Kissy Birds II, Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River find by Mark Jones
This suspected "paired birds" figure stone was found by Mark Jones from the D.C. area at Piney Point, Maryland, near the confluence of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. Mark is a fossil and artifact hunter who began to notice a subtle pattern of rocks looking like paired birds in concentrations where he was finding many other tool artifacts. Many of the sculptures are heavily rolled in the environment and markings are faint but detectable, as is the case with this example. Mark showed me dozens of these paired bird artifacts when I made a visit to Maryland to check them out. Most are manuports with very little work to complete the images.
A few of them look like the birds have wrapped their wings around each other in a hug. Mark and his wife now call the motif in their locate "kissy birds." They have an exquisite example of paired birds facing away, almost unnaturally, in a position where they look angry. They call that sculpture "Pissy birds." I made an illustration to the photo at right to highlight what Mark saw, and what I see in this piece as well. This was a gift from Mark so it a part of my collections now and a great memory of my visit to Piney Point.Other artifacts Mark has found which have I have posted already are Kissy Birds and Pair of Incised Birds, a rare example of a portable petroglyph. The Kissy Birds posting was the first on this blog exactly one year ago and this second Kissy Birds posting marks the 100th entry made on portablerockart.com
A duck-head like view of the stone, with "eye divot" just like the birds on the other side. By numbers found by me and others, heads of ducks and other waterfoul must have a great significance in the American Stone Age art.
The stone has an anthropomorphic, torso-like in a view from the back side of the birds
Here is the figure stone on a centimeter(cm) grid for scale. The eye of the bird on the right is made of a "V" shape incision and the bird on the left's eye is made of an incised rectangle. The round, protruding, portion of the stone below the birds is egg-like.
-kbj
Thank you for posting your pictures. I have been finding 'rock birds' for years and have 100's of amazing specimens. Few people see the bird that is so visible to us. I would like to learn more about this and share some of my pictures. my email address is josephyne@comcast.net
ReplyDeleteIs it possible you are mistaken about the figure being 2 birds? Looks, to me, very much like a goddess carving (not the best). No head, one arm crossed over the other leading to a fine etched 4 fingers over the abd. Further down, you can see a V shaped pubis with a hole and the two thighs on each side with a line down from the sides of the V going down to the knees- no calves/feet. As you said, looks like a torso from the back. I am an artist and can find "Waldo" fairly easily. Ha ha.
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