Prehistoric Art History for Dummies Flashcards
1
Q
Timeline and Characteristics of Paleolithic Period
A
- Old Stone Age
- hunter gatherer societies
- 90,000 years after the great ice age (120,000BC)
- lasted roughly from 40,000 B.C. to 8,000 B.C
2
Q
Charasterists of Paleolithic Art
A
- Earliest surviving art is from this period
- Art is deep in the bowels of caves, mostly located in Southern France and northern Spain
- Paintings of woolly mammoths, wholly rhinos, and aurochs are the most accurate images we have of these extinct species.
- Initially researchers believed cave art was connected to hunting (sympathetic magic, kind of like voodoo), however, many paintings depict inedible predators like panthers, lions, and hyenas
- Now paintings beleived to be shaministic
3
Q
Basic History of Tools
A
- Earliest form of human got onto their feet about 4 million years ago
- Stones with sharpened edges, ruff-flaked stones used for cutting meat and pelts appeared in east-central Africa (about 2 million years later)
- Hand ax (about 1,300,000 B.C.)
- Spear (about “1,000,000 B.C.).
- Bow and arrow (around 10,000 B.C)
4
Q
Shamans in Cave Art
A
- Prehistoric hunter-gatherers probably praticed shamanistic magic similar to societies from Africa to Siberia and North America
- Shamans were visionary and sometimes an ‘artist’
- Shamans could “beam up” into the spirit world to talk to the souls of beasts where they can learn from animal spirits how to fix imbalances in nature.
- Some used natural hallucinogen and depicted journeys with images of humans and animals entwining and even merging
5
Q
Prehistoric Sculpture (Types)
A
Two Types of Sculpture
- statuettes - small statues
- reliefs - sculptor outlines an image in stone or wood, and then carves out the background so that the image projects above it.
6
Q
Prehistoric art impliments
A
- Feathers, fur, moss, chewed sticks, and their fingers as paintbrushes.
- “spray-painted” large areas by blowing colored powders through hollowed-out reeds or bones.
- sharp stones or charcoal sticks were used to incise outlines of pictures into cave walls
7
Q
Cave Art Painting Techniques
A
- Color - Ground minerals (red and yellow ochre, manganese, and hematite) into powders which were applied directly to the damp limestone walls
- Texture - Cave painters sometimes used bumps and crevices on cave walls to emphasize an animal’s contours:
- ie a bulge for a belly
- an indentation for an eye
- Bump for a hump.
- knob in a wall for a paw, etc
8
Q
A
Woman of Willendorf (~25,000 years ago)
- Pudgy 4-1/2-inch-high figure carved out of limestone.
- Wasn’t an individual, but a type/symbol for fertility/abundance
- Same female type is found in many prehistoric cultures around the world
- A woman might have held the statuette
9
Q
A
Bird-Headed Man with Bison and Rhinoceros
- ~20,000 years old
- Discovered in 1940 in Lascaux in Dordogne, France
- may depic shaman’s phycadelic journey
- Trainee shamans had to undergo ceremonial fake deaths, as well as food and sleep deprivation
- In 19th-century Siberia, shamans used a so-called “world pole” as a portal to different worlds.
- These poles commonly were topped with a bird
10
Q
Chararacheristics of Neolithic Era
A
- New Stone Age
- Argicultural age
- Land warmed up as glaciers melted, and man was able to farm, domesticate animals, improve his stone tools, and build permanent settlements.
- Began in the warm southern climes and migrated northward in the wake of the retreating glaciers.
- Mankind fell into a creative slump that lasted about 6,000 years, but improved as architects and built structures to last.
11
Q
Çatalhöyük
A
- cha-tal hoo-yook”; it means “forked mound”
- One of the oldest New Stone Age settlements
- Anatolia (modern Turkey)
- 6500 B.C. to 5650 B.C.
- Truly peaceful
- Mastered textiles, basketry, simple pottery
- Lived in rectangular, mud-brick homes with doors in the roof
12
Q
Çatalhöyük Architecture and Art
A
- Built rectangular, mud-brick homes with doors in the roofs
- Had two or more elevated, multipurpose platforms, one of which was always painted red
- red platform served as a table, workbench, bed, and bier (a bed for corpses)
- Some homes included paintings and sculptures
- Paintings were mainly of stick figure men hunting
- Women in sculpture like Woman of Willendorf
13
Q
Skara Brae
A
- A later Neolithic community (around 3000 B.C.)
- northerly Orkney Islands of Scotland
- Homes included a fireplace, stone tanks, built-in stone furniture (beds, chairs, tables, and shelves).
- The only art we have from Skara Brae are the simple designs carved into the stone pottery and some of the stone beds.
14
Q
The Carnac Stones
A
- Scattered fields of menhirs throughout Brittany in western France between 4250 B.C. and 3750 B.C
- 3,000 menhirs stand in 2-mile-long rows
- Gradually grow as you move from east to west.
- Stones on the eastern side are 3 feet high, while on the western end they’re over 13 feet high.
- The alignment corresponds to the rising and setting sun. Today, no oneknows how this prehistoric observatory worked
15
Q
Megaliths
A
huge stones
Brittany and England
some megalith structures served as tombs
post-and-lintel system (the post part is made up of the uprights, and the lintel is the horizontal slab).
one of man’s first architectural advances
