Art Before History
Paleolithic (= old stone) Art- Hunter/Gatherer Society
1. 30,000 BCE (Before the Common Era, used instead of BC) first art appeared.
a. Shell Necklaces
b. Human and Animal forms in ivory, clay, stone, painting
c. Depictions of animal forms most common. Women rare, Men very rare
d. Paintings and incised and raised reliefs on cave walls.
e. First representation (present again) of humans and animals
a. Vs. seeing faces in pre-existing objects (waterworn face, 3,000,000 BCE)
f. Representations of animals shown in profile: All parts can be seen; head, body, legs,
tail: Tried to create convincing image to capture essence
a. Originality, variety not a concern
2. Nude Woman of Willendorf, Willendorf, Germany, ca. 28,000 – 25,000 BCE, Limestone, traces of
red ocher
a. Most prehistoric sculptures show animals or humans (mostly female)
b. Anatomically exaggerated, fertility image?
a. Big Breasts
b. Tiny arms
c. Pubic triangle
c. Not “Venus”, not a deity
d. Not a specific woman: No face (hair, hat?)
3. Cave Paintings:
a. Altamira, Spain, ca. 12,000 – 11,000 BCE; Pech-Merle, France, ca. 22,000 BCE; Lascaux,
France, ca. 15,000 – 13,000 BCE
1. Rare
2. Use radiocarbon dating (rate at which carbon 14 degenerates in organic
material) to ascertain age.
3. Some colored in, some just outlines, even on same wall.
4. fixed environment
5. hard to get to
6. needed fire to see/make art
7. created hunting scenes mostly
8. Many wall paintings are hundreds of feet long
9. Used wide range of minerals for color and brushes
a. Used stone palettes to mix colors
b. Created scaffolding to reach areas?
10. Made positive and negative images of hands
11. Convex rock for bison/cattle (“enhanced” rock that looked like bison)
12. Concave rock for horses and hands
13. Enigmatic: No single explanation for why art was made. All discredited at one
time or another
a. For destruction (hunting)of animals?
b. For preservation of animals?
c.
d.
e.
f.
Magical powers attributed to animals?
Target practice / teach hunting techniques?
Many caves used over thousands of years
Why such a narrow range of subject matter?
i. Altamira people ate reindeer not bison
14. Altamira discovered in 1879 by Don Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola. Originally
discounted as forgeries by experts. But subsequent cave-art findings covered
with mineral deposits requiring thousands of years to accumulate changed
experts opinions.
15. Altamira bison in profile. Altamira bison do not stand on a ground line (painted
or carved baseline on which figures appear to stand in paintings and reliefs).
16. Each bison is a separate image.
a. Do not share common orientation.
b. Bison lying down (giving birth) are pictured from above to maintain
profile view: no common viewpoint
c. No background, setting, or indication of place
d. Painted at different times(?)
b. Chauvet Cave Paintings, Mallon-Pont-d’Arc, France, 30,000 – 28,000 BCE OR 15,000 –
13,000 BCE
1. Shows horns in true profile, not composite view (twisted perspective)
2. Discredits idea of stylistic advancement
3. Perhaps signs of narrative (two rhinos fighting?)
Neolithic (New Stone Age)
Around 9000 BCE the glaciers over Europe melted. Sea levels rose 300 feet. England
became an island. Spain no longer linked to Africa.
Mesolithic (middle stone age) is a transitional period between Paleolithic and Neolithic.
Mesolithic more efficient at food gathering and hunting due to better stone tools and
domestication of the dog.
Neolithic more distinctive period: Agriculture and domesticated animals became major
food source. Transition first occurred in ANE. Good base stock of wild grains and
animals. Tigris/Euphrates very fertile.
Technological advances: Weaving, metalworking, pottery, counting and
recording with clay tokens.
By 7000 BCE agriculture and domesticated animals were well established from
Anatolia to Iran.
Hallmarks of Neolithic Art
 Some architectural elements
 More depictions of humans
 More advanced technology evidenced in artifacts (see technological
advances above).
 Evidence of narrative in Neolithic art.
Ancient Near East
1. Jericho:
a. Plateau in Jordan River valley with spring. Occupied as early as 9,000
BCE. By 8,000 BCE covered 10 acres with oval mud-brick homes. Roofs
branches and earth
b. 7500 BCE built ditch and wall around town of 2,000
c. Built oval based tower as high as 30 ft. tall and 33 ft. diameter (for
defense?). Still being excavated to see if more towers. First
monumental architecture.
2. Ain-Ghazal, near Amman Jordan
a. Built/Occupied from 7200 to 5000 BCE
b. Houses built with irregularly shaped stones
c. Found cache of 3 + ft sculptures.
i. Plaster over reed armature (support structure)
ii. Human subject
iii. Some have 2 heads.
iv. Seem to have been ritually buried.
v. Painted bitumen eyes and painted clothes
vi. Gender ambiguous
vii. Much bigger than Paleo. Sculpture
3. Catal Hoyuk, Turkey, 7000 – 5000 BCE
a. Wealth was trade, especially obsidian (glasslike volcanic rock): could be
finely chipped for tools and weapons. Lead smelting.
b. Seems urban: Orderly: Planned along a scheme
i. No streets
ii. Enter through holes in roof (doubles as chimney)
iii. Attached buildings more stable; easier to defend as each house
was sealed off from the rest of the village
iv. Homes mud brick and timber
v. Walls and floors were plastered
vi. Platforms on walls for sleeping and working
vii. Dead buried beneath platforms
viii. Some rooms were highly decorated(shrines?)
1. Wall paintings
2. Plaster reliefs
3. Animal heads
4. Bucrania (bovine skulls)
5. Bulls’ horns (masculine)
6. Plaster female breasts
7. Stone and terra cotta (baked clay) statuettes: mostly
female figures
8. Hunting still important: Some scenes of hunting
a. Regular appearance of humans in large
coherent groups
b. Many poses, subjects and settings
c. Clearly narrative: human themes and action
scenes of humans dominating animals.
d. Descriptive detail of individuals: Faces (in
profile) and clothing
e. People in composite view
f. Surface prepared: plaster
g. World’s first landscape painting (volcano and
town): No people, no animals
Western Europe
No comparable villages found like in ANE. Monumental architecture instead. Starting
in 4000 BCE started architecture with massive rough-hewn rocks as big as 17 ft.
weighing 50 tons (how?). These structures are called megaliths. Big rocks = megalith.
A menhir is a large upright standing stone. Menhirs may be found singly as monoliths, or
as part of a group of similar stones.
The function of Menhirs has provoked … debate… Over the centuries they have
variously been thought to have been used by Druids for human sacrifice, used as
territorial markers or elements of a complex ideological system, or functioned as early
calendars. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menhir)
A Dolmen is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of three or
more upright stones (megaliths) supporting a large flat horizontal capstone (table). Most
date from 4000 B.C.E. to 3000 B.C.E.. Dolmens were usually covered with earth or
smaller stones to form a barrow, though in many cases that covering has weathered
away, leaving only the stone 'skeleton' of the burial mound intact.
(http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Domen)
1. Passage Grave, Newgrange, Ireland, ca. 3200 – 2500 BCE
a. Tomb with long corridor, 62 ft., leading to burial chamber.
b. Built with corbelled vault technique. Stones held in place by their own
weight. One side of chamber leaning on other side.
c. Covered with tumulus (earthen burial mound) 280 ft. diameter, 44 ft.
tall.
d. Some stones decorated with incised abstract motifs (themes).
e. At winter solstice sun shines directly down passage grave to burial
chamber.
f. Passage graves found in England, France, Spain, Scandanavia: Shows
importance these Neolithic societies placed on honoring the dead.
2. Temple, Hagar Kim, Malta, 3200 – 2500 BCE
a. Cut stone stacked in courses (stacked horizontal rows)
b. Doorways built using post and lintel system.
c. Designed with rectilinear and curved forms
d. Used apses (semicircular recesses)
e. Altars = religious shrine
f. Stone statues of headless nude women, one standing, others seated.
3. Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain, England, ca. 2550 – 1600 BCE.
a. Henge = megaliths in a circle ( 97 ft. diameter).
b. Built over hundreds of years.
c. Concentric circles of post and lintel construction
d. Inside are trilithons (three-stone constructions)
e. Heel stone outside of circle marks sunrise for summer solstice from
center of Stonehenge: Observatory, calendar?