Unit 1 - Global Prehistory Flashcards
Apollo 11 Stones: Identifiers
Style: Paleolithic
Location: Wonderwerk Cave, Namibia
Date: c. 25,500 BCE
Apollo 11 Stones: Form + Function
Form: charcoal on 2 pieces of cave stone, maybe used mineral based pigment bc they found ostrich egg painted
Function: unknown, small enough to fit in hand, taken from place to place?
Apollo 11 Stones: Content
- supernatural, part-animal, part-human creature?
- originally a feline & human legs added later?
- therianthrope
Apollo 11 Stones: Context
- found in Hun’s Mnts. of Namibia
- 7 other tablets that contained animal figures
- found during the Apollo 11 moon landings
Great Hall of Bulls: Identifiers
Style: Paleolithic
Location: Lascaux Caves, France
Date: 15,000 BCE
Great Hall of Bulls: Form
- hall of bulls can hold up to 50 people
- stone tools
- holes from tree limb scaffolding
- organic lines, naturalistic
- colors of brown red, yellow, white, from ocher
- twisted perspective
Great Hall of Bulls: Function + Content
Function: telling a story, hunting strategy, memorializing their kill, offering imagery for future hunt, importance of survival, used for religious rituals, storytelling and preserving history
Content: animals of importance (bulls, horses, cattle, deer), human vs animals
Great Hall of Bulls: Context
- one of 350 sites
- discovered in 1940, opened to public in 1948, closed in 1963
- created over centuries
- stone age
- replica built to preserve artwork
Camelid Sacrum in the Shape of a Canine: Identifiers
Style: Paleolithic
Location: Central Mexico
Date: 14,000 BCE
Camelid Sacrum in the Shape of a Canine: Form
- made from fossilized remains of sacrum-triangular pelvic bone of a camelid (extinct)
- sacrum = sacred bone at base of spine
- camelid- camel, alpaca, llama, etc.
- holes for eyes, nostrils
Camelid Sacrum in the Shape of a Canine: Function
- unknown but prehistoric artisans drew/painted/sculpted what they saw in their everyday life, so choice to render image of canine makes sense
- spiritual significance of sacrum, pelvic bone is fulcrum of the body and central to internal organs
- could be a symbol of fertility or connection to ancestry and posterity/ hunting
- mask?
Camelid Sacrum in the Shape of a Canine: Context
- lost to scholars for 60 years, privately owned
- discovered 40 ft below surface in Mexico City by a drainage worker in 1870
Running Horned Woman: Identifiers
Style: Neolithic
Location: Algeria
Date: c. 6,000 BCE
Running Horned Woman: Form
- hierarchal scale
- pigment on rock (pictograph)
- illusion of movement
- twisted perspective, woman profile, horns frontal
- conservation issues: walls often sponged with water to enhance image
Running Horned Woman: Function
- emphasized importance of survival
- recognition of importance animal and human relationship
- representation of a deity
- role and importance of women
- size = importance
Running Horned Woman: Content
- very remote and difficult to access location, assume figure is important
- dancing and action and interaction
- her size and horns indicate importance- largest and most elaborate, hunter gatherers did not typically wear horned helmets, figures in bg are smaller
- white dots = grain
Running Horned Woman: Context
- found in area with high elevation and unique topography
- hunter gatherer society
- thousands of paintings were found in the area
- found in Algeria, Africa