Portable Art Research Articles

A Paleolithic bird figurine from the Lingjing site, Henan, China.

The recent identification of cave paintings dated to 42–40 ka BP in Borneo and Sulawesi highlights the antiquity of painted representations in this region. However, no instances of three-dimensional portable art, well attested in Europe since at least 40 ka BP, were documented thus far in East Asia prior to the Neolithic. Here, we report the discovery of an exceptionally well-preserved miniature carving of a standing bird from the site of Lingjing, Henan, China. Microscopic and microtomographic analyses of the figurine and the study of bone fragments from the same context reveal the object was made of bone blackened by heating and carefully carved with four techniques that left diagnostic traces on the entire surface of the object. Critical analysis of the site’s research history and stratigraphy, the cultural remains associated with the figurine and those recovered from the other archeological layers, as well as twenty-eight radiometric ages obtained on associated archeological items, including one provided by a bone fragment worked with the same technique recorded on the object, suggest a Late Paleolithic origin for the carving, with a probable age estimated to 13,500 years old. The carving, which predates previously known comparable instances from this region by 8,500 years, demonstrates that three-dimensional avian representations were part of East Asian Late Pleistocene cultural repertoires and identifies technological and stylistic peculiarities distinguishing this newly discovered art tradition from previous and contemporary examples found in Western Europe and Siberia.

Mammoth ivory paleoart objects from the upper Paleolithic assemblage of Ust-Kova (eastern Siberia): A technological approach

Studies of Paleolithic art in Siberia have recently gained a new impetus from both the contemporary landscape of scholarly discussion in the field of Paleolithic archaeology and human evolution, and instrumental developments in research procedures and frameworks. In regard to mobile art, or portable art (carvings or sculptures made on organic and inorganic materials), research aimed at identifying local differences between Upper Paleolithic cultural groups, and tracking their prehistoric geographic ranges across Eurasia during the Late Pleistocene, is considered to be especially relevant. Here we present the results of a study of the Late Paleolithic assemblage of Ust-Kova, focusing on the different technologies involved in the production of mobile paleo-art in Siberia. The results indicate that a complex array of technological methods were used to manufacture personal ornaments and sculptures out of ivory. Furthermore, it reveals some of the technical connections between the paleoart objects and the stone tools used to manufacture them. Overall, the study presented here improves our understanding of the genesis and evolution of ancient technologies related to paleoart manufacture in Northern Eurasia.

Portable art from Pleistocene Sulawesi.

The ability to produce recognizable depictions of objects from the natural world-known as figurative art-is unique to Homo sapiens and may be one of the cognitive traits that separates our species from extinct hominin relatives. Surviving examples of Pleistocene figurative art are generally confined to rock art or portable three-dimensional works (such as figurines) and images engraved into the surfaces of small mobile objects. These portable communicative technologies first appear in Europe some 40 thousand years ago (ka) with the arrival of H. sapiens. Conversely, despite H. sapiens having moved into Southeast Asia-Australasia by at least 65 ka, very little evidence for Pleistocene-aged portable art has been identified, leading to uncertainties regarding the cultural behaviour of the earliest H. sapiens in this region. Here, we report the discovery of two small stone 'plaquettes' incised with figurative imagery dating to 26-14 ka from Leang Bulu Bettue, Sulawesi. These new findings, together with the recent discovery of rock art dating to at least 40 ka in this same region, overturns the long-held belief that the first H. sapiens of Southeast Asia-Australasia did not create sophisticated art and further cements the importance of this behaviour for our species' ability to overcome environmental and social challenges.

Prehistoric art as a part of the neurophysiological capacities of seeing. Examples from prehistoric rock art and portable art

ABSTRACT Colour, line, movement and face are discussed here as a part of the neurophysiological capacities of seeing. They are all integral parts of seeing and visual interpretation a part of the world we live in. Visual narratives conveyed via depictions allow imagery not only to represent things but also play active roles in story-telling. Prehistoric art surviving in caves and on rock surfaces, carved figurines, and the installation of the viewer into these are explored in terms of a joint relationship between the image/s and the way our brains work.

Magdalenian knappers in the Asón Valley: Level 2 at El Horno Cave (Ramales de la Victoria, Cantabria, Spain)

The lithic assemblage studied here comes from El Horno Cave (Ramales de la Victoria, Cantabria, Spain) and is dated in the recent Magdalenian. It was recovered in Level 2 in this site, during fieldwork in 2000 and 2001, in association with a large collection of bone industry, portable art and fauna. The study has been conducted within an integral approach, on the premise that the technological organisation of Magdalenian groups included a series of inter-related strategies involving the procurement of raw materials and the production and fabrication, use and discard of lithic artefacts. Groups of raw materials were established for the technological study in order to characterise the different chaînes opératoires. These vary significantly depending on the flint type. In some cases all or part of the technological process is present, whereas in others only the implement use and discard stage is documented. The flint knappers at El Horno Cave used high-quality raw materials, particularly the Flysch flint-type. The circulation of raw materials indicates that the record at El Horno resembles the pattern identified at other Magdalenian sites in the region. The assemblage appears to correspond to a context of débitage. Although materials were widely available, only a moderate number of potential blanks were retouched into tools, and the choice of these was not especially strict. The retouched tools are not indicative of a situation of specialisation, and use-wear analysis has revealed functional diversity, including complex transformation activities, which are usually linked to stable occupations.

A peça de arte móvel da Freixiosa (Miranda do Douro-Portugal). Primeiros avanços na sua contextualização e interpretação

The present text aims to make known a schist artefact engraved with abstract motifs according to a palaeolithic style. The artefact, deposited in the Natural History and Science Museum of the University of Porto (MHNC-UP), is from Freixiosa in Miranda do Douro county. Our aim is to describe and contextualize it in the scope of the regional rock and portable art dated from the ends of the Upper Palaeolithic to the Epipalaeolithic and also to establish possible connections to other Iberian areas as, for example, the Cantabria

Virtual Prehistory portable art collection of Siberian Mal’ta-Buret’ culture: ways of documenting, classification and representation

Modern research of museum archaeological collections, their attribution and digitizing are relevant questions of science, culture, and education in the world. The paper presents archaeological materials of the Siberian Upper Paleolithic sites Mal’ta and Buret’ and the ways of their systematization and documentation in a form of an information system on the internet. The system has a full-fledged item attribution, scientific description and extensive multimedia support including 3D models and macro photographs. The collections were obtained during the excavations under the direction of M. M. Gerasimov and A. P. Okladnikov, carried out in the early to mid-20th century ; the unique artifacts from the collections are kept in the funds of various museums in different cities of Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Irkutsk) in a scattered and unsystematic form. Our project is aimed to the developing of the documentation of unique items from the collection of the Upper Paleolithic Mal’ta-Buret’ archaeological culture and presenting the results in a systematic way with visual materials. The collection includes a number of anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, ornithomorphic figurines, ornamented discs and plates, as well as items of personal ornamentation, and other unique artefacts. As part of the project, we took photographs and macro photographs of the objects, their 3D models using the photogrammetry method, made a detailed description and collected all available publications on them, both modern and the earliest. The art objects of the fragmented collection are systematized and presented in the form of a single virtual collection on the Internet – Information System of Mal’ta and Buret’ Mobile Art. Descriptions, photographic images and three-dimensional models of objects, the results of microscopic studies and trace analysis have been published.

Фигурка лося с памятника Турист-2 (г. Новосибирск): особенности технологии и стилистики

Большая часть предметов мелкой пластики из могильника эпохи бронзы на поселении Турист-2 (г. Новосибирск) — антропоморфные фигурки, выполненные в единой своеобразной иконографической манере, которая названа «крохалевским» стилем. Однако в комплексе присутствуют два фрагмента, передающие зооморфный образ (лось). Поскольку они не апплицируются, был проведен специальный анализ. Посредством программных измерений и статистических сравнений значений толщины обоих фрагментов удалось доказать их принадлежность одной фигурке, что крайне важно для дальнейшего ее изучения, поиска аналогий и последующих интерпретаций. Сопоставление стилистики этого изображения и других образцов мобильного искусства с памятника Турист-2 затруднено тем, что большинство предметов передают антропоморфные образы. Тем не менее, как показал анализ, с точки зрения технологических особенностей фигурка лося прекрасно вписывается в достаточно однородный и устойчивый комплекс приемов оформления мелкой пластики. Сопоставление технологических характеристик и стилистических приемов, использованных для создания этой скульптурки, позволяет искать аналогии среди изображений позднего этапа развития ангарской изобразительной традиции. Поскольку могильник Турист-2 не был датирован, для уточнения возраста рассматриваемой фигурки была получена одна предварительная радиоуглеродная дата — 4 601 ± 61 л.н. (калиброванный интервал 3511-3127 гг. до н.э.). Учитывая эту дату и археологический контекст скульптурки лося, в дальнейшем ее можно использовать как один из опорных предметов для культурнохронологической атрибуции других изображений, близких по манере и технологии исполнения.

The Middle/Upper Magdalenian transition at Bourrouilla cave in Arancou (Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France): Portable art and context-induced considerations

Bourrouilla cave in Arancou (Pyrénées-Atlantiques region, France) is a Paleolithic dwelling site with occupations mostly assigned to the Upper Magdalenian with harpoons. The archeological richness of the levels, the good preservation state and diversity of the remains, which include portable art, make it a major site of the western Pyrenees. It has been excavated meticulously with a fine recording of data for about twenty years. So far, available data for occupations older than the Upper Magdalenian are rare. However, the discovery at the back of the cave of a rib fragment decorated with a particularly detailed horse head feeds our considerations. By its style, this figuration differs much from art works assigned to the Upper Magdalenian; it has obvious connections with the Middle Magdalenian Pyrenean art. This discovery is consistent with the presence in the spoil of a clandestine excavation of half-round rods fragments decorated with spiral patterns of the Isturitz type, and of fork-based spearheads also found in stratigraphy together with truncated microliths. Based on these elements, we formulate the hypothesis that occupation level(s) documenting the middle phase of the Magdalenian and/or the transition between the Late Middle Magdalenian and the Upper Magdalenian with harpoons exist in stratigraphy inside the cave.

The Upper Paleolithic sequence in el Mirón Cave (Ramales de la Victoria, Cantabria, Spain): An overview

El Mirón Cave, located on the northern edge of the Cantabrian Cordillera and 20 km from the present Atlantic shoref, contains a sequence of Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian, Solutrean, Magdalenian and Azilian) levels (ranging in radiocarbon age from 28,000–10,500 BP) atop a minor Middle Paleolithic layer (>46,000 BP) and beneath a long, rich series of Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age deposits (5700–3200 BP). The Upper Paleolithic levels, spanning early MIS3, LGM, Oldest Dryas, and Late Glacial environmental conditions, display alternation between short-term, ephemeral, limited-function human occupations (Gravettian, Solutrean, Upper Magdalenian and Azilian) and repeated, long-term, multi-functional ones (Initial, Lower and Middle Magdalenian). The rich ungulate faunas are co-dominated by ibex and red deer, which is logical since the cave is on a high, steep, rocky cliff-side (ibex habitat), but dominates a broad, low-lying inter-montane valley (red deer habitat). Salmon fishing was also important at times. The lithic artifact assemblages, with abundant evidence of in situ knapping, include mixes of debris and tools made on local non-flint materials and others (including abundant projectile points and backed bladelets) made on high-quality, non-local flints from coastal flysch outcrops and other exotic sources. Domestic tools (scrapers, denticulates, etc.) can be made of either type of lithic material. Osseous artifacts, especially in the early-mid Magdalenian levels, include large numbers of antler points, bone needles and awls, as well as a few distinctive works of portable art. The cave also includes rupestral art of probable Magdalenian age. The Lower Magdalenian levels are particularly rich in hearths and other human-made structures (a wall, pits, pavements) and the first human burial from this period ever to be found on the Iberian Peninsula. The individual was a healthy, robust female of 35–40 years old, buried in ritual fashion with a special ochre from an outcrop located on the modern shore and “marked” by engravings and the same ochre on a large block that had fallen from the cave ceiling soon before the grave was made in a narrow space between it and the rear vestibule wall. Numerous technical studies (e.g., paleoenvironments, DNA, stable isotopes) are summarized in this article.

Portable X-ray fluorescence of Lower Pecos painted pebbles: New insights regarding pigment choice and chronology

Painted pebbles are the primary mobiliary art found in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and northern Mexico. Previous studies of these artifacts have focused on stylistic variation of the imagery and interpretation of the role these artifacts played within Lower Pecos societies. The focus of this study is the use of portable X-ray fluorescence on Lower Pecos painted pebbles to conduct elemental analyses to identify the pigment used by ancient artists in the paint recipe for painted pebble production. Using a sample of recently excavated painted pebbles, as well as a sample from a private collection, a total of 254 pXRF measurements were collected on 70 pebbles. We determined that charcoal was used as a pigment for black paintings and that iron-based mineral pigments were used for red paintings. The newly excavated pebbles range in age from 6500 to 700 RCYBP, and the stratigraphic and chronologic context of these pebbles provides a dataset for analyzing not only pigment selection, but allows us to also address changes in painted pebble production through time. This paper summarizes the results from the pXRF analysis, and discusses the larger archaeological implications for Lower Pecos painted pebbles.

The Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian striated hinds on scapulae: Towards a new definition of a graphic morphotype

From the graphic point of view, the theme of the “striated hind” is a true fossil director of the Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian. Represented for the most part on scapulae in the case of portable art, it also possesses its correlation in parietal art. The C14 dates currently available do not allow any doubts about its chrono-cultural attribution. However, the concept of “striated engraving”, referring to a technical/stylistic resource, has been used much more expansively to characterize chronologically a large number of representations of doubtful attribution.Therefore, this paper will define, from a precise study of technical characteristics involving both microscopic and formal analysis, the “striated hind” morphotype, as opposed to the notion of “striated engraving”, which will also be reviewed in the light of the formal and technical data available.This redefinition will enable us to address more precisely the dispersion across space and time of this graphic resource so characteristic of the Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian.

The Uluzzian in the north of Italy: insights around the new evidence at Riparo Broion

In attempt to enlighten the debate on the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition, this work contributes new data from a yet unpublished site, Riparo Broion in the north-east of Italy. Studies confirm the presence of the Uluzzian technocomplex embedded in an archaeological sequence which includes Mousterian, Gravettian and Epigravettian. These layers have yielded finds of bone and lithic technology, shell beads, engraved portable art and the use of red mineral pigments, which make this archive a unique case for evaluating the implications of cultural dynamics in Northern Italy 44.0–42.4 ky BP. The diversity of the faunal assemblage recovered in layers 1f and 1g is representative of the different environments surrounding the site, with ungulates being targeted for hunting and consumption. The lithic assemblage records a high fragmentation rate due to the extensive use of the bipolar knapping technique, responsible for a large variety of splintered pieces and associated chips which also affected the backed pieces, lunates and end-scrapers. The features of the bone tools, as well as those of the marine and freshwater beads, echo the technique used in the Uluzzian in the south of Italy, confirming the geographic spread of this technocomplex in the North Adriatic region, as previously envisaged at Grotta Fumane. However, comparisons between these two sites stimulate a discussion around the possible driving forces responsible for the differences observed in technological, typological and structural lithic assemblages. A definitive scenario for the Middle Palaeolithic–Upper Palaeolithic transition in this region of Southern Europe is ongoing and Riparo Broion is adding key contributions.

A zoomorphic sickle terminal from the Natufian site of Wadi Hammeh 27 in Jordan

ABSTRACTExcavations at the Natufian site of Wadi Hammeh 27 in Jordan undertaken in 2014 led to the discovery of several new portable art pieces, including the representation of an ungulate mammal (RN 140226), probably intended as a gazelle, carved in the round from bone. The small object was extensively damaged by fire and had become separated at its neck from longer pieces of fragmented, burnt bone lying distally to it. This configuration and the style of the animal head leads us to interpret the piece as the decorated terminal of a bone sickle haft. The piece is unusual in that is it is one of the few figurative Natufian art pieces with incised geometric decoration added to its surface. Its finding extends the distribution of the ‘gazelle-headed’ sickle haft from Mount Carmel, where three well-known examples were unearthed in the early twentieth century, to the northern Jordan Valley. The piece adds to the limited repertoire of zoomorphically rendered Natufian artefacts associated with plant gathering and processing.

Humanizing European Paleolithic art: A new visual evidence of human/bird interactions at L’Hort de la Boquera site (Margalef de Montsant, Tarragona, Spain)

This paper reports the discovery of a new example of portable art in North-eastern Iberia dating to the Late Upper Palaeolithic (12.250±60 BP). The piece is analysed in relation to the European Palaeolithic art assemblage to determine its significance and how it contributes to our understandings of Palaeolithic artistic practices. Both the motifs depicted (birds and humans) and the patterns of composition (a narrative scene) are unusual in Palaeolithic assemblages. In addition, this new find contributes to filling a geographic gap in the artistic record as evidence of Palaeolithic art is rare in Catalonia. The anatomical features of one of the birds suggest that it is a crane, a species that has been depicted in a limited number of sites, as summarized in this paper. Moreover, there are only three known example of birds and humans interacting in a narrative scene in Palaeolithic art. Exhibiting innovations in media, subject matter and compositional norms, this new find has the potential to change the classic definition of European Upper Palaeolithic art and integrate the region in the artistic trends circulating along Mediterranean Iberia during the Upper Magdalenian.

Sacred Stimulus: Jerusalem in the Visual Christianization of Rome by Galit Noga-Banai

Reviewed by: Sacred Stimulus: Jerusalem in the Visual Christianization of Rome by Galit Noga-Banai Maya Maskarinec Galit Noga-Banai Sacred Stimulus: Jerusalem in the Visual Christianization of Rome Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity New York: Oxford University Press, 2018 Pp. 256. $85.00. Noga-Banai's Sacred Stimulus is written to engage two types of readers: the art historian and the historian. Art historians will relish in the precision with which Noga-Banai presents and describes mosaics, sarcophagi, wall paintings and other visual material, her constructive engagement with older scholarship (helpfully well-documented in the extensive footnotes), and the nuanced and surprising readings that emerge. These are case studies that can productively be read on their own terms, even as they are interwoven into a larger and more ambitious historical thesis about the subtle, but significant influence of the earthly Jerusalem on art in Rome in the fourth to mid-fifth century. This review focuses on that thesis from a historian's perspective. Noga-Banai's preface begins with a charming vignette of a modern sculpture, "Second Temple: Jerusalem-Rome-Jerusalem," overlooked by all but the most attentive (or well-informed) viewers: a concave hourglass carved into a sidewalk in what was formerly the Jewish ghetto of Rome. This "miniment," as its artist Micha Ullman terms it, though easy to overlook, is nevertheless subtly present in the urban fabric of the city. Similarly, so Sacred Stimulus argues, Jerusalem was present, as a visual idea, in late antique Rome—despite the fact that, as the author readily admits, its traces are as difficult, if not more, to identify. Most ambitiously, Noga-Banai contends that careful visual analysis can reveal an engagement with Jerusalem—and even a shifting argument about its meaning and importance vis-à-vis Rome—that has left no trace in the textual record. As she eloquently expresses it, "Visual rhetoric can help us to see the absence of words and decipher the presence of silence" (5). In itself this is a plausible and credible thesis, even if readers will not all be equally persuaded by the specific relationships between Rome and Jerusalem that Noga-Banai posits. The starting points for Noga-Banai's analysis are a historical claim, namely that "[i]n order to stake its claim to be the head of the Church . . . Rome had to overcome [not only Constantinople but] another much more complicated obstacle as well: Jerusalem" (4), and a first-century Roman monument: the Arch of Titus and its representation of the Temple spoils. Rome's claim to these sacred treasures, in addition to Rome's acquisition of relics of the True Cross, were, according to Noga-Banai, the stimuli for Rome's attempts to establish its superiority to Jerusalem. Specifically, in chapter 1, she suggests that the presence of a copy of the Mosaic law in Rome influenced late fourth-century depictions of the Dominus legem dat scene as found in a mosaic from the mausoleum of S. Constanza and a wall painting from the catacomb under the Villa Torlonia. With respect to the S. Constanza mosaic she argues that it "pictures the significant eschatological event of ingathering, which is to take place on Mount Zion, as in [End Page 338] fact taking place in Rome" (29). Then in chapter 2, in a similar vein, she draws a relationship between Roman compositions showing the adoration of the elevated Christogram by Peter and Paul and Cyril of Jerusalem's account that emphasizes Jerusalem as the home of the True Cross. In turn, Noga-Banai posits that there was a change in Rome's relationship to Jerusalem from the late fourth century onward, once "Rome finally established itself as a pilgrimage center as sacred as Jerusalem" (139). This trajectory is explored through Pope Damasus's attention to martyrs' tombs (juxtaposed with Cyril of Jerusalem's efforts to "Christianize" Jerusalem), the imperial reconstruction of S. Paolo fuori le Mura, and portable art of the fifth century. Depictions of Christian Jerusalem in fifth-century Rome (in the mosaics of S. Pudenziana and S. Maria Maggiore and the architecture of S. Stefano Rotondo) register, according to Noga-Banai, Rome's embrace of Jerusalem "with the strong arm of...

L’attribution culturelle des sculptures du Jura souabe selon les documents des découvreurs

The portable art discovered in the caves of the Swabian Jura has been dated to the Aurignacian for almost half a century, following work by J. Hahn, but that was not the opinion of the discoverers at the sites of Vogelherd and Hohlenstein Stadel. The dating of these figurines poses questions about the first development of figurative art. This paper examines the validity of the arguments presented about radiometric ages of the finds comparing to their stratigraphic locations. A varied chronology for these artworks becomes clear: in our view, some pieces from Vogelherd and Hohle Fels date to the Gravettian, while others from Vogelherd and Hohlenstein Stadel date to the Magdalenian. The arguments in favour of the Aurignacian do not hold up to critical examination.

Upper Palaeolithic portable art objects in Central Germany and supra-regional parallels

In different parts of Germany Upper Palaeolithic objects of portable art were found that date from the Aurignacian to the Magdalenian. The aim of this article is to present the most important findings of portable art from the German federal states Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Saxony with some European parallels. Except for the site of Breitenbach-Schneidemühle they all date from the Magdalenian period. Some of these objects have distinct parallels with objects from other sites in Germany or from other parts of Europe, others, however, are unique.

La redéfinition de l’Épigravettien et de l’Épipaléolithique de l’abri sous roche de Cuina Turcului (le Défilé des Portes de Fer du Danube, Roumanie), avec un regard particulier sur les objets d’art

The Cuina Turcului rock shelter is located on the Romanian bank of the Iron Gates Gorges of the Danube. Archaeological investigations conducted in the 1960’s revealed, in the lower part of the deposit, the existence of two habitation levels, whose cultural definition has changed several times over the years. Due to lithic material features, hard animal materials, C-14 dates and especially personal ornaments and art object, we consider that the first layer belongs to the Epigravettian and the second to the Epipalaeolithic. The richness, diversity and particularities of portable art in the Epigravettian layer I justifies its defining as a regional independent facies, called Clisurean.

A Study of Finds from Excavation I at Suchu Island, the Lower Amur (the 1974 Field Season)

Finds unearthed at the Suchu settlement in 1974 include lithics, ceramics, and portable art and ritual objects, now owned by the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk. Most of them have not been described before. In this study, they are analyzed using methods of stratigraphy, planigraphy (assessment of position within and between dwellings), petrography and typology (lithics), binocular microscopy (ceramics), and chronology (ceramics, objects of portable art and ritual). The results suggest that finds from excavation I (1974) mostly represent the Middle Neolithic (Malyshevo and Kondon cultures and the Belkachi complex),Late Neolithic (Voznesenovskoye culture), and Final Neolithic. Certain artifacts date to the later periods (Bronze and Early Iron Ages and the Middle Ages). Certain ceramics are unrelated to the Lower Amur complexes. A reconstruction of dwellings is attempted. The typological analysis of lithics revealed a variety of tool and spall types. Various minerals were employed, the principal ones being aleurolite, argillite, and siliceous rocks. Most ceramics, portable art, and ritual objects represent the Middle Neolithic Malyshevo and the Late Neolithic Voznesenovskoye cultures.