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.

23 February 2017

A rhomboid plaquette from Arkfeld Site

Arkfeld Site, #44FK731, 'Rhomboid plaquette'

Clear Brook, Virginia

Adam Arkfeld has identified a recurring pattern of these diamond-shaped stones which have been sculpted using a "bend-break" or "buffer technique" to make the relatively straight sides. They have been found at several portable rock art sites and likely had some kind of symbolic significance to their Stone Age makers.

19 February 2017

Paleolithic hand puppets survive in stone from Site #23JP1222, Jasper County, Missouri

'Human face' detail on 'hand puppet'

Stacy Dodd and Rod Weber find, The Old Route 66 Zoo portable rock art site

I have interpreted a number of pieces on this blog as stone 'hand puppets' because they present human or animal imagery and have tapering projections which seem to be very suitable 'handles' to present the imagery. They have come from a number of locations in addition to this one. Perhaps these objects were childrens' toys, or maybe they were used as props in folkloric story-telling.

'Human head profile looking left as a hand puppet'

My illustration of an 'eye,' 'mouth with teeth' and 'handle' on this second example from Site #23JP1222. Stacy Dodd processed the image digitally and the eye and mouth may be seen in addition to two possible 'nostrils' at the 'nose.' (Click photos to expand.)

14 February 2017

Queensland portable rock art typically found at 1 to 2 meters depth

Human facial profile worked onto translucent stone material

Rebecca Hainsworth & John Rogers finds, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Please note the attention give to the 'chin' which is a distinguishing phenotypic feature of anatomically modern humans.

Two views of the same piece of glass art found with the iconic portable rock art. Possible bird facing right in photo 1, possible creature's head looking right in photo 2.

A worked boulder 'face-mask' with missing left eye and distortion to the left side of the face in a possible example of this motif in Australia in addition to ones found in North America, Europe and South East Asia.

Animal facing right

Wombat

Two sides of the same stone have worked human (robust type?) head and facial profiles, seen here facing each other. I call pieces like this 'literal bi-faces.'

Rebecca and John typically find this kind portable rock art material in the course of their excavation work at depths between 1 and 2 meters.

04 February 2017

Zoo Whooo! A paleolithic owl sculpture from Missouri

Owl portable rock art sculpture

Stacy Dodd and Rod Weber find, The Old Route 66 Zoo mega portable rock site producing dozens of figure stones and sculptures. Site #23JP1222, Jasper County, Missouri

This is a classic North American Paleolithic bird sculpture but this art has not been acknowledged, recognized or studied by Archaeology officialdom despite its potential to provide far more cultural information than studying tool sets alone.

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