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.

14 December 2012

Listen to the rock: Denis Argaut of France makes a masterful interpretation of a horse head figure stone on which a realistic sound of a galloping horse is recorded

Rock art investigator Denis Argaut, (FR), blog Formes de' ombres. Find and interpretation as a "rocking horse," a horse head figure with a realistic galloping horse soundtrack demonstrated on YouTube by Mr. Argaut.

Horse head looking left

Watch the horse head rock back and forth and listen to the sound of the galloping horse

Please compare this illustration to the image of the rock seen in the still image on the YouTube screen above it. Ken Johnston interprets a possible mammoth depiction here, where the mammoth is seen in profile view facing right. The curvature of the mammoth head and trunk is seen in the outline of the stone as seen on the right side in the YouTube picture above. The horse head can be seen as being depicted on the posterior of the mammoth image (just to the left of the play button), a technique of combining images in the Paleolithic noted already on this blog.

Denis Argaut's interpretation is masterful and demonstrates how closely all rock material at archaeological sites must be scrutinized for "unusual" art properties. Mr. Arguat's special interest is in Stone Age exploitation of light and shadow in artistic expression. Ironically, he has made what must be recognized as a significant discovery in the realm of sound signal analysis in rock art.

A note from Denis Argaut:

Hello Ken,

Thank you for your comments and I will investigate whether this stone can be

as a mammoth. Know that this stone offers already several figures

(see attachments), a unique rotation (see video), a set animaton

sound and visual of the horse. Also a figure a little strange just reveal a

eye formed a small stone embedded in the block ... After at least fifty

hours of observation of this stone, I have the feeling that there is still

much to find ...

If this does not trouble you, I will send you other videos on other

horses. Let me give you a tip, n 'wait until the summer to

watch your stones in favor of the darkness. A simple flashlight

Just ... My method is this: I first searches the positions of

equilibria of the stone. Often an equilibrium position offers a

major form of the stone and s which can animate by tilting. Make no

mistake, find sound effects corresponding to the shape may request

several hours ... Hope to discover the expression of different

"creative vectors" that man has mastered in stone, it seems

that must guide every HUMILITY not research! humility

essential to consider the stone as possible receptacle of the

intelligence and dare to give this intelligence the ability to have in

LEADING place and knowledge-how that we know more ...!

The expression of the shadows we will in large part to ever

inaccessible because it emanates from a sensibility, an alertness of observation

and an "addiction" to shadows that we have become totally

foreigners.

If found by the shadows that is a leap backwards, that is first

leap into the unknown with innocence and humility.

Regards Denis

"Ombre qui danse"

-kbj

1 comment:

LukeDecember 18, 2012 at 1:26 AM
All the doubters of the acoustics of rock should look into the chichen itza temple. You stand at the base and clap, the echo returned off the stairs makes the sacred call of the quetzal bird and also on the equinox a shadow crawls down the temple in a serpentine motion, for all who disbelieve in the shadow language . It goes further than that if you look into Steven Wallers work on archaeoacoustics associated with rock art its just starting to scratch the surface of the amazing knowledge incorporated into the rock art.the portable art rock's , as well have these features included in them as they were undoubtedly the forerunners to the larger scale temples.
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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

Ursel Benekendorff is recognized in the vanguard of Stone Age art inquiry and study

(This image is Copyright (c), Ursel Benekendorff, All Rights Reserved. May not be copied or distributed in any way. Used here with permission of Ursel Benekendorff for purpose of linking to her web site Schafftwissen) Stone age art pioneer Ursel Benekendorff has 2000 photographs and demonstrates standardization in the production of the world's oldest art. “My work was a pioneer work, without help of curators or technical experts. Self developed methods helped me, to stay on top of thousands of pieces of extraordinary shapes, excavated by digging machines. I was fast but not that fast and not all artifacts could have been rescued, still Menhir sizes, microlithic material, handsize stones and Un- PORTABLE sized stones were documented. That was more than most collectors assembled or documented, as I learned later on. I had invited large numbers of people to my site, so I know how they go about it all, they operate on a personal preferences, thus a wide open field, possessing is the goal, not so much the unsolved research questions. You see it was not my goal to find the best but the goal was, to clear misleading pictures and find those, who got repeated. This needed a large variety of stone types to detect the repetition by former artists. (Not looking pictures into the stones). But I wanted and still want to know, how the logo face stone on my website created his surrounding.” -Ursel Benekendorff

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

Early art of the northern Far East : the Stone Age, by M. A. Kiriyak. This book is about the portable rock art of the Russian north east area. It was written in Russian but has been translated to English by the United States National Park Service's Shared Beringia Heritage Program. The hundreds of iconographic artifacts described and pictured here should inform North American archaeologists regarding the possibilities for art modalities having arrived via Beringia during peopling of the Americas migrations. The book is available for preview at the link here.

Denisovan Ancestry in East Eurasian and Native American Populations

14 December 2012

Listen to the rock: Denis Argaut of France makes a masterful interpretation of a horse head figure stone on which a realistic sound of a galloping horse is recorded

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