Palaeoliths and Pareidolia: Photography and Archaeological Stone Collecting From the Discovery of Deep Time to the Eolith Controversies

Abstract

Photography played an important part in the revelation of deep time in the later nineteenth century, leading to the invention of a new epoch – the palaeolithic. This article investigates how photography participated in creating palaeoliths, eoliths, and stone collectables in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when the boundaries between artefacts and non-artefacts, culture and nature, were at issue. I examine the emergence of visual conventions for depicting ancient stone implements in archaeological publications and museums and the development of standardized artefact photography. I investigate how the mechanical objectivity of photography was deployed in archaeological experiments demonstrating that eoliths, like photographs, could be produced using non-human agencies. I explore the utopian and left-wing cultures of collecting and photographing figure-stones and picture-stones; collecting cultures based around an alternative connoisseurship of pareidolia – the “primitive” skill of discerning animals, faces and body parts in stones. Comparing case studies of authenticated, unauthenticated, and, hoax artefacts, I examine how authentication practices preserved the personal authority of archaeological specialists, by emphasizing encounters between experts and stones, over those between experts and photographs. Photography always had the potential to destabilize the power relations of archaeological authentication, but, in practice, reinforced and extended them.