Art History Chapter 1

Electron spin resonance

techniques use a magnetic field and microwave irradiation to date a material such as tooth enamel and the soil around it.

When it comes to time what does BCE and CE stand for?

Before the Common Era The Common Era

What did French archaeologist Salomon Reinach suggest?

In 1903, French archaeologist Salomon Reinach suggested that cave paintings were expressions of sympathetic magic: the idea, for instance, that a picture of a reclining bison would ensure that hunters found their prey asleep.

1-12 Bird-Headed Man With Bison

Shaft scene in Lascaux Cave. c. 15,000 BCE. Paint on limestone, length approx 9' (2.75 m).

What kind of houses were built in the Upper Paleolithic Russia and Ukraine?

Builders created settlements of up to ten hours using the bones of the now extinct wooly mammoth, whose long, curving tusks made excellent roof supports and arched door openings (FIG. 1-5). This bone framework was probably covered with animal hides and turf. Most activities centered around the inside fire pit, or hearth, where food was prepared and tools were made. Larger houses might have had more than one hearth, and spaces were set aside for specific uses--working stone, making clothing, sleeping, and dumping refuse.

What caused people to paint such dramatic imagery on the walls of caves?

In the early twentieth century, scholars believed that art has a social function and that aesthetics are culturally relative. They proposed that cave paintings might be prod-ucts both of rites to strengthen clan bonds and of ceremonies to enhance the fertility of animals used for food.

Why did Homo sapiens sapiens outlive neanderthals?

Critical cognitive abilities set modern humans apart from their predecessors; Homo sapiens sapiens outlast Neanderthals as a species because they had the mental capacity to solve problems of human survival.

When did Homo sapiens sapiens appear?

120,000 years ago.

What does Paleolithic mean?

Paleo (old) lithic (stone)

What are the two parts of the Stone Age?

Paleolithic and neolithic.

when did the Neolithic way of living emerge in Western Europe?

3000 BCE

How many paintings and engravings does Lascaux contain?

600 paintings and 15,000 engravings.

When did the Neolithic way of living emerge in the Near east?

8000 BCE.

What did Abbe Henri Beureli believe?

Abbé Henri Breuil took these ideas further and concluded that caves were places of worship and settings for initia-tion rites. During the second half of the twentieth century, scholars rejected these ideas and rooted their interpreta-tions in rigorous scientific methods and then-current social theory.

Despite many different hypotheses what agreement did archaeologist come to?

Although the hypotheses that seek to explain cave art have changed and evolved over time, there has always been agreement that decorated caves must have had a spe-cial meaning because people returned to them time after time over many generations, in some cases over thousands of years. Perhaps Upper Paleolithic cave art was the prod-uct of rituals intended to gain the favor of the supernatural.

What is the Lion Human and when was it created, what is its meaning?

An early and puzzling example of a sculpture in the round is a human figure--probably male--with a feline head, made about 30,000 - 26,000 BCE. Archeaologists excavating at Hohlenstein-Stadel, Germany, found broken pieces of ivory (from a mammoth tusk) that they realized were parts of an entire figure. Nearly a foot tall, this remarkable statue surpasses most early figurines in size and complexity. Instead of copying what he or she saw in nature, the carver created a unique creature, part human and part beast. The figure may have been intended to represent a person wearing a ritual lion mask--or someone who had actually taken on the appearance of an animal. Archaeologists now think that the people who lived at this time held very different ideas than ours about what it meant to be a human and how humans were distinct from animals; it is quite possible that they thought of animals and humans as parts of one common group of beings who shared the world. What is absolutely clear is that the Lion-Human is evidence of the uniquely human ability to conceive and represent a creature never seen in nature.

What is an example of clay dating at Altamira?

An excellent example of such work in clay dating to 13,000 BCE is preserved at Le Tuc d' Audoubert, south of the Dordogne region of France. Here the sculptor created two bison leaning against a ridge of rock. Although the beats are modeled in very high relief (they extend well forward from the background), they display the same conventions as earlier painted ones, with emphasis on the broad masses of the meat-bearing flanks, and shoulders. To make the animals even more lifelike, their creator engraved short parallel lines below their necks to represent their shaggy coats. Numerous small footprints found int he clay floor of this cave suggest that group rites took place here.

Why did Andre Leroi-Gourhan and Annete Laming-Emperaire dismiss the magic theory?

André Leroi-Gourhan and Annette Laming-Emper-aire, for example, dismissed the sympathetic magic theory because statistical analysis of debris from human settle-ments revealed that the animals used most frequently for food were not the ones traditionally portrayed in caves.

What is the "Woman From Brassempouy" and what does it represent?

Another remarkable female image, discovered in the Grotte du Paps in Brassempouy, France, is the tiny ivory head known as the Woman From Brassempouy. Though the finders did not record its archaeological context, recent studies prove it to be authentic and date it as early as 30,000 BCE. The carver captured the essence of a head, or what psychologists call the memory image--those generalized elements that reside in our memory of a human head. An egg shape rests on a long neck. A wide nose and strongly defined brownie suggest deep-set eyes, and an engraved square patterning may be hair or a headdress. the image is an abstraction (what has Coe to be known as abstract art): the reduction of shapes an appearances to basic yet recognizable forms that are not intended to be exact replications of nature. The result in this case looks uncannily modern to contemporary viewers. Today, when such a piece is isolated in the museum case or as a book illustration we enjoy it as an aesthetic object, but we lose it original cultural context.

What style of time do archaeologist use versus the book we read?

Archealogist denote time in number of years BP ("before present"). However, to ensure consistent style throughout the book, which reflects the usage of art historians, this chapter uses the notations BCE (before the Common Era) and CE (the Common Era) to mark time.

What are the the cultural and historical contexts that led to the first artistic impulses of the Stone Age?

Art was about survival at first but then became a way of socially interacting with others.

What is art?

Art, in the sense of image making, is the hallmark of the Upper Paleolithic period and the emergence of our subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens; representational images appear in the archaeological record beginning about 38,000 BCE in Australia, Africa, and Europe.

When did small figures, or figurines, of people and animals made of bone, ivory, stone, and clay appear?

As early as 30,000 BCE small figures, or figurines, of people and animals made of bone, ivory, stone, and clay appeared in Europe and Asia. Today we interpret such self-contained, three-dimensional pieces as examples of sculpture in the round. Prehistoric carvers also produced relief sculpture in stone, bone, and ivory. In relief sculpture, part of the surrounding material is retained to form a background for the projecting figure.

1-7 Woman From Willendorf

Austria c. 24,000 BCE. Limestone, height 4 3/8" (11cm). naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna

When it comes to time what does BP stand for?

Before present

What significant changes in our ancestors' cognitive abilities and manual dexterity allowed us to see?

By 1.65 million years ago, significant changes in our ancestors' cognitive abilities and manual dexterity can be seen in sophisticated stone tools, such as the teardrop shaped hand-axes that have been found across Eurasia.

When did Neanderthals inhabit Europe?

By 400,000 years ago, during the late Middle Paleolithic period, a Homo sapiens subspecies called Neaderthal inhabited Europe.

1-13 Bison

Ceiling of a cave at Atlamira, Spain. c. 12,500 BCE. Paint on limestone, length approximately. 8'3" (2.5 m)

Whats the difference between change today versus change in 10th millennium BCE?

Change today was quicker than it was before.

1-10 Wall Painting With Horses, Rhinoceroses, And Aurochs

Chauvet Cave. Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, Ardèche George, France. C. 32,000 - 30,000 BCE. Paint on limestone

What were the earliest objects made by our human ancestors?

Dating to 2.5 million years ago, the earliest objects made by our human ancestors were simple stone tools used to cut animal skin and meat, smash open bones to reveal the marrow, and cut wood and other plant materials.

What other evidence suggested that cave art was represented by religious practice and musical gathering?

Footprints and hand prints suggested that exploring the cave was meaningful not just because the creation but because they could come back to visit later. There was also flutes and other instruments found to suggest that there was gatherings for music.

1-4 Decorated Ocher

From Blombos Cave, southern Cape coast, South Africa. 77,000 years ago.

1-6 Lion Human

From Hohlenstein-Stadel, Germany. c. 40,000-35,000 BCE. Mammoth ivory, 12 1/4 x 2 7/8 (31.1 x 7.3 cm). Ulmer Museum, Ulm, Germany.

1-3 Paleolithic Hand-Axe

From Ismila Korongo, Tanzania, 60,000 years ago. Stone, height 10" (25.4 cm)

1-9 Woman From Brassempouy

Grotte du Pape, Brassempouy, Landes, France. Probably c. 30,000 BCE. Ivory, height 1 1/4" (3.6 cm). Musee des Antiqultes Nationales, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France.

Why are these figures significant?

He suggested that when groups of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers did occasionally meet up and interact, the female statues may have been among several signature objects that signaled whether a group was friendly and acceptable for interaction and, probably, for mating. As symbols, these figures would have provided reassurance of shared values about the body, and their size would have demanded engagement at a close personal level. It is not a coincidence, then, that the largest production of these figurines occurred during a period when climatic conditions were at their worst and the need for interaction and alliance building would have been at its greatest.

Why are the Blombos finds important?

Here our early ancestors, probably modern humans but possibly their predecessors, used the earth's raw materials to decorate themselves with jewelry and body art.

What was one of the techniques uses to create wall paintings in caves?

In a dark cave, presumably working by the light of an animal-fat lamp, prehistoric artists chewed a piece of charcoal to dilute it with saliva and water. Then they blew out the mixture on the surface of a wall, using their hands as stencils. This drawing demonstrates how cave archaeologist Michel Lor-blanchet and his assistant used this step-by-step process of the original makers of a cave painting at Pech-Merle (SEE FIG. 1-1) in France to create a complex design of spotted horses. By turning himself into a human spray can, Lorblanchet produced clear lines on the rough stone surface much more easily than he could with a brush. To create the line of a horse's back, for example, with its clean upper edge and blurry lower one, he blew pigment below his hand. To capture its angular rump, he placed his hand vertically against the wall, holding it slightly curved. To produce the sharpest lines, such as those of the upper hind leg and tail, he placed his hands side by side and blew between them. To create the forelegs and the hair on the horses' bellies, he fingerpainted. A hole punched in a piece of leather served as a stencil for the horses' spots. It took Lorblanchet only 32 hours to reproduce the Pech-Merle painting of spotted horses, his speed suggesting that a single artist could have created the original.

1-11 Hall Of Bulls

Lascaux Cave. Dordogne, France. c. 15,000 BCE. Paint on limestone, length of largest auroch (bull) 18' (5.50 m).

1-8 Woman From Dolni Vestonic

Moravia Czech Republic. 23,000 BCE. Fired clay, 4 1/4 x 1 7/10" (11 x 4.3 cm). moravske Museum, Bmo, Czech Republic.

What does Neolithic mean?

Neo(new) lithic (stone)

How were cave paintings discovered?

No one knew of the existence of prehis-toric cave paintings until one day in 1879, when a young girl, exploring with her father in Altamira in northern Spain, crawled through a small opening in the ground and found herself in a chamber whose ceiling was covered with painted animals (SEE FIG. 1-13). Her father, a lawyer and amateur archaeologist, searched the rest of the cave, told authorities about the remarkable find, and published his discovery the following year. Few people believed that these amazing works could have been made by "primi-tive" people, and the scientific community declared the paintings a hoax. They were accepted as authentic only in 1902, after many other cave paintings, drawings, and engravings had been discovered at other places in north-ern Spain and in France.

Chauvet cave

One of the earliest known sites of prehis-toric cave paintings is the Chauvet Cave (named after one of the persons who found it) near Vallon-Pont-d'Arc in southeastern France. Discovered in December 1994, it is a trove of hundreds of paintings (FIG. 1-10). The most dramatic of the images depict grazing, running, or rest-ing animals, including wild horses, bison, mammoths, bears, panthers, owls, deer, aurochs, woolly rhinoceroses, and wild goats (or ibex). Also included are occasional humans, both male and female, many handprints, and hundreds of geometric markings such as grids, circles, and dots. Footprints in the Chauvet Cave, left in soft clay by a child, go to a "room" containing bear skulls. The charcoal used to draw the rhinos has been radiocarbon-dated to 32,410 years old, plus or minus 720 years.

What is one change that took place in our prehistoric past?

One of the fundamental changes that took place in our prehistoric past was in the relationship people had with their environment. After millennia of established interactions between people and ild plants and animals-ranging from opportunistic foraging to well-schedule gathering and collecting--people gradually started to exert increasing control over the land and its resources.

What was found in the Lascaux caves?

Over 100 small stone lamps have been found at Lascaux, indicating that the artists worked in flickering light obtained from burning animal fat. Although 1 pound of fat would burn for 24 hours and produce no soot, the light would not have been as strong as that created by a candle.

How old are the animal images at Lascaux?

Recent experiments have helped to date cave paintings with increasing precision. Radiocarbon analysis has determined, for example, that the animal images at Lascaux are 17,000 years old-to be more precise, 17,070 years, plus or minus 130 years.

What are the two ways today used to determine an artifacts age?

Relative dating- relies on the relationships among objects in a single excavation or among several sites. If archaeologists have determined, for example, that pottery types A, B, and C follow each other chronologically at one site, they can apply that knowledge to another site. Even if type B is the only pottery present, it can still be assigned a relative date. Absolute dating, on the other hand, aims to determine a precise span of calendar years in which an artifact was created. The most accurate method of absolute dating is radiometric dating, which measures the degree to which radioactive materials have disintegrated over time. Used for dating organic (plant or animal) materials-including some pigments used in cave paintings--one radiometric method measures a carbon isotope called radiocarbon, or carbon-14, which is constantly replenished in a living organism. When an organism dies, it starts to lose its store of carbon-14 at a predictable rate. Under the right circumstances, the amount of carbon-14 remaining in organic material can tell us how long ago an organism died.

What did Leslie G. Freeman conclude in her study of the Altamira Cave?

Researchers continue to discover new cave images and to correct earlier errors of fact or interpretation. A study of the Altamira Cave in the 1980s led anthropologist Leslie G. Freeman to conclude that the artists had faithfully repre-sented a herd of bison during the mating season. Instead of being dead, asleep, or disabled—as earlier observers had thought—the animals were dust-wallowing, common behavior during the mating season.

What did Mithen believe about cave art?

Similar thinking has led to a more recent interpretation of cave art by archae-ologist Steve Mithen. In his detailed study of the motifs of the art and its placement within caves, Mithen argued that hoofprints, patterns of animal feces, and hide colorings were recorded and used as a "text" to teach novice hunters within a group about the seasonal appearance and behav-ior of the animals they hunted. The fact that so much cave art is hidden deep in almost inaccessible parts of caves—indeed, the fact that it is placed within caves at all—sug-gested to Mithen that this knowledge was intended for a privileged group and that certain individuals or groups were excluded from acquiring that knowledge.

Where do the world's earliest examples of art come from?

South Africa: two 77,000-year-old, engraved blocks of red ocher (probably used as crayons) found in the Blombos cave. Both blocks are engraved in an identical way with cross-hatched lines on their sides. Archeaologists argue that the similarity of the engraved patterns means these two pieces were intentionally made and decorated following a common pattern. Thousands of fragments of ocher have been discovered at Blombos; there is little doubt that people were using it to draw patterns and images the remains of which have long since disappeared. It is highly likely that the ocher was used to decorate peoples' bodies, as well as to color objects such as tools or shell ornaments.

What did David Lewis-Williams suggest about cave art?

South African rock-art expert David Lewis-Williams has suggested a different interpretation. Using a deep com-parative knowledge of art made by hunter-gatherer com-munities that are still in existence, Lewis-Williams argued that Upper Paleolithic cave art is best understood in terms of shamanism: the belief that certain people (shamans) can travel outside of their bodies in order to mediate between the worlds of the living and the spirits. Traveling under the ground as a spirit, particularly within caves, or conceptually within the stone walls of the cave, Upper Paleolithic sha-mans would have participated in ceremonies that involved hallucinations. Images conceived during this trancelike state would likely combine recognizable (the animals) and abstract (the nonrepresentational) symbols. In addition, Lewis-Williams interprets the stenciled human handprints on the cave walls (SEE FIG. 1-1) as traces of the nonshaman participants in the ritual reaching toward and connecting with the shaman spirits traveling within the rock.

What do we know about the shelters and representational images from the Paleolithic period?

That building the shelter required thought.

What is an example of a women figurine and what is its meaning?

The "Woman From Willendorf". Austria dates from about 24,000 BCE. Carved from limestone and originally colored with red ocher, the stauette's swelling, rounded forms make it seem much larger than its actual 4 3/8-inch height. The sculptor exaggerated the figure's female attributes by giving it pendulous breasts, a big belly with a deep navel (actually a natural indentation in the stone), wide hips, and dimpled knees and buttocks. By carving a woman with a well-nourished body, the artist may have been expressing health and fertility, which could ensure the ability to produce strong children, thus guaranteeing the survival of the clan.

Lascaux cave

The abundant cave paintings found in 1940 at Lascaux, in the Dordogne region of southwest France, have been dated to about 15,000 BCE. Closed in 1963 because fungus, the public later reopened a recreation of it, so that everyone could view what was inside.

Altamira

The cave paintings at Altamira, near Santander in the Cantabrian Mountains in Spain—the first to be discovered and attributed to the Upper Paleolithic period—are now dated to about 12,500 bce, as discussed below. The Altamira artists created sculptural effects by painting over and around natural irregularities in the cave walls and ceilings. To produce the herd of bison on the ceil-ing of the main cavern (FIG. 1-13), they used red and brown ocher to paint the large areas of the animals' shoulders, backs, and flanks, then sharpened the contours of the rocks and added the details of the legs, tails, heads, and horns in black and brown. They mixed yellow and brown from iron-based ocher to make the red tones, and they derived black from manganese or charcoal.

How did the new cognitive abilities effect homo sapiens sapiens?

The new cognitive abilities included improvements in recognizing and benefiting from variations in the natural environment and in managing social networking and alliance making--skills that enabled organized hunting. The most important new ability, however, was the capacity to think symbolically: to create representational analogies between one person, animal, or object, and another and to recognize and remember those analogies. This cognitive development marks the evolutionary origin of what we call art.

Why is the "Woman From Dolni Vestonice" important?

The stie of Dolni Vestonice is important because it holds evidence of av era early date (23,000 BCE) for the use of fire to make objects out of mixtures of water and soil. What makes the figures from this site in the Czech Republic and others in the region (Pavlov and Predmosti) unusual is how they were made. But by mixing soil water according to a very particular recipe and then placing wet figures in a hot kiln to bake, the makers were not intending to create durable, well-fired statues. On the contrary, the recipe and firing procedure indicate that the intention was to make the figures explode in the kilns before the firing process was complete--before a "successful" figure could be produced. There ar very few complete figures, but there are numerous fragments that bear traces of explosions at high temperatures at these sites. The Dolni Vestonice fragments are records of performance and process art in their rawest and earliest forms.

What was the teardrop-shaped hand axe viewed as?

These extraordinary objects, symmetrical in form and produced by a complex multistep process, were long thought of as nothing more than tools (or perhaps even as weapons)--but the most recent analysis suggests that they had a social function as well.

Where were the earliest objects made found?

These first tools have been found at sites such as Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Although not art, they document a critical development in our evolution: humans' ability to create specific tools and objects that could be used to complete a task.

Why are these upper Paleolithic structures important?

These upper Paleolithic structures are important because of their early date: The widespread appearance of durable architecture concentrated in village communities did not occur until the beginning of the Neolithic period in the Near East and southeastern Europe.

What are the three phases the they divided. the Paleolithic period into?

They divide the Paleolithic period into three phases reflecting the relative position of objects found in layers of excavation: Lower (the oldest), Middle and Upper ( the most recent).

What are the drawbacks of carbon-14 dating?

This method has serious drawback for dating works of art. Using carbon-14 dating on a card antler or wood sculpture shows only when the animal died or when the tree was cut down, not when the artist created the work using those materials. Also, some part of the object must be destroyed in order to conduct this kind of test-something that is never desirable in relation to works of art. For this reason, researchers frequently test organic materials found in the same context as the work of art rather than sacrificing part of the work itself. Radiocarbon dating is most accurate for materials no more than 30,000 to 40,000 years old.

1-5 Reconstruction Drawing Of Mammoth-Bone Houses

Ukraine. c 16,000 -10,000 BCE

1-2 Rainbow Serpent Rock

Western Arnhem Land, Australia Appearing in Australia as early as 6000 BCE, images of the Rainbow Serpent play a role in rituals and legends of the creation of human beings, the generation of rains, storms, and floods, and the reproductive power of nature and people.

When did Homo sapiens appear?

about 400,000 years ago.

What does the Hall of Bulls depict?

cows, horses, and deer along the natural ledges of the rock, where the smooth white limestone of the ceiling and upper wall meets a rougher surface below. They also used the curving wall to suggest space. The animals appear singly, in rows, face to face, tail to tail, and even painted on top of one another. Their most characteristic features have been emphasized. Hornes, eyes, and hooves are shown as seen from the front, yet heads and bodies are rendered in profile, in a system known as a composite pose. the animals are full of life and energy, and the accuracy in the drawing of their silhouettes, or outlines, is impressive.

Uranium-thorium dating

measures the decay of uranium into thorium in the deposits of calcium carbonate that cover the surfaces of cave walls, to determine the minimum age of paintings under the crust.

Thermo-luminescence dating

measures the irradiation of the crystal structure of a material subjected to fire, such as pottery, and the soil in which it is found, determined by the luminescence produced when a sample is heated.

What are three painting techniques used by Homo sapiens sapiens?

the spraying demonstrated by Lorblanchet, drawing with fingers or blocks of ocher, and daubing with a paintbrush made of hair or moss. In some prehistoric caves, three other stages of image creation can be seen: engraved lines using flakes of flint, followed by a color wash of ocher and manganese, and a final engraving to emphasize shapes and details.

What was art like 30,000 years ago?

they were not making "works of art," and there were no "artists" as we use the term today. They were flaking, chipping, and polishing flint into tools--spear points, knives, and scrapers--not sculptures, even if we find these artifacts pleasing to the eye and to the touch today. Wall paintings must have seemed equally important to their prehistoric makers in terms of everyday survival, not visual delight.

What does Architecture refer to?

usually refers to the enclosure of spaces with some aesthetic intent, and building even a simple shelter requires a degree of imagination and planning deserving of this term.

Potassium-argon dating

which measures the decay of a radioactive potassium isotope into a stable isotope of argon, an inert gas, is most reliable with materials over a million years old.