1. Chapter 1: Prehistoric Art in Europe

2. TIME PERIODS:
Paleolithic Art : 30,000 BCE to 8,000 BCE in the Near East
30,000 BCE to 4,000 BCE in Europe
Neolithic Art: 8000 BCE to 3000 BCE in the Near East
4000 BCE to 2000 BCE in Europe
KEY IDEAS:
•The earliest surviving works of art are cave paintings and portable
sculptures of humans and animals.
•Little is known about the original intention or meaning of prehistoric
works.
•Buildings such as Stonehenge show the ability of prehistoric people
to build elaborate religious structures using the post-and-lintel system
of construction.

3. Prehistoric Background
Paleolithic (“Old Stone Age”)
-people were hunter-gatherers
-people used caves and other natural shelters as
homes
-people were unsettled (moved frequently)
Neolithic (“New Stone Age”)
-people cultivated the earth and raised livestock
-people lived in organized settlements
-people divided labor into occupations
-people constructed the first homes

4. Prehistory = all human existence before writing
Even before writing, people were:
-carving objects
-painting images
-creating structures/shelter
Wall Painting with Horses,
Rhinoceroses, and Aurochs
(oxen). Chauvet Cave, France
30,000-28,000 BCE.
Paint on limestone

5. -Homo sapiens sapiens (our subspecies) evolved about
120,000 to 100,000 years ago. (wow!)
-We can only make hypotheses about prehistoric art
-The paintings, sculptures, and structures that have survived are only a
fraction of what must have been created over a very long period of time.
-Prehistoric art is one of the most speculative areas of art history.
Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania
-fossilized remains and
footprints of the earliest
hominid (“human”), believed
to be 1.8 million years old.
-many tools, vessels, and other
handmade artifacts found here.

6. Prehistoric Sculpture:
-all portable
-most are very small
-carvings on cave walls make use of natural
modulations in the wall surface to enhance the image

7. Woman or “Venus” of Willendorf
c. 28,000 – 21,000 BCE, limestone
Here is one major work of Prehistoric sculpture.
Describe this sculpture
What might it have represented?

8. Woman or “Venus” of Willendorf
c. 28,000 – 21,000 BCE, limestone
Here is one major work of Prehistoric sculpture.
•Reproductive organs emphasized: huge
breasts, belly, buttocks, navel
•Hair in clumps arranged in rows, or
maybe it’s a woven hat?
•Deemphasized arms, face, legs, no feet
•She was never meant to stand up
•Face may have been painted
•Traces of paint on the body
•Fertility symbol?
•Small, just under four and a half inches
•Venus is a name given to the object after its
discovery as a way of comparing it to the
ancient goddess of beauty.
•Its true purpose is unknown

9. 8stylized representations of human and animal figures
8limestone, clay, ivory, bone, and antlers
8symbolism (man’s important new cognitive development)
Lion-Human
30,000-26,000 BCE
from Hohlenstein-Stadel,
Germany
Some sculptures included…
Lion-Human
•made of mammoth ivory
•shows complex thinking and creativity!
•probably male, but with a feline head
•nearly a foot tall (that’s big!)
•didn’t copy nature exactly, used imagination
•a breakthrough- ability to conceive and represent a
creature never seen in nature!

10. Venus of Lespugue
23,000 BCE
contours of stone
used as a starting point
for carvings on cave walls

11. 20,000 BCE 3 Wild Cattle,
Fourneua de Diable, France

12. Prehistoric Cave Painting:
4Prime examples include Lascaux, France and Altamira, Spain
4Most are deeply recessed from the cave openings
4Images of animals dominate with black outlines emphasizing their contours
4Main animals include horse, bison, mammoth, ibex, aurochs, and deer
4Animals are realistic, humans are stick figures with little detail
4Many handprints (negative- done by blowing paint over hand)
4Often left hands, some missing joints or fingers (voluntary mutilation?)
4Scattered around the cave surface with no relationship to one another
4Abstract signs and symbols included with images
4No vegetation or ground/horizon line
4Individual images often painted over one another suggest process, or the act of
creation may have been more important than the product

13. SPOTTED HORSES AND HUMAN HANDS
Pech-Merle Cave. Dordogne, France. Horses 25,000-24,000 BCE; hands c. 15,000 BCE.
Paint on limestone, individual horses over 5’ 01-01]
Are spots based
on hallucinations?

14. Don’t try this at home

15. Cave paintings were
very far from the
entrances. Why?
Cave of Altamira,
13,000 BCE
Spain

16. Why is the man stick-like and the bison is rendered with such
accurate detail? Does this record an actual event?

17. Lascaux 17,000 - 15,000 B.C.

18. Cave painting theories:
-a way to strengthen clan bonds
-a ceremony to enhance animal fertility
-expressions of sympathetic magic
(the painting might come true!)
-religious or magical function
-visual record of hallucinations
-visual record of real life happenings
-just people enjoying the creative process
???????

19. HALL OF BULLS
Lascaux Cave. Dordogne, France. c. 15,000 BCE.
Paint on limestone, length of largest auroch (bull) 18’

20. BIRD-HEADED MAN WITH BISON
Shaft scene in Lascaux Cave. c.
15,000 BCE.
Paint on limestone, length approx. 9’
LASCAUX CAVES
15,000-13,000 BCE
Dordogne, France
•Natural products used to make paint: charcoal, iron ore, plants
•650 paintings: most common are cows, bulls, horses, and deer
•Animals placed deep inside the cave, some hundreds of feet in
•Bodies seen in profile, frontal or diagonal view of horns, eyes,
and hooves; some animals appear pregnant

21. •Many overlapping figures
•Evidence still visible of scaffolding erected to get to
higher areas of the caves
•Negative handprints: are these signatures?
•Caves were not dwellings because prehistoric people led
migratory lives following herds of animals; some evidence
exists that people sought shelter at the mouths of caves
•Walls were scraped to an even surface; paint colors were
bound with animal fat; lamps light interior of caves

22. Smolinski discovers cave paintings in a Tanzania hotel!

23. Neolithic Art (New Stone Age)
8,000 - 3,000 B.C.
3 conditions:
-organized agriculture
-maintenance of herds of domesticated animals
-permanent, year-round settlements
Rock Shelter Art:
-combined geometric forms and
simplified depictions of people
and animals engaged in everyday
activities
-abstract style, simple line drawing,
and little color
-animals in a “flying gallop”
(still used today to show movement) People and Animals
Rock-shelter painting in Cogul, Spain
4000-2000 BCE

24. •Structures
8beginnings of architecture
8built homes, storage spaces, and shelters for animals out of
wood, stone, animal bones, and plant materials.
8examples include Jericho, Catal Huyuk, and Stonehenge
•Pottery and Smelting
4often richly decorated
4objects made of non-indigenous materials suggest commerce
•Evidence of new priestly class
4structures that suggest sanctuaries and organized religion
4new demands and reasons for art creation

25. RECONSTRUCTION DRAWING OF
MAMMOTH-BONE HOUSES
Ukraine. c. 16,000-10,000 BCE.

26. How the heck do they know when this stuff is from???
-RELATIVE DATING: compare objects in a single excavation or
nearby sites
-ABSOLUTE DATING: aims to determine a precise span of
calendar years in which an artifact was created
-RADIOMETRIC DATING: measures how materials disintegrated
over time (carbon dating)
-POTASSIUM-ARGON DATING, THERMO-LUMINESCENCE
DATING, ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE: other fancy ways
These technologies help experts be more precise.

27. Prehistoric Architecture:
Most famous structures were for worship, not housing.
MENHIRS (long individual stones) used to create a complex are called
MEGALITHS
A circle of MEGALITHS, usually with LINTELS on top, is called a
CROMLECH
Align with important calendar dates
Two uprights with horizontal beam = POST-AND-LINTEL
(most fundamental type of architecture in history)

28. Jericho, c.7500 B.C.
The earliest stone fortifications discovered to date! It was a town of mud-
brick houses that covered 6-10 acres and had 2,000 people. They built a huge
brick wall five feet thick and 20 feet high (for protection? Who knows!)

29. Catal Huyuk
(7500 - 5700 B.C.)
Konya, Turkey
-the best preserved
Neolithic site found to
date.
-all domestic buildings
-housed 10,000 people
-mud-brick houses crammed
together without footpaths or streets
-accessed by holes in the ceilings,
ladders, and stairs. The rooftops
were the “streets”. Fun!
-plenty of artifacts found here
(plastered skulls, clay figures,
murals, wall carvings)

30. Stonehenge, England c. 2100 BCE (sandstone)
-Whoever stood at the exact center on the morning of the summer solstice 3,260
years ago would have seen the sun rise directly over the heel stone.
-There are five “trilithons”- pairs of upright stones topped by lintels.
-What is it? Some sort of observatory? A place for public ceremonies? Who knows?
heel stone
lintel

31. • Maybe took 1000 years to build
• Post-and-lintel
• Lintels grooved in place by the mortise-and-tenon system of building
• Large megaliths in center are over 20 feet tall and form a horseshoe
• Surrounding a central flat stone
• Ring of megaliths surrounds horseshoe
• Some stones over 50 tons!
• “HENGE” = a Neolithic monument, circular plan, rituals, astronomy
• Stones imported from
more than 200 miles away
• May predict eclipses
• Oriented toward
sunrise on longest day of
the year

32. Ritual Dance. Rock Engraving.
c. 10,000 B.C. Caves of Addaura. Sicily.
Henri Matisse. The Dance. 1910. Oil on canvas. The
Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
Inspiration!