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 May 2017

New Tennessee site with portable rock art, anvils, flint and tools

Edgar Lopez finds, White House, Tennessee

"Hello
My name is Edgar and I am seeking your help on some finds that I dug up while starting a garden.
I believe I may have stumbled on some ancient American Indian artifacts. I am including a link with the pictures to this email. Please email me back if you think there is a chance that I'm correct on what these artifacts are. Or, if you have another idea of what this could be, please let me know that as well. They may just be rocks or they may be something extraordinary. I have zero expertise in this area; I am grateful if you are able to help."

I informed Mr. Lopez based on my experience his intuition is correct and he has found a likely Paleolithic art and tool site.

The red mark indicates the mouth of a human head right profile. The head may also include a 'hair' representation.

The white circle indicates the face and nose of a 'bear' in right 3/4 profile. Other possible bear figures have been found by Mr. Lopez. (Click photos to expand and compare)

To the left of the bear head is a pitted area in the stone which may have been a receptacle or work area of some kind.

Human faces in Paleolithic art (R.D. Guthrie)

This figure with evidence of human modification in the eye and mouth areas is compatible with human head forms as described on a gradient by R. Dale Guthrie in his book The Nature of Paleolithic Art.

Blue marks illustrate incised lines carved on the stone face mask.

A broken anvil stone reassembled by Mr. Lopez

A broken block of flint reassembled

Rhomboid and square tablet stones typical of many Paleolithic sites in the United States are seen here in situ courtesy of Mr. Lopez.

Crude tools and utilized stones identified by Mr. Lopez

These kinds of artifacts detected by laypersons show that a formal education in Archaeology precludes one's ability to detect materials not already assumed to be present by prior knowledge. Mr. Lopez has been told by many these are 'just rocks' but we can indeed know better.

13 May 2017

A feline and human head combination figure stone from Missouri

Stacy Dodd and Rod Weber find

The Old Route 66 Zoo site near Joplin, Missouri

This figure depicts a right 3/4 profile perspective feline-looking head with pointed ears along with a face which resembles a grinning human. It has two eyes, a nose and a mouth in addition to the two ears.

Löwenmensch, a lion-headed figurine found in Germany, dating to the Upper Paleolithic of about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago

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

31 May 2017

New Tennessee site with portable rock art, anvils, flint and tools

13 May 2017

A feline and human head combination figure stone from Missouri