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.

Sculptures transported 700 miles?

Featured June 1 on this blog: Human face profile looking left

Featured July 8 on this blog: Feline head looking left

The above two sculptures were found by Stacy Dodd and Rod Weber at The Old Route 66 Zoo site (OR66Z), #23JP1222, near Joplin, Missouri.

When I saw the first one I was fairly certain it was made in a stone material known as Vanport Chert from Flint Ridge in Licking and Muskingum Counties in Ohio. Not long after I received photos of the feline head and it also appeared to be made of this Ohio flint from just 10 miles from my home.

The stone material used for these two sculptures is different looking from all the other lithics found at the OR66Z site. I have seen hundreds of photos over 4 1/2 years and these two objects are unique and were recovered at the same time this summer at the site.

Based on the photos, I have had confirmation from some locals familiar with the Flint Ridge material that these two pieces both appear to be from Ohio. X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry testing of the two Missouri sculptures, compared to testing of known Flint Ridge chert will confirm these two stones originated in Ohio.

The motifs of these two sculptures also compare favorably to art I have well-described on this blog and have documented locally to Flint Ridge.

It is my opinion these sculptures were manufactured near Flint Ridge and transported 700 miles to the find location near modern day Joplin, Missouri. While tool stone from Flint Ridge Ohio has been documented in Missouri, this would represent the longest known transport of lithic material used for symbolic or art purposes and perhaps the longest known transport of finished sculptures from one place to another.

The distance from the sculpture find location at The Old Route 66 Zoo site in Jasper County, Missouri to the Flint Ridge, Ohio source of the stone material the sculptures are made from, is 700 miles. Tools and tool stone from Flint Ridge are known to have been transported hundreds of miles.

Turgite formations on some Flint Ridge Ohio chert have iridescent properties and was likely highly valued by Stone Age peoples for its unique visual properties. From the John Nethers farm, Muskingum County.

A map of the Pennsylvanian "Vanport formation" of chert located in Licking and Muskingum Counties in east-central Ohio which is regarded as some of the highest quality and most colorful chert in North America.

Regarded by many as the "World's greatest living flint knapper" Roy Miller is seen here in his quarry at Flint Ridge, Ohio.

The Roy Miller quarry at Flint Ridge, Licking County, Ohio

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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.

Archaeology of Portable Rock Art

Denisovan Ancestry in East Eurasian and Native American Populations

Sculptures transported 700 miles?

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