Bushel with Ibex motifs Susa, Iran 4200-3500
Painted terra cotta                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Neolithic

INNOVATION/CONVENTION:
Because no dwellings places contemporary to the graves have been found, we do not know if painted ceramics were in common use or if the served specifically funerary purposes. They all have similar, highly recognizable forms, styles and motifs, but each vase bears the stamp of an individual craftsman: although specialized workshops mass-produced objects over several generations, each artist gave free reign to his personal genius.

FORM:
The pattern is actually a series of stylized animal forms. A frieze of birds runs along the top, while the next layer depicts running dogs
and goats with narrow bodies. The artist depicted various animal forms in a super-stylized manner. For example, the long necks of the
crane emphasize the length of the beaker.

INTERPRETATION:
The main design features a twisting, winding pattern. This pattern may belong to a particular family or group and mark the deceased as
a fallen member.

ARTISTIC DECISIONS:
The beaker was found in an ancient cemetery from the 4th millennium B.C.E. The creator painted the design with very close attention
to detail. Human forms are notably absent, which is eerily fitting for a funerary good.

CONTEXT:
The Neolithic Era began roughly 6000 years ago. With it came the emergence of more sophisticated civilizations that included
complex settlements, language, and written forms of communication and an overall better quality of life. This pot comes from a
cemetery at the foot of the Susa acropolis, where thousands of secondary-burial places have been found, each containing painted
ceramic vases and a few metal objects. This cemetery dates back to the original settlement of Susa, in the late 5th and early 4th
millennium BC. At first a simple village lying in a plain where the land was worked by other agricultural communities, Susa seems
very quickly to have become the leading community. Its superiority is visible in the construction of a high terrace of unbaked bricks of
which only traces remain – sufficient, however, to identify it as one of the first monumental buildings of a public and probably religious
nature, also found in Mesopotamia.

FUNCTION:
Ancient Sumerians used the beaker with ibex motifs as a funerary good. Maybe the beaker was used for food or drink. It features
geometric designs and animal forms, so it could have been an art object for display. Alternately, given the pristine condition of the
buried beaker, it could have been used in a ritual or ceremonial sacrifice.

CONTENT:
The pattern may be an indicator of Shamanic religion brought from Asia. This large, hand thrown vessel with thin walls has a stylized decoration that constitutes a kind of synthesis of the environment of the first agricultural communities of the ancient Orient. A frieze of aquatic birds runs around the top; the parallel lines of their necks suggest a whole flock on the water’s surface, a sight that must have been common at the time in the low, reed-carpeted valleys. Underneath are running dogs with long, narrow bodies, perhaps the ancestors of the slender salukis, hunting dogs that were adapted to the steppe plateaus. The main part of the vase is decorated with large panels divided up with meander patterns; these may symbolize the settlement of the land by men, showing the borders of fields and villages and watercourses. In the center of the panels is the majestic figure of the goat, omnipresent in both its wild or domesticated forms. Traced with simple shapes, triangles and circles, small details such as a goatee beard or tail add a personal touch. Within the oversized circle of its horns is an abstract motif, perhaps a topographical or clan-related sign, serving to identify the vase and its owner as belonging to a particular group or a family

TITLE: LOCATION: DATE:
Terra Cotta Fragment Solomon Islands 1000 BC

MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE:
Terra cotta (incised)

FORM:
Most were simple bowls, some had pedestal feet, and others were flat-bottomed vessels. The decoration of the pottery consists of stamped and incised motifs that adhere to a very regular, structured, and repeated set of specific patterns. The motifs were applied to the surface of the vessel with a small dentate (tooth-like) stamp and/or drawn free-hand with a sharp edge of some sort. The pattern stamps used included both linear and curved shapes of various lengths, as well as round forms. Types of patterns range from simple to complex geometric forms, and include anthropomorphic face designs found on Talepakemalai in the Mussau island group. The anthropomorphic (having a human form) pattern was a characteristic of early Lapita pottery, and is not present on pottery found in the upper (and therefore newer) archaeological layers of sites further east in Polynesia.

FUNCTION:
We know that the pottery was generally not used for cooking because carbon residues are not normally found on the pot sherds.
Rather, the evidence suggests that much of the pottery was used for serving food, while larger vessels were likely used for storage.
Because this piece was found in fragments, though, many questions about its use and function remain unanswered. The pieces of
broken but stylistically related pot sherds distributed across thousands of miles of islands, laid down in datable stratigraphic layers,
have revealed important information about the ancestors of the contemporary peoples of the central Pacific.

CONTENT:
In fact, this is the main difference between Lapita culture and the cultures of contemporary Polynesian tribes. While other Polynesian
peoples created pottery, none used firing as a technique to glaze the ceramic. Patterned designs such as the one featured on these
fragments left a lasting legacy on Polynesian culture. Even today, tribal design on pottery and clothing and in art and body art is
ubiquitous. A large number of the pot sherds found there had been made from materials brought from other places, indicating that
either the raw materials or perhaps the pots themselves had been imported. This reveals that the Lapita people had the means and the
need to travel and trade across significant ocean stretches—their “sea of islands.”

CONTEXT:
The Lapita people are believed to have originated in Taiwan before migrating to the Solomon Islands, bringing with them ceramic
firing technology. The sequential depositing of potsherds (fragments of pottery) in an easterly direction across the island groups of
the Pacific has become the pivotal evidence that tells the extraordinary story of the peopling of the vast Pacific Ocean. Pieces of the
distinctive red-slipped pottery of the Lapita people have been recovered from sites spanning thousands of miles across the Pacific
from the outer reaches of South East Asia, through the island groups often referred to as Micronesia (includes the Federated States
of Micronesia, Guam, Kiribati, Mariana Islands, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, and Wake Island) and Melanesia (includes the
islands and island groups of Fiji, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu), and into the central Pacific and Polynesia.

INNOVATION/CONVENTION:
The clay-firing technology (in open fires) of the Lapita people was a major development, demonstrating a leap in early technology.
These technologies were used to create durable, distinctive works of art. Archaeologists contend that those responsible for decorating
the pots used a very restricted range of motifs and combined these in specific ways on particular areas of the pots. In other words, the
ancient people who decorated the pots followed the rules of a defined design system. From an analytical point of view, the systemized
grammar of design has meant that pot sherds found in one site can be categorized and compared with others found in multiple
other sites to provide evidence of the movement of the Lapita people in particular timeframes. What’s more, vestiges of the design
motifs and the grammar of the system are apparent in contemporary tattooing, barkcloth decoration and other art forms throughout
contemporary Remote Oceania.

ARTISTIC DECISION:
Lapita pottery was shaped by hand, and perhaps using a paddle-and-anvil technique to thin the walls, but without the aid of a potter’s
wheel. It is low-fire earthenware (no evidence of Lapita kilns have been found). This means that the dry clay pots would likely have
been placed in open fires to harden—the descendants of the Lapita people in Fiji and other areas still make pottery in this way. The
makers of the Lapita pottery blended clay with a particular type of sand. The sand was needed as a temper to make the vessels more
durable during firing (temper, often sand, or other added materials, reduces the elasticity of the clay—how much it shrinks—and helps
to avoid cracking during the firing process). Both the clay and sand are only found in certain areas of the Pacific.

INTERPRETATION:
Archaeologists now believe that, somewhere between 4,000 and 3,500 years ago, a group of people who had sailed from the area around Taiwan in South East Asia arrived by canoe to the beaches of the Bismarck Archipelago. The new arrivals, who we now know as the Lapita people (named for the beach on the island of New Caledonia where a large number of pottery sherds were found), spoke a different language than the people they would have encountered there. These local people had been living on the large island now known as New Guinea and the surrounding islands for between 60,000 and 40,000 years.[2] Aside from their language and different genetic stock, the Lapita were different to those they encountered because they had sophisticated seafaring and navigation capability—and they manufactured and decorated ceramics in very particular ways.

DETAILS/TERMS/DEFINITIONS:

When Europeans arrived in the Pacific in the 1700s and 1800s, the ocean going long-distance seafaring canoes were gone, but the
knowledge of distant islands and oral histories of voyaging remained.

LOCATION/PERIOD/DATE:

Stonehenge Wiltshire, UK 2500-1600 BCE
Neolithic Europe

MATERIAL:
Sandstone

FORM:
Each of these blue stones weighs a whopping four tons. The giant megaliths of the outer circle weigh as much as 50 tons each. Each standing stone was around 13 feet high, almost seven feet wide and weighed around 25 tons. This ring of stones enclosed five sarsen trilithons (a trilithon is a pair of upright stones with a lintel stone spanning their tops) set up in a horseshoe shape 45 feet across. These huge stones, ten uprights and five lintels, weigh up to 50 tons each. Bluestones, either reinstalled or freshly quarried, were erected in a circle, half in the outer sarsen circle and half within the sarsen horseshoe.

FUNCTION:
Most likely, though, Stonehenge functioned as a ceremonial and burial site. Bones of adult males who showed no signs of being
laborers or having diseases—which means they were probably pretty elite—were interred at the site. It is also considered an
astronomical calendar. Art historians also believe that the site may have been used as a tool for communication because the megaliths
produce a bell-like sound when hit.

CONTENT:

We do know that the stones used to construct the monument were transported via water from Wales, approximately two hundred miles away. The giant megaliths traveled on wooden rafts to reach England. Also, the construction was executed with surprisingly advanced techniques, such as hinging stones together for greater stability.

CONTEXT:

Stonehenge represents one of the greatest construction feats of all time. The site took approximately 400 years to complete.
Transporting the megaliths from Wales alone required a huge labor force. Stonehenge also provides evidence of elaborate burials
after archaeologists unearthed human remains in the area. From this research, art historians believe some members of the prehistoric
English elite were buried there.

ARTISTIC DECISIONS:
It is generally agreed that the first phase of construction at Stonehenge occurred around 3100 BCE, when a great circular ditch about six feet deep was dug with a bank of dirt within it about 360 feet in diameter, with a large entrance to the northeast and a smaller one to the south. This circular ditch and bank together is called a henge. The second phase of work at Stonehenge occurred approximately 100-200 years later and involved the setting up of upright wooden posts, possibly of a roofed structure, in the center of the henge, as well as more upright posts near the northeast and southern entrances. The third phase of construction at Stonehenge happened approximately 400-500 years later and likely lasted a long time. In this phase the remaining blue stones or wooden beams which had been placed in the Aubrey holes were pulled and a circle 108 feet in diameter of 30 huge and very hard sarsen stones were erected within the henge; these were quarried from nearby Marlborough Downs. These upright sarsen stones were capped with 30 lintel stones.

INNOVATION/CONVENTION:
Stonehenge is aligned in the direction of the sunrise at the summer solstice and the sunset at the winter solstice. The first phase of
work required precise planning and a massive amount of labor. If there were leaders or a social class who convinced or forced people
to work together to build the first phase of Stonehenge, we haven’t found them. It also probably means the first phase of Stonehenge’s
construction was an egalitarian endeavor, highly unusual for the ancient world. it also entailed an entirely new level of technical
sophistication, specifically in the working of very hard stone. For instance, the horizontal lintel stones which topped the exterior ring
of sarsen stones were fitted to them using a tongue and groove joint and then fitted to each other using a mortise and tenon joint,
methods used in modern woodworking.

DETAILS/TERMS/DEFINITIONS:

One theory suggests that Stonehenge could have been a burial site for individuals of elite status. Another theory suggests that
Stonehenge was an elite healing site. The large vertical stones are called trilithons.

TITLE/LOCATION/DATE:

Running Horned Woman 6000-4000 BCE
Pigment on rock
Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria

MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE:

Pigment on rock.

FORM:

Running horned woman is a rock painting depicting a woman wearing a skirt and horns. Her body, arms, and torso are adorned with body paint. While the figure is two-dimensional, the painter attempts to create perspective by twisting the horns. On the damp rock surface stood out the gracious silhouette of a woman running. One of her legs, slightly flexed, just touched the ground, while the other was raised in the air as high as it would normally go. From the knees, the belt and the widely outstretched arms fell fine fringes. From either side of the head and above two horns that spread out horizontally was an extensive dotted area resembling a cloud of grain falling from a wheat field. Although the whole assemblage was skillfully and carefully composed there was something free and easy about it…

FUNCTION:

This female horned figure, her body adorned and decorated, found in one of the highest massifs in the Tassili—a region is believed to
hold special status due to its elevation and unique topology—suggests ritual, rite, or ceremony.

CONTENT:

The figure is superimposed over paintings of animals in the background. The body is outlined with great detail. For instance, small
white dots appear on the woman’s torso, shoulders, and legs. These dots could have been meant to suggest movement and to give the
form more fluidity. The dot adornment could also imply that the running horned woman has a high social status. Her horns, which are
also dotted, suggest that she could even be some sort of deity performing a ritual.

CONTEXT:

Tassili n’Ajjer is a Tamahaq name meaning “plateau” of the Ajjer people (the Kel Ajjer is group of tribes whose traditional territory
was here). Much of the 1,500-2,100 meter high plateau is protected by an 80,000 square kilometer National Park. The Running
Horned Woman, the title by which the painting is commonly known today, was found in a massif so secluded and so difficult to access
that Lhote’s team concluded that the collection of shelters was likely a sanctuary and the female figure—“the most beautiful, the most
finished and the most original”—a goddess. Lhote recounted that the Running Horned Woman was found on an isolated rock whose
base was hollowed out into a number of small shelters that could not have been used as dwellings. This remote location, coupled
with an image of marked pictorial quality—depicting a female with two horns on her head, dots on her body probably representing
scarification, and wearing such attributes of the dance as armlets and garters—suggested to him that the site, and the subject of the
painting, fell outside of the everyday.

INNOVATION/CONVENTION:

The running woman is graceful and rendered on a much larger scale than the humans in the background. She’s one of the earliest,
clearest paintings of the human figure uncovered by archaeologists. Even though the face is featureless, the artist used great detail
in rendering the torso and limbs. This was common of early human renderings in Paleolithic art. While specifics about rituals and
ceremonies practiced 8000 years ago remain a mystery, the running horned woman has allowed art historians to see the gradual
evolution of early human art, as well as provide us with a tantalizing sneak peek into early religion.
The figure is superimposed over paintings of animals in the background. The body is outlined with great detail. For instance, small
white dots appear on the woman’s torso, shoulders, and legs. These dots could have been meant to suggest movement and to give the
form more fluidity. The dot adornment could also imply that the running horned woman has a high social status. Her horns, which are
also dotted, suggest that she could even be some sort of deity performing a ritual.

INTERPRETATION:

The running horned woman is a very detailed rendering of a human figure. Her adornments suggest she is a deity—or at least a
prominent religious figure—which sheds light on early religions or beliefs. In fact, one of the interesting things that the running
horned woman suggests is that women were as powerful, if not more powerful, than men in this ancient society. S Also, because the
woman’s horned, she’s a reflection of the natural cycles of human and animal fertility. Early humans considered fertility a spiritual
quality held by women. The running horned woman represents the embodiment of spirituality.

DETAILS/TERMS/DEFIBITIONS:

Most art historians believe that the cow and bull have religious significance. They’ve inferred that the woman is shown wearing a
raffia skirt and bullhorns on her head while performing a ceremony or ritual either celebrating or praying for a strong harvest or good
hunting season.

TITLE/LOCATION/DATE:

Camelid Sacrum in the shape of a canine
Tequixquiac, Central Mexico 14000-7000 BCE

MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE:
Bone. An artist’s rendering, carved from a camel’s hipbone (sacrum)

FORM:

The sacrum is the large triangular bone at the base of the spine. Holes were cut into the end of the bone to represent nostrils, and the bone is also engraved.

FUNCTION:
The sacrum has a symbolic importance because the domestication of canines was very important to evolution of early human life. However, the camelid sacrum doesn’t contain anything that could be construed as symbols, including writing. The camelid sacrum was likely used in rituals in which animal spirits would be revived, which speaks to spiritualism of early humans. “Language and iconographic evidence strongly suggests that the sacrum bone was an important bone indeed in Mesoamerica, relating to sacredness, to resurrection, and to fire. The importance attached to this bone and its immediate neighbors is not limited to Mesoamerica. From ancient Egypt to ancient India and elsewhere, there is abundant evidence that the bones at the base of the spine, including especially the sacrum, were seen as sacred.”

CONTEXT:
Dogs were important to Tequixquiac-ites; in fact, they were most likely domesticated and possibly played prehistoric games of
fetch. The domestication of animals facilitated human evolution as humans became dependent on domesticated dogs for hunting and
farming. Humans depended on dogs for survival and showed reverence for these animals through sculptures, like the camelid sacrum,
which were used in rituals.

INTRPRETATION:
Because the carving was made in a period before writing had developed, it is likely impossible to know what the sculpture meant
to the carver and to his/her culture. One possible way to interpret the object is to look at it through the lens of later Mesoamerican
cultures. One anthropologist has pointed out that in Mesoamerica, the sacrum is seen as sacred and that some Mesoamerican Indian
languages named this bone with words referring to sacredness and the divine. In English, “sacrum” is derived from Latin: os sacrum,
meaning “sacred bone.” The sacrum is also—perhaps significantly for its meaning—located near the reproductive organs.
The camelid sacrum represents a significant finding because it is portable. Early humans traveled to South and Central America earlier
than previously thought, and they made portable art to bring along on their migration.

FUNCTION:
The sacrum has a symbolic importance because the domestication of canines was very important to evolution of early human life. However, the camelid sacrum doesn’t contain anything that could be construed as symbols, including writing. The camelid sacrum was likely used in rituals in which animal spirits would be revived, which speaks to spiritualism of early humans. “Language and iconographic evidence strongly suggests that the sacrum bone was an important bone indeed in Mesoamerica, relating to sacredness, to resurrection, and to fire. The importance attached to this bone and its immediate neighbors is not limited to Mesoamerica. From ancient Egypt to ancient India and elsewhere, there is abundant evidence that the bones at the base of the spine, including especially the sacrum, were seen as sacred.”

INNOVATION/CONVENTION:

This is the earliest art discovered in the Americas.  This carved camelid sacrum provides evidence that early humans traveled farther earlier than previously thought.

ARTISTIC DECISION:

The choice to carve the camel’s sacrum bone was deliberate. Today, scholars agree that the carving and markings were made by
human hands—the two circular spaces that represent the nasal cavities were carefully carved and are perfectly symmetrical and were likely shaped by a sharp instrument.

DETAILS/TERMS/DEFINITIONS:

The camelid sacrum represents a significant finding because it is portable. Early humans traveled to South and Central America earlier
than previously thought, and they made portable art to bring along on their migration.

LOCATION: DATE:
ARTIST: PERIOD/STYLE: PATRON:

Great Hall of Bulls . Lascaux, France 15,000-13,000 BCE
Paleolithic Europe

MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE:
Mineral pigments on stone

CONTENT:
The paintings, created with mineral paints and clay, include animals, mythical creatures, and symbols. We find images of horses, deer, bison, elk, a few lions, a rhinoceros and a bear—almost as an encyclopedia of the area’s large prehistoric wildlife.  Among these images are abstract marks—dots and lines in a variety of configurations. In one image, a humanoid figure plays a mysterious role. Archaeologists have found hundreds of stone tools, they have also identified holes in some walls that may have supported tree-limb scaffolding that would have elevated an artist high enough to reach the upper surfaces. Fossilized pollen has been found. These grains were inadvertently brought into the cave by early visitors and are helping scientists understand the world outside.

CONTEXT:
It shows us that there was a network of communication at prehistoric Lascaux. Hunters and artists (or maybe hunter-artists, but
hopefully not artist hunters) were giving each other information on the animals in the area.  The famous Hall of Bulls is large enough to hold some fifty people. Other “rooms” and “halls” are extraordinarily narrow and tall.

INNOVATION?CONVENTION:

The use of twisted perspective and strict profile allowed the artists to be descriptive in their illustrations of animal anatomy. The
animals are rendered in what has come to be called “twisted perspective,” in which their bodies are depicted in profile while we see the horns from a more frontal viewpoint. The images are sometimes entirely linear—line drawn to define the animal’s contour. In many other cases, the animals are described in solid and blended colors blown by mouth onto the wall. In other portions of the Lascaux cave, artists carved lines into the soft calcite surface. Some of these are infilled with color—others are not.

ARTISTIC DESISIONS:

After struggling through small openings and narrow passages to access the larger rooms beyond, prehistoric people discovered that the cave wall surfaces functioned as the perfect, blank “canvas” upon which to draw and paint. To paint, these early artists used charcoal and ochre (a kind of pigmented, earthen material, that is soft and can be mixed with liquids, and comes in a range of colors like brown, red, yellow and white). Multiple different artists painted animals on these cave walls, which suggests that information was being shared. Although we don’t know if this was a form of bragging about hunting, a warning about ferocious beasts, or a ritual, we know that many artists worked to create something both artistic and communicative. Early humans did not usually depict the human form in the cave paintings at Lascaux. There is only one. Given the large scale of many of the animal images, we can presume that the artists worked deliberately—carefully plotting out a particular form before completing outlines and adding color.

INTERPRETATION:

The theory goes that these caves provide the earliest evidence of communication between hunter-gatherer groups. The Great Hall
could have been a kind of early message board for hunters, which would explain why the caves feature repetitive animal patterns.
Another theory suggests that the prehistoric people who used the cave may have believed that a way to overpower their prey involved
creating images of it during rituals designed to ensure a successful hunt.

DETAILS/TERMS/DEFINITIONS:

The caves at Lascaux were discovered by accident when 18-year-old Marcel Rabinat happened to do a little investigating during what
was a relaxing walk in the woods. For a week in 1940, he and his buddies kept the caves a secret before letting a teacher know that he
had uncovered one of the most important archaeological finds of all time. From 1940 to 1963, the numbers of visitors and their impact
on the delicately balanced environment of the cave—which supported the preservation of the cave images for so long—necessitated
the cave’s closure to the public.