Abstract
The collection of 5th Millennium BCE frescoes from the Chalcolithic (4700–3700 BC) township of Teleilat Ghassul, Jordan, are vital signposts for our understanding of early visual communication systems and the role of art in preliterate societies. The collection of polychrome wall murals includes intricate geometric designs, scenes illustrative of a stratified and complex society, and possibly early examples of landscape vistas. These artworks were produced by specialists using the buon fresco technique, and provide a visual archive documenting a fascinating, and largely unknown culture. This paper will consider the place these pictorial artefacts hold in the prehistory of art.
Highlights
The discovery of polychrome wall paintings at the Dead Sea site of Teleilat Ghassul, Jordan (Figure 1), in 1931 stunned the archaeological community (Mallon et al 1934, p. 129), as large-scale prehistoric polychrome wall art had been unknown up to this point (Cameron 1981, p. 3)
These neighbouring mountains are rich in Chalcolithic features and may well have been a focus of ritual activities carried out on, or about, the Sanctuary A altar arc as the sun or moon rose over the highlands
It may be that blue/green pigments did not prove colour fast when combined with fresh lime plaster, or that blue/green colours did not feature in the Ghassulian artistic palette, playing no role in the Fifth Millennium BCE Chalcolithic cultic or artistic world-view (Thavapalan 2018, Section VI, pp 3–4)
Summary
The discovery of polychrome wall paintings at the Dead Sea site of Teleilat Ghassul, Jordan (Figure 1), in 1931 stunned the archaeological community (Mallon et al 1934, p. 129), as large-scale prehistoric polychrome wall art had been unknown up to this point (Cameron 1981, p. 3). 33), the Ghassulian frescoes excavated in the 1930s illustrated www.mdpi.com/journal/arts complex geometric, distinctive figurative cultic subjects in brilliant polychrome colour schemes. They should have revolutionized our attitudes to prehistoric art, but strangely have had little impact on art-historical studies, partly due to subsequent Neolithic discoveries at Çatalhöyük in central Turkey 33), the Ghassulian frescoes excavated in the 1930s illustrated complex geometric, distinctive figurative cultic subjects in brilliant polychrome colour schemes They should have revolutionized our attitudes to prehistoric art, but strangely have had little impact on art-historical studies, partly due to subsequent. We shall explore several of the more complete artworks from Ghassul in the sections below, focusing on their technical advances, compositional sophistication and anthropological importance, before assessing the Ghassulian corpus in the context of east Mediterranean pre and proto-historic art history
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