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.

13 February 2011

Family united in tenderness

Family in tenderness (in proboscidean context)

Hans Grams of Germany has kindly submitted this figure stone with his interpretative notes "Child, Mother & Father in tenderness." On the right side, view the man's head from the left rear. The nape of his neck and jawline are visible. On the left, the woman's forehead is pressed against the man's forehead, her face is nuzzled against him in right profile with a closed eye lid. The baby is depicted as being behind her head, presumably on her back in a sling.

Grams has noted the elephant iconography in the overall shape of the stone. This family is united in form with what may have been a revered animal. Mr. Grams writes:

"V922
Category: 1
Family in Elephant
Finding date: 03/10/2006
Finding place: D-41748 Viersen-Helenabrunn
This stone from pure quartz weighs 132 gr. and has the dimensions 5x4x2 cms.

The very pure material lets suppose a very valuable motive with a figural representation. The man covers the right one, the child and the woman the left side of the relief. Eyes and mouth of man and woman subtend themselves. The faces are leaned towards each other. The whole figure has the outline of an Elephant. Still today this animal is marked by his stove love. The back of the stone is absolutely level and smooth. Here only the quality of the material works. The picture side contained two elated parts as a physical structure. These were used by the palaeolithic artist to model relief-like the faces of a man, a woman and a child. The child seems to carry a kind of pointed cap.

In a mail from the 12.10.2006 Jan van Es, Roermond, (Netherlands) dates the origin of the sculpture in a period from before 750,000 to 1,000,000. At that time in the Rhineland there was the flint - lighter to be worked on - only seldom. It was transported only with the glaciers of the ice age of the Baltic States to there. At that time the prehistoric artists helped themselves of the lydit- or the quartz-stones, which existed here always. Also for the treatment of this stone they have had quite excellent technologies."

Here is the link to Mr. Hans Grams' website:

1 comment:

Hans GramsFebruary 13, 2011 at 2:28 PM
Thank you Ken, to have posted and commented this picture of friendship within a family.
The elephant is a symbol of care to each other, which was obeserved by stoneage-people and built into a figure-stone.
Sunday, the 13.02.2011
Hans Grams
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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

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A book on Siberian portable rock art could provide clues to North American possibilities

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Denisovan Ancestry in East Eurasian and Native American Populations

13 February 2011

Family united in tenderness

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