GLOBAL PREHISTORY
(40,000 - 500 B.C.E.)
CONTENT: What do you see?
FORM: The details (what you see more exactly). How the artist delivers the content.
CONTEXT: Everything NOT observable.
FUNCTION: The intended purpose of the work.

APAH 250 IMAGES

1.  Apollo 11 stones
2.  Great Hall of the Bulls
3.  Camelid sacrum in the shape of a canine
4.  Running Horned Woman
5.  Beaker with Ibex motifs
6.  Anthropomorphic stele
7.  Jade cong
8.  Stonehenge
9.  The Ambum stone
10. Tlatilco female figurine
11. Terra cotta fragment​

Extra image:​

​Venus of Willendorf

NEED TO KNOW DATES...

Paleolithic Art:          40,000-8,000 BCE in the Near East
"Old Stone Age"         40,000-4,000 BCE in Europe
(Woman of Willendorf, Feline-headed statue, Lascaux Caves, Catal Hoyuk)
  • Hunter-Gatherers, Nomadic

Neolithic Art:           8,000- 3,000 BCE in the Near East
"New Stone Age"     4,000- 2,000 BCE in Europe
(Stonehenge)
  • Cultivated, raised livestock, organized settlements

KEY IDEAS

  • 75,000 BCE: Stick of ochre (a pigment of the earth, brown/yellow) are engraved in Blombos Cave, South Africa, 61,000 years before the Lascaux caves!
  • Earliest works are cave paintings and portable sculptures
  • Conjectures are made about the meaning of prehistoric works
  • No one single function and the purpose can only be guessed 
  • Monuments like Stonehenge show that people were able to build structures made of the post and lintel system.
  • The need to create is one of the strongest human impulses.
  • Focus on materials indigenous to the environment/geography
  • Since context is largely unknown, focus on original location and content

CHARACTERISTICS OF 
PAINTINGS

  • Animal figures dominate- usually with a dark outline or as a silhouette
  • Humans usually represented as stick figures or silhouettes, negative handprints
  • Lascaux Caves, 15,000- 13,000 BCE, France
  • Altimira Caves, Spain

​CHARACTERISTICS OF 
ARCHITECTURE

  • Shelters out of large animal bones
  • Post and lintel systems (most basic type of architecture)
  • Stonehenge, possibly

CHARACTERISTICS OF 
SCULPTURE

  • All in-the-round sculpture is portable
  • Some human representations have emphasis on certain body parts
  • Carvings on cave walls utilize natural formations in the rock 

CONTEXT
Ritual and symbolic works might have encouraged the availability of food sources. The first art-making was associated with activities of food production (hunting, agriculture, etc.), showing status, and burial.
​
Artifacts show human's awareness of fundamental, stable situations/experiences/incidents from astrological events to manipulation of materials available.
​
Art production was used to connect and influence the natural world to human needs - sustaining life, and fertility.
​
Animal images and female figuresseem to be connected to shamanistic rituals.
​
Due to the absence of written records and other contextual information, there is a lack of certainty regarding prehistoric artifacts. Multiple interpretations are presented due toarchaeological and ethnographic (study of human cultures) approaches of function and meaning of the works of art.

VOCABULARY

1. PALEOLITHIC
2. NEOLITHIC
3. SCHEMATIC
4. SHAMAN
5. ABSTRACTION
6. HUNTER-GATHERER
7. RITUAL
8. COSMOS
​9. CERAMICS
10. MONOLITH
11. TRILITHON
12. POST AND LINTEL
13. ANTHROPOMORPHIC
14. MOTIFS
15. PROFILE
16. SILHOUETTE
​17. CONTOUR LINES
18. BAS RELIEF
19. GEOMETRIC
20. STYLIZED
21. STELE
22. SONG
23. INCISE
24. SUBTRACTIVE
25. MEGALITH