent news: Earliest footprints outside Africa discovered in Norfolk

Danish Neolithic period axe worked around stone inclusions like "pair of eyes"

Neolithic stone axe from near Silkeborg, Denmark

 22,3 CM,  Weight 1127 grams (42,5 ounces)

The maker of this axe appears to have centered it on two inclusions in the stone which resemble eyes on the finished product- in what would be an anatomically correct position for "eyes on an axe" if such a thing existed. Such artistic centering of unique inclusions in the lithic material spans all-time, from the Lower Paleolithic to historical times.

What meaning these "eyes" may have had remains elusive. Was it to bring the axe to life, to show off stone working skills or to amuse the maker? Only when archaeologists and collectors begin identifying possibly iconic tools like this and start comparing them and their find contexts, will we move toward being able to know what they mean.

Coschocton County, Ohio, Cactus Hill type point, dated by morphology to ca. 19,000 BP, has two indents which seem centered like a "pair of eyes" on the artifact.

Artist writes of being inspired by natural rock forms as may have been typical in the Stone Age birth of sculpture

Tira Vanichtheeranont collection, Bangkok, Thailand

Tira thinks this is a mimetolith, or a rock that looks like something. Even though its find context has been lost it may be an example of a natural form which was found in prehistory and elaborated upon by a Stone Age artist. It seems some carving may have been made to separate the bird, to better define it, in relation to the "rock" it is sitting upon. Even though the rock looks like a base for the bird sculpture, they are found or composed on the same piece of stone.

This is the kind of object which the public needs to understand is important to archaeology so find locations are not lost because someone thinks it must be "just a rock." Pieces like this which can be determined to be artifacts may lead to new archaeological sites and new insights into ancient life ways.

Leone Battista Alberti’s opening words in his treatise De statua, written about 1430. Here the origin of sculpture is described as follows:

"Those who were inclined to express and represent... the bodies brought forth by nature would at times observe in tree trunks, clumps of earth, or other objects of this sort which through some slight changes could be made to resemble a natural shape. They thereupon took thought and tried, by adding or taking away here and there, to render the resemblance complete. Before long the primeval sculptors learned how to make images without depending on such resemblances latent in their raw material".

This passage is the earliest statement of the idea that what sets the artist apart from the layman is not his manual skill but his ability to discover images in random shapes, i.e., his visual imagination, which in turn gives rise to the desire to make these images more explicit.

Noted portable rock art investigator Jan van Es of Roermond, The Netherlands, writes:

"Particularly people of the older stone-age traditions were handling the principle: nature shows and offers the basic forms or basic shapes. They acquired these forms to fix and perpetuate their "image-language" in typological iterations." (pers. comm.) 

Washington sculptor Joy Jasinek says in a recent interview:

“In my 28 years of stone sculpting, I have yet to purchase a squared stone and most likely will not. I do not come up with an idea and then sculpt it from a block. My ideas come from the natural shape and colors of each stone, whether I find a stone or purchase one from a stone vendor. Yes, there are vendors that seek quality and unusual stones from around the world for the sculpting trade. But, ouch … we pay by the pound!"

“I noticed this large, pear-shaped, granite stone half-buried in a nearby field. Looking it over, what came to mind was a BIG FAT CAT.”

Bessie Harvey, a 20th century wood carver explains the process to Barbara Olins Alpert in her book "The Creative Ice Age Brain: Cave art in the light of neuroscience"

“I don’t design my work.  I don’t carve it.  I just make what I see from found objects.  The wood- the insects has already created what it is, and time.  Time rots away a lot of wood, and inside that wood, these little people hide.  I just go to them and find what I see and bring it out.  I think that God is the artist in my work.” 

Extraordinary Texas figure stone has "secret pair of eyes" and is a compelling example of same iconography seen at Dolní Věstonice, Moravia, Czech Republic

 Human head figure on a small pebble, find and identification by David Boies, Austin, Texas. Scale is in inches.

Close up of the detailed stonework to compose the figure's right eye. A pigment may have been used to stain the stone to create the darker iris feature of the eye.

Rotating the stone slightly reveals a flash of light of two otherwise hidden eyes which were manufactured by exposing the same plane of fracture of this pebble so light is reflected from both eyes at the same moment.

Close up of the "hidden eyes" awaiting the observer's discovery when the stone is viewed while rotating in ambient light.

Texas artifact at left compared to an illustration of a carved mammoth tusk ivory figure from Dolní Věstonice, Moravia, Czech Republic, dated to ca. 26,000 years before present. The similarity of this and a lion's head ceramic figure to North American portable rock art figures implies a relatedness of the iconography across a long distance from Europe to America, perhaps supported by the "mammoth steppe hypothesis" of Steven R. Holen and Kathleen Holen.

Selected point of impact and application of exacting force makes "birdseye" of Hertzian cone flake scar

"Birdseye"

Rock with a suggestive avian form was immediately animated as a "bird" by addition of an eye in one selective and masterful blow by a Stone Age artist to a lithic material he must have known well. A conchoidal fracture bulb of force flake scar (in this case a perfect Hertzian cone) serves as the bird's eye. Artifact find and interpretation as a bird figure in a portable rock art context by David Boies, Austin, Texas

Close up of the human-manufactured eye which, although simple, disambiguates the bird-form rock enough to be recognized as an intended bird figure in a context of other portable rock art finds, Austin, Texas.

Oregon and Texas amateur archaeologists independently identify zoomorphic figures which are visual analogs of the same idealized creature

David Boies find, Austin, Texas, identified as an ape form with a face looking left

Dennis Boggs find, Irrigon, Oregon, identified as an ape form with a face looking left, featured in an earlier posting on this blog

Texas creature's face looking to the left

Oregon creature's face looking to the left

The creature depicted in the Oregon and Texas stone figures is of the same idealized form which must have been a shared cultural icon, despite being found 1,600 miles apart.

Austin, Texas, bird-form has human face depiction on its back with another bird head form serving as the human's nose

Find by David Boies, Austin, Texas

The overall shape of the stone is a bird form in left profile

A human face on the bird's back, where the human's chin serves as the tail of the larger bird. A smaller protruding bird head form serves as the nose of the human.

Mark Jones find, Piney Point, Maryland, depicting a view of a vulture from behind with a human face depicted on its back and tail was featured in an earlier posting on this blog. The human's chin is the end of the bird's tail, just like in Mr. Boies Texas example. 

The Maryland and Texas objects are made in the same culturally-mediated tradition, despite being found 1300 miles apart. 

Researcher Alan Day reports confirmed human agency on Ohio limestone bird-form with input of a geologist/petrologist in article in "Ohio Archaeologist"

Image of limestone bird-form from a poster presentation made by Alan Day at the International Rock Art Congress held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2013. Photos by Alan Day. 

Independent portable rock art (figure stone) researcher Alan Day of Cambridge, Ohio, has confirmed human agency on stone figures at hilltop sites in Guernsey and Muskingum Counties, Ohio. Day co-authored a recent article in Ohio Archaeologist with petrologist Dr. Eric Law about a limestone-bird form.

Most all archaeologists do not have the expertise to fully evaluate conditions of human agency the way a geologist/petrologist (rock formation specialist) is able to. Archaeology should acknowledge its general limitations in this area and should begin to defer to a scientific approach to evaluating artifact status as Mr. Day has done.

However, Day's article shows Ohio Historical Society archaeologists have no interest in pursuing the subject of stones with iconic properties despite Ohio having a large number of examples reported by amateurs. They must have already determined they do not exist or they are not important to the development of archaeological knowledge in the Buckeye state. They would be wrong on both counts.

Image and text from the journal Ohio Archaeologist, published by The Archaeological Society of Ohio. Copies of Ohio Archaeologist are available from the Society. VOLUME 63 NO. 4, FALL 2013, pp. 37-38. The quote is attributed to article co-author Dr. Eric Law, professor of geology and petrology at Muskingum University, New Concord, Ohio.

Polyiconic mammoth sculpture is third such example to date from 23JP1222

Mammoth sculpture identified by Stacy Dodd, and Rod Weber, The Old Route 66 Zoo, 23JP1222

Jasper County, Missouri

Ken Johnston illustration of his interpretation of a running lion figure depicted in bas relief on the side of the mammoth sculpture. The lion and mammoth have a "shared tail."  Shared body elements like this are commonplace in polyiconic sculptures of the Stone Age. (click photos to toggle and compare)

Running lion silhouette approximates the interpreted bas relief form illustrated above

Close-up view of the lion's head (facing left)

Scholars interested in American rock art can no longer deny the presence of figure stones here and must establish a new focus on iconographic portable rock art. Archaeologists who do not bring portable rock art expertise to their multi-disciplinary teams will continue to destroy their sites and leave behind the most important information available about the pre-historic peoples they seek to learn more about.  

Mammoth sculpture 1: identified as having 2 bison images on its back and a lion head on the mammoth's trunk

 Mammoth sculpture 2: identified as having a lion glyph incorporated into its back 

Mammoth sculpture 3: featured in this article, identified as having a running lion figure on its side, sharing the tail of the mammoth as its own tail

Fish figure with "eye" from the Upper Rogue River valley, Oregon, is compared to Russian and Ohio examples

Fish figure collected and identified by Shelly Kaye, Upper Rogue River, Oregon

This figure was found outside of any supportive context but recognized as a "fish" by Shelly. The imagery compares favorably to the 2nd of the three fish from Siberia in the illustration below. Even though not from an archaeological context which could be detected by the finder, objects such as this may provide other ways to indicate artificiality. 

Illustration of Siberian example

This Oregon figure has a dark spot as the eye which may be evidence of pigment application as is seen in other portable rock art examples. Perhaps these residues can be tested. It may be that something similar to a "birch bark resin manufacturing process" was used to develop the pigment which would confirm this as an artifact. Birch bark resin was used by Neanderthals for glue and is thought to be the earliest synthetic material made by humans identified to date. Eyes are also made by grinding on stones or exploiting natural stone inclusions.

Siberian examples of fish figures on flakes. From Early Art from the Northern Far East- the Stone Age, by M.A. Kiriyak.

Mike Raver found fish figure from Zanesville, Ohio, in Coschocton blue flint

Horse head sculpture from Missouri site

Interpreted by Ken Johnston as a horse head sculpture from The Old Route 66 Zoo site, 23JP1222, Jasper County, Missouri. From a dense context of iconographic artifacts identified by Stacy Dodd and Rod Weber as seen on this blog. Mammoth, horse and bison were favorite fauna for Paleolithic hunters in North America and portable rock art images of all have been identified from this Missouri archaeological site.

Early Acheulean human head profile from the Beegden archaeological site described by Jan van Es, The Netherlands

Early Acheulean human from the Beegden archaeological site, Jan van Es, 6km west of Roermond, The Netherlands. Suspected to be an  image by Homo erectus.

Mammoth sculpture from site 23JP1222 has now faint lion glyph incorporated into its back, which along with other examples demonstrates a Paleolithic art theme

Identified as a mammoth sculpture by Stacy Dodd. From 23JP1222, "The Old Route 66 Zoo" site near Joplin, Missouri, Rod Weber, landowner. This is the second mammoth sculpture from "The Zoo" featured on this blog.

This artifact presents a fairly simple "big picture" icon of a mammoth form where the entire perimeter of the stone in this view resembles the profile of a mammoth- in a seemingly simple cookie-cutter outline. This art object depicts two extinct Pleistocene creatures, mammoth and American Lion.

Missouri Archaeological Inventory site OR66Z "The Old Route 66 Zoo" This amateur discovered archaeological site has produced many dozen examples of deliberately worked iconographic flint and limestone objects and is available for professional archaeological investigation. It is a palaeoart megasite which presents a unique in situ opportunity for archaeologists and art scholars.

(click photos to toggle and compare original to markup)

Faint lines faded with age in the soil can still be detected and define the body of the lion interpreted by Ken Johnston, including rear leg and tail. The definition of the lion's body has been etched into the stone. Several art pieces with this motif have been seen on this blog, enough to establish "lion atop mammoth/human/bison" as recurring depictions in United States portable rock art.

Labels of the worked stone features composing the lion head image

Lion's head looking right. This is a depiction of the now extinct American Lion, Panthera leo atrox. Actual size in microsculpture is about 2cm.

Reconsruction of now extinct American Lion head as depicted in stone above

Some early Americans may have had paradoxical relationships with lions, where humans lived in constant vigilance against predation and surprise attacks by lions while at the same time being dependent on lion kills of fauna to leave flesh and marrow meats behind the humans could exploit for nutrition.

African Acheulean beaked tool on a bird shaped stone is similar to U.S.A. finds

This stone has an appearance reminiscent of a perched bird. Such similarities would not have gone unnoticed among our ancestors. Acheulean, est. 600,000 to 100,000 BP. Sahara Desert, North Africa. This piece is 5.5" long, 3.25" wide, over 1.5" thick and weighs 20 ounces. 

The bird form with a natural beak inspired the toolmaker-artist to prepare the stone with a sharp edge on the beak, creating a graver, and remove additional stone likely to help accommodate the grip of a hand.

Flint Ridge, Ohio, bird sculpture is a tool with a yellow beak-graver and an excurvate knife at the crest of its head

Flint Ridge, Ohio, tool in the form of a bird figure

Bird form gravers: Oregon example at left, Ohio example at right

Licking County, Ohio: Interpreted by Ken Johnston as a coarse stone tool with a sharp edge fashioned as the head of a turkey vulture. The nostril accurately represents the one on the real bird.

Possible symbolism with these bird beak tools may recognize the bird's beak as the "tool" it uses to emerge from its egg.

Archaeologists snooze while Austin, Texas, amateur discovers "One eye open, other eye closed" figure stone (with added nostrils) among dozens of portable rock art objects

David Boies find, Westlake, Texas

A representation of the figure's right eye may be seen in the eye socket. The left eye is depicted differently, suggesting a closed, damaged or missing eye. The left side of the figure's face is distorted as is seen in so many other examples and the mouth is given an emotional expression by selective removal of a hunk of stone from the lower left side of the face.

The figure stone has been given two nostrils by the Stone Age artist. This may be symbolic of the artist's desire to "animate the stone with the breath of life."

 David Boies find in context of many figure stones, Westlake, Texas

"My name is David Boies and I have studied Native Americans and their cultures for over forty years. As any portable rock art enthusiast will attest, trying to get the academic world to look at something in a different way is difficult at best and impossible when you propose something altogether new. The people that carved these were very skilled craftsmen and excellent artisans with a deep reverence for nature. These artifacts hold an immense amount of knowledge to be gleaned by the professionals but getting them to admit they exist is the first step."

These kinds of small figure stones have been well documented by archaeologist Jan van Es of The Netherlands. Jan has shared many photographs with me over a few years and I can say this figure stone has very remarkable similarity to the Dutch material from the Lower and Middle Paleolithic sites he has worked. Many of Jan's photos may be seen in postings on this blog.

The "one eye open, other eye closed" motif is a meme originating in the Acheulean/Late Acheulean time frame and its presence throughout North America requires an accounting by archaeological science. To date, it is being ignored or denied without the benefit of any intellectual effort on the part of those whose duty it is to address such anomalies.