Prehistoric Art

Origins, Types, Chronology, Characteristics of Stone Age Culture.

Prehistoric Art of the Stone Age

Types, Characteristics, Chronology

Contents

• Introduction
• Types
• Characteristics
• Dating & Chronology
• Prehistoric Culture
• Human Evolution: From Axes to Art
• Paleolithic Period
Prehistoric Cupules
The oldest cultural phenomenon, • Lower Paleolithic (c.2.5 million - 200,000 BCE)
found throughout the prehistoric • Middle Paleolithic (c.200,000 - 40,000 BCE)
world, the cupule remains one of the
least understood types of rock art. • Upper Paleolithic (c.40,000-10,000 BCE)
• Mesolithic Culture
NOT "ART FOR ART'S SAKE" - 10,000 - 4,000 BCE - Northern and Western Europe
A large proportion Stone Age art - 10,000 - 7,000 BCE - Southeast Europe
was created to express ideas or
information. This applies to most - 10,000 - 8,000 BCE - Middle East and Rest of World
animal cave paintings, hand stencils • Neolithic Culture
and all abstract symbols. To put it - 4,000 - 2,000 BCE: Northern and Western Europe
another way, all these types of art
functioned as "pictographs", and - 7,000 - 2,000 BCE: Southeast Europe
probably served as a backdrop for - 8,000 - 2,000 BCE: Middle East & Rest of World
a variety of prehistoric ceremonies.
• Bronze Age Art (In Europe, 3000-1200 BCE)
• Iron Age Art (In Europe, 1500-200 BCE)

Introduction to Prehistoric Art

Types
Archeologists have identified 4 basic types of Stone Age art, as
follows:petroglyphs (cupules, rock carvings and
engravings); pictographs (pictorial imagery, ideomorphs, ideograms or
symbols), a category that includes cave painting and drawing;
and prehistoric sculpture (including small totemic statuettes known
as Venus Figurines, various forms of zoomorphic and therianthropic ivory
carving, and relief sculptures); and megalithic art(petroforms or any other
works associated with arrangements of stones). Artworks that are applied to
an immoveable rock surface are classified asparietal art; works that are
portable are classified as mobiliary art.

Characteristics
The earliest forms of prehistoric art are extremely primitive. The cupule, for
instance - a mysterious type of Paleolithic cultural marking - amounts to no
Venus of Willendorf (25,000 BCE) more than a hemispherical or cup-like scouring of the rock surface. The early
One of the famous Venus Figurines
of the Upper Paleolithic. sculptures known as the Venuses of Tan-Tan and Berekhat Ram, are such
crude representations of humanoid shapes that some experts doubt whether
they are works of art at all. It is not until the Upper Paleolithic (from roughly
40,000 BCE onwards) that anatomically modern man produces recognizable
carvings and pictures. Aurignacian culture, in particular, witnesses an
 explosion of rock art, including the El Castillo cave paintings, the
monochrome cave murals at Chauvet, the Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel,
the Venus of Hohle Fels, the animal carvings of the Swabian Jura, Aboriginal
rock art from Australia, and much more. The later Gravettian and
Magdalenian cultures gave birth to even more sophisticated versions of
prehistoric art, notably the polychrome Dappled Horses of Pech-Merle and the
sensational cave paintings at Lascaux and Altamira.

Dating and Chronology of Prehistoric Art

A number of highly sophisticated techniques - such as radiometric testing,
Uranium/Thorium dating and thermoluminescence - are now available to help
establish the date of ancient artifacts from the Paleolithic era and later.
Stone Age lions watching prey. However, dating of ancient art is not an exact science, and results are often
Chauvet Cave (c.30,000 BCE)
Franco-Cantabrian cave art from
dependent on tests performed on the 'layer' of earth and debris in which the
the Late Aurignacian. artifact was lying, or - in the case of rock engraving - an analysis of the
content and style of the markings. (Animal drawings using regular side-
profiles, for instance, are typically older than those using three-quarter
profiles.) For a chronological list of dates and events associated with Stone
Age culture, see: Prehistoric Art Timeline.

Maikop Gold Bull (c.2,500 BCE)

One of the greatest treasures of
prehistoric sculpture from Russia.
See: Oldest Stone Age Art: Top 100.

PREHISTORY
The main geological epochs include: Prehistoric Culture
PLIOCENE (c.5,300,000 BCE)
This epoch begins roughly with the
emergence of upright early hominids. The longest phase of Stone Age culture - known as the Paleolithic period - is
They were too busy trying to stay alive a hunter-gatherer culture which is usually divided into three parts:
to create art. This period used to end
2.5 million years ago when humans
first started making tools, but (1) Lower Paleolithic (2,500,000-200,000 BCE)
geologists extended it to 1.6 million
BCE, trapping the early Lower (2) Middle Paleolithic (200,000-40,000 BCE)
Paleolithic period in it. (3) Upper Paleolithic (40,000-10,000 BCE).
PLEISTOCENE (c.1.6m - 10,000 BCE)
This is a geologic period that covers
the earth's most recent glaciations. After this comes a transitional phase called the Mesolithic period (sometimes
It includes the later part of the
Lower Paleolithic as well as the
known as epipaleolithic), ending with the spread of agriculture, followed by
Middle and Upper Paleolithic periods. the Neolithic period (the New Stone Age) which witnessed the establishment
It witnessed the emergence of modern of permanent settlements. The Stone Age ends as stone tools become
man and the great works of Paleolithic
rock art, like cupules, petroglyphs, superceded by the new products of bronze and iron metallurgy, and is
engravings, pictographs, cave murals, followed by the Bronze Age and Iron Age.
sculpture and ceramics. The term
pleistocene comes from Greek words
(pleistos "most") and (kainos "new"). WARNING: All periods are approximate. Dates for specific cultures are
For fact-addicts, the Pleistocene is the
third stage in the Neogene period or given as a rough guide only, as disagreement persists as to
6th epoch of the Cenozoic Era. classification, terminology and chronology.
HOLOCENE (c.10,000 BCE - now)
During its prehistory section this
geological period saw the birth of
Human civilization, as well as a
range of sophisticated paintings, Paleolithic Era (c.2,500,000 - 10,000 BCE)
bronze sculptures, exquisite pottery,
pyramid and megalithic monomental
architecture. Like its predecessor the Characterized by a Stone Age subsistence culture and the evolution of the
Pleistocene, the Holocene epoch is human species from primitive australopiths via Homo erectus and Homo
a geological period, and its name
derives from the Greek words ("holos", sapiens to anatomically modern humans. See: Paleolithic Art and Culture.
whole or entire) and ("kainos", new),
meaning "entirely recent". It is
divided into 4 overlapping periods: Lower Paleolithic (2,500,000 - 200,000 BCE)
the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age),
the Neolithic (New Stone Age),
the Bronze Age and Iron Age. - Olduwan culture (2,500,000 - 1,500,000 BCE)
- Acheulean culture (1,650,000 - 100,000 BCE)
- Clactonian culture (c.400,000 – 300,000 BCE)

Middle Paleolithic (200,000 - 40,000 BCE)

- Mousterian culture (300,000 - 30,000 BCE)

- Levallois Flake Tool culture (dominant c.100,000 - 30,000 BCE)

Upper Paleolithic (40,000-8,000 BCE)

- Aurignacian culture (40,000 - 26,000 BCE)

- Perigordian (Chatelperronian) culture (35,000-27,000 BCE)
- Gravettian culture (26,000 - 20,000 BCE)
- Solutrean culture (19,000 – 15,000 BCE)
- Magdalenian culture (16,000 - 8,000 BCE)

Note: Neither Perigordian (aka Chatelperronian) nor Solutrean cultures are

strongly associated with artistic achievements. Artworks created during their
eras are believed to have been influenced by other cultures.