Chapter 1: Prehistoric Art in Europe

Chapter 1: Prehistoric Art in Europe
TIME PERIODS:
Paleolithic Art : 30,000 BCE to 8,000 BCE in the Near East

30,000 BCE to 4,000 BCE in Europe
Neolithic Art: 8000 BCE to 3000 BCE in the Near East

4000 BCE to 2000 BCE in Europe
KEY IDEAS:
•The earliest surviving works of art are cave paintings and portable
sculptures of humans and animals.
•Little is known about the original intention or meaning of prehistoric
works.
•Buildings such as Stonehenge show the ability of prehistoric people
to build elaborate religious structures using the post-and-lintel system
of construction.
•Much of what we know about prehistoric people is based on the art,
artifacts, and fossils found in archeological sites.
Prehistoric Background
Paleolithic (“Old Stone Age”)

-people were hunter-gatherers
-people used caves and other natural shelters as
homes
-people were unsettled (moved frequently)
Neolithic (“New Stone Age”)

-people cultivated the earth and raised livestock
-people lived in organized settlements
-people divided labor into occupations
-people constructed the first homes
Prehistory = all human existence before writing
Even before writing, people were:

-carving objects
-painting images
-creating structures/shelter
Wall Painting with Horses,

Rhinoceroses, and Aurochs
(oxen). Chauvet Cave, France
30,000-28,000 BCE.
Paint on limestone
-Homo sapiens sapiens (our subspecies) evolved about
120,000 to 100,000 years ago. (wow!)
-We can only make hypotheses about prehistoric art
-The paintings, sculptures, and structures that have survived are only a
fraction of what must have been created over a very long period of time.
-Prehistoric art is one of the most speculative areas of art history.
Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania
-fossilized remains and

footprints of the earliest
hominid (“human”), believed
to be 1.8 million years old.
-many tools, vessels, and other

handmade artifacts found here.
Prehistoric Sculpture:
-all portable
-most are very small
-carvings on cave walls make use of natural

modulations in the wall surface to enhance the image
Here is one major work of Prehistoric sculpture.
Woman or “Venus” of Willendorf

c. 28,000 – 21,000 BCE, limestone
Describe this sculpture

What might it have represented?
Here is one major work of Prehistoric sculpture.
Woman or “Venus” of Willendorf

c. 28,000 – 21,000 BCE, limestone
•Reproductive organs emphasized: huge

breasts, belly, buttocks, navel
•Hair in clumps arranged in rows, or
maybe it’s a woven hat?
•Deemphasized arms, face, legs, no feet
•She was never meant to stand up
•Face may have been painted
•Traces of paint on the body
•Fertility symbol?
•Small, just under four and a half inches
•Venus is a name given to the object after its
discovery as a way of comparing it to the
ancient goddess of beauty.
•Its true purpose is unknown
Some sculptures included…
stylized representations of human and animal figures
limestone, clay, ivory, bone, and antlers
symbolism (man’s important new cognitive development)
Lion-Human
•made of mammoth ivory
•shows complex thinking and creativity! Lion-Human
•probably male, but with a feline head 30,000-26,000 BCE
from Hohlenstein-Stadel,
•nearly a foot tall (that’s big!) Germany
•didn’t copy nature exactly, used imagination

•a breakthrough- ability to conceive and represent a
creature never seen in nature!
Venus of Lespugue
contours of stone
used23,000 BCE point
as a starting
for carvings on cave walls
20,000 BCE 3 Wild Cattle,
Fourneua de Diable, France
Prehistoric Cave Painting:
Prime examples include Lascaux, France and Altamira, Spain

Most are deeply recessed from the cave openings
Images of animals dominate with black outlines emphasizing their contours
Main animals include horse, bison, mammoth, ibex, aurochs, and deer
Animals are realistic, humans are stick figures with little detail
Many handprints (negative- done by blowing paint over hand)
Often left hands, some missing joints or fingers (voluntary mutilation?)
Scattered around the cave surface with no relationship to one another
Abstract signs and symbols included with images
No vegetation or ground/horizon line
Individual images often painted over one another suggest process, or the act of
creation may have been more important than the product
Are spots based
on hallucinations?
SPOTTED HORSES AND HUMAN HANDS

Pech-Merle Cave. Dordogne, France. Horses 25,000-24,000 BCE; hands c. 15,000 BCE.
Paint on limestone, individual horses over 5’ 01-01]
Don’t try this at home
Cave paintings were
very far from the
entrances. Why?
Cave of Altamira,
13,000 BCE
Spain
Why is the man stick-like and the bison is rendered with such
accurate detail? Does this record an actual event?
Lascaux 17,000 - 15,000 B.C.
Cave painting theories:
-a way to strengthen clan bonds
-a ceremony to enhance animal fertility
-expressions of sympathetic magic
(the painting might come true!)
-religious or magical function
-visual record of hallucinations
-visual record of real life happenings
-just people enjoying the creative process
???????
HALL OF BULLS
Lascaux Cave. Dordogne, France. c. 15,000 BCE.
Paint on limestone, length of largest auroch (bull) 18’
BIRD-HEADED MAN WITH BISON
Shaft scene in Lascaux Cave. c.
15,000 BCE.
Paint on limestone, length approx. 9’
LASCAUX CAVES
15,000-13,000 BCE
Dordogne, France
•Natural products used to make paint: charcoal, iron ore, plants

•650 paintings: most common are cows, bulls, horses, and deer
•Animals placed deep inside the cave, some hundreds of feet in
•Bodies seen in profile, frontal or diagonal view of horns, eyes,
and hooves; some animals appear pregnant
•Many overlapping figures
•Evidence still visible of scaffolding erected to get to

higher areas of the caves
•Negative handprints: are these signatures?
•Caves were not dwellings because prehistoric people led

migratory lives following herds of animals; some evidence
exists that people sought shelter at the mouths of caves
•Walls were scraped to an even surface; paint colors were

bound with animal fat; lamps light interior of caves
Smolinski discovers cave paintings in a Tanzania hotel!
Neolithic Art (New Stone Age)
8,000 - 3,000 B.C.
3 conditions:
-organized agriculture
-maintenance of herds of domesticated animals
-permanent, year-round settlements
Rock Shelter Art:

-combined geometric forms and
simplified depictions of people
and animals engaged in everyday
activities
-abstract style, simple line drawing,
and little color
-animals in a “flying gallop”
(still used today to show movement) People and Animals
Rock-shelter painting in Cogul, Spain
4000-2000 BCE
•Structures
beginnings of architecture
built homes, storage spaces, and shelters for animals out of
wood, stone, animal bones, and plant materials.
examples include Jericho, Catal Huyuk, and Stonehenge
•Pottery and Smelting

often richly decorated
objects made of non-indigenous materials suggest commerce
•Evidence of new priestly class

structures that suggest sanctuaries and organized religion
new demands and reasons for art creation
RECONSTRUCTION DRAWING OF
MAMMOTH-BONE HOUSES
Ukraine. c. 16,000-10,000 BCE.
How the heck do they know when this stuff is from???
-RELATIVE DATING: compare objects in a single excavation or

nearby sites
-ABSOLUTE DATING: aims to determine a precise span of

calendar years in which an artifact was created
-RADIOMETRIC DATING: measures how materials disintegrated

over time (carbon dating)
-POTASSIUM-ARGON DATING, THERMO-LUMINESCENCE

DATING, ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE: other fancy ways
These technologies help experts be more precise.

Prehistoric Architecture:
Most famous structures were for worship, not housing.
MENHIRS (long individual stones) used to create a complex are called

MEGALITHS
A circle of MEGALITHS, usually with LINTELS on top, is called a

CROMLECH
Align with important calendar dates
Two uprights with horizontal beam = POST-AND-LINTEL

(most fundamental type of architecture in history)
Jericho, c.7500 B.C.
The earliest stone fortifications discovered to date! It was a town of mud-brick
houses that covered 6-10 acres and had 2,000 people. They built a huge brick
wall five feet thick and 20 feet high (for protection? Who knows!)
Catal Huyuk
(7500 - 5700 B.C.)
Konya, Turkey
-plenty of artifacts found here

(plastered skulls, clay figures,
murals, wall carvings)
-the best preserved

Neolithic site found to
date.
-all domestic buildings
-housed 10,000 people
-mud-brick houses crammed
together without footpaths or streets
-accessed by holes in the ceilings,
ladders, and stairs. The rooftops
were the “streets”. Fun!
Stonehenge, England c. 2100 BCE (sandstone)
lintel
heel stone
-Whoever stood at the exact center on the morning of the summer solstice 3,260 years
ago would have seen the sun rise directly over the heel stone.
-There are five “trilithons”- pairs of upright stones topped by lintels.
-What is it? Some sort of observatory? A place for public ceremonies? Who knows?
• Stones imported from
more than 200 miles away
• May predict eclipses
• Oriented toward
sunrise on longest day of
the year
• Maybe took 1000 years to build

• Post-and-lintel
• Lintels grooved in place by the mortise-and-tenon system of building
• Large megaliths in center are over 20 feet tall and form a horseshoe
• Surrounding a central flat stone
• Ring of megaliths surrounds horseshoe
• Some stones over 50 tons!
• “HENGE” = a Neolithic monument, circular plan, rituals, astronomy
Inspiration!
Henri Matisse. The Dance. 1910. Oil on canvas. The

Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
Ritual Dance. Rock Engraving.

c. 10,000 B.C. Caves of Addaura. Sicily.

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Chapter 1: Prehistoric Art in Europe

Paleolithic Art : 30,000 BCE to 8,000 BCE in the Near East

Neolithic Art: 8000 BCE to 3000 BCE in the Near East

Paleolithic (“Old Stone Age”)

Neolithic (“New Stone Age”)

Even before writing, people were:

Wall Painting with Horses,

-We can only make hypotheses about prehistoric art

-Prehistoric art is one of the most speculative areas of art history.

Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

-fossilized remains and

-many tools, vessels, and other

-most are very small

-carvings on cave walls make use of natural

Woman or “Venus” of Willendorf

Describe this sculpture

Woman or “Venus” of Willendorf

•Reproductive organs emphasized: huge

•didn’t copy nature exactly, used imagination

Prime examples include Lascaux, France and Altamira, Spain

SPOTTED HORSES AND HUMAN HANDS

•Natural products used to make paint: charcoal, iron ore, plants

•Evidence still visible of scaffolding erected to get to

•Negative handprints: are these signatures?

•Caves were not dwellings because prehistoric people led

•Walls were scraped to an even surface; paint colors were

Rock Shelter Art:

•Pottery and Smelting

•Evidence of new priestly class

-RELATIVE DATING: compare objects in a single excavation or

-ABSOLUTE DATING: aims to determine a precise span of

-RADIOMETRIC DATING: measures how materials disintegrated

-POTASSIUM-ARGON DATING, THERMO-LUMINESCENCE

These technologies help experts be more precise.

MENHIRS (long individual stones) used to create a complex are called

A circle of MEGALITHS, usually with LINTELS on top, is called a

Align with important calendar dates

Two uprights with horizontal beam = POST-AND-LINTEL

-plenty of artifacts found here

-the best preserved

• May predict eclipses

• Maybe took 1000 years to build

Henri Matisse. The Dance. 1910. Oil on canvas. The

Ritual Dance. Rock Engraving.

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