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.

31 December 2016

Stone human head sculptures found in concentration at The Arkfeld Site by Adam Arkfeld

'Stone doll with head looking left'

Arkfeld Site, Clear Brook, Virginia

A weathered tool from the Arkfeld Site prepared for suspension with natural materials by Adam Arkfeld.

30 December 2016

Human head with mammoth cresting forehead (with crosshatch)

Arkfeld Site, #44FK731, Clear Brook, Virginia

This sculpted stone is in a motif seen in many instances on this blog and in several from Arkfeld Site. This is a human head likeness in profile facing right with an expanded eye area. There have been stone removals to affect a curved nose and a tongue-like feature near the 'mouth.'

The human is simultaneously a mammoth profile figure facing right where the human and mammoth more or less share the same 'eye' feature in the stone. The human's 'nose' is also the 'trunk' of the mammoth figure. The mammoth's 'head bump' is the crest of the human's forehead in the depiction.

Also of probable significance, there is a small incised crosshatch pattern in the stone above the 'eye' hole which seems inspired by a wholly natural crosshatch feature of the stone formation itself.

22 December 2016

Arkfeld Site human head profile has deeply incised eye definition, a human face carving as its 'nose,' and a possible 'beaver' figure when it is rotated

'Human head profile facing right'

Adam Arkfeld find, Clear Brook, Virginia, Site #44FK731

Deeply incised and angular lines define the figure's eye area and provide quite complete confirmation of the intentional art enterprise evidenced at this remarkable archaeology site. Please note the lower right of this photo which includes the human's 'nose' and shows a human face which has been carved and included looking right on its surface.

Close up view of the human face looking right on the 'nose' of the larger human profile

When the human head profile is rotated 90 degrees left the top stone layer in the stone's relief appears to depict a beaver-like animal with faint remnants of its eye, nose and mouth still faintly visible on the stone.

Illustration of the animal face features on the stone.

21 December 2016

Open egg form with visibility into its internal structure from The Island of Oleron, France

'Open egg form with visibility into its internal structure'
Henri Valentie find, a Lower Paleolithic site, Island of Oleron, France

During all those years of research I noticed that, besides all forms nature offers in rocks- trees, fruit, animals etc., the egg-shaped rocks were considered as the most ideal kind. The big cosmic egg, the germinal force and origin of life, seems to have been a very important notion and turns out to be a main line in the images. -Jan van Es, Roermond, Netherlands

Hello
Stone pierced by nature but retouched to enlarge or to complete the work of nature. The bars that cross the hole are made of stones. If you know this natural phenomenon I will be curious to know it. Dim: 8/6 cmle hole made 3 cm in diameter.

The second picture is I think a character sitting. We observe the splinters removed on the head and on the inf and post limbs. Dim 18/15 cm. These 2 stones come from the same site on the Island of Oleron.
I wish you a happy New Year
Friends
Henri VALENTIE

In this view of the second stone described by Mr. Valentie I see a possible rabbit figure in profile looking right

Cortex removal in selected locations to affect an 'ear' and a 'nose' of the perceived rabbit likeness of this pierre-figure.

16 December 2016

Several mammoths and humans combined on sculpted plaquette found in Missouri Ice Age portable rock art context

'Mammoth profile facing left with human face on its posterior facing right'

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

Human face profile sculpted on the mammoth's posterior

The intentionality of a mammoth figure here is evidenced by the manufacture of an 'eye' divot in an artistically correct position for the animal's eye.

When the mammoth form is rotated 180 degrees a human-like face is seen in profile looking to the right

There is a second smaller human face profile worked into the forehead of the larger face figure. Click photo to expand view. The top part of the stone above the two circled faces may be interpreted as a mammoth form cresting the stacked human faces.

When the figure is rotated 90 degrees left it presents another human face profile looking left with eye, nose and lips details.

In the illustration the black outline highlights another mammoth form which is sharing or cresting the forehead of the human face figuration. The smaller face which was circled in the prior image is on this smaller mammoth's posterior back looking skyward as illustrated by the black arrow near its eye.

Human face profile looking left with mammoth form cresting its forehead, worked on the base edge of a mammoth shaped figure stone.

08 December 2016

'Mammoth cresting human forehead' motif on an ocher-stained carved plaquette from Missouri

'Mammoth cresting human forehead' motif on an ocher-stained carved plaquette. Stacy Dodd and Rod Weber find, The Old Route 66 Zoo Site, near Joplin, Missouri. Site #23JP1222.

Illustration of the human and mammoth profiles facing left, where the mammoth is depicted on top of the human's head. This is a North American Paleolithic art motif identified on this blog. The person's mouth is deeply incised which disambiguates the plaquette and says "this is an intended human form" despite the rest of the stonework being relatively vague.

Stacy Dodd processed his photo of the sculpture with the D-Stretch rock art digital enhancement tool for Image-J and it reveals yellow and red ocher stains which are only barely visible to the naked eye in the original photo. The ocher stains suggest intentional decoration of the plaquette or perhaps even ceremonial use of those pigment substances while handling it.

A human-mammoth hybrid from European cave art was traced by Brad Lepper of The Ohio History Connection.

Licking County, Ohio, example of a human face profile with a mammoth head cresting the human's forehead, was found in the context of other mammoth sculptures and menhirs near my home on the former glacial swamp now known as Buckeye Lake. This was the first one I identified but many more have now been documented on this blog.

There is a head of a second mammoth-like creature depicted facing right on the back of the human's head. An 'eye,' 'tusk,' 'trunk' and 'curved head' are diagnostic elements of the animal. The tusk is defined by an incised line in the stone and the 'eye' has been gouged out in the correct anatomical position.

06 December 2016

Standing bird sculpture from Hardin County, Tennessee

Jason Lamont find, Hardin County, Tennessee

This stone has been sculpted and stands upright on a flat base. The bird head up close seems to intentionally depict something roundish being held in the bird's beak.

Jason has suggested this piece may depict a 'bird emerging from its egg' and I think that is very possible. The bird is raptor-like with the curvature of the upper beak being quite pronounced.

Many figures in a motif of 'bird with head turned back' have been featured on this blog. They typically feature water birds like ducks with the head turned back and beak tucked to their back in a 'preening water bird' position.

This sculpture was found in a portable rock art context identified by Jason Lamont in Hardin County, Tennessee, and featured in other postings on this blog.

02 December 2016

Portable petroglyph of the joined half-bodies of a feline and mammoth on a mammoth-shaped stone from France

Lion and mammoth portable petroglyph

Henri Valentie find, near Limoges, central France

Hello

This piece was found near a semicircle megalith near the town of LIMOGES, center of France. View of one side observes a half-body of a feline on the left and seen on the right an elephant half-body. On the next picture on the other side of the piece is an elephant. Dim: 24cm / 12cm

friendships

henri VALENTIE

Illustration of the two joined half-bodies of feline and mammoth or elephant interpreted by Henri Valentie. A layer of stone which contrasts with the stone below it has been selectively removed to create the bas relief outline of the two joined animals facing away from each other.

The approximate 'eye' locations of the two animals are circled. The lion seems to have subtle ear detail. The top of the 'blue Y' in the illustration represents an area of stone removal to visually split, define, demarque or bifurcate the two animals and also to join them.

Other side of stone is in a mammoth shape

Ken Johnston interpretation of possible trace remnants of a human face

This is a remarkable find and interpretation by Mr. Valentie.

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