Lower Palaeolithic Art in Britain?

AD · Post by AD » Mon Nov 06, 2006 11:15 pm

Hi Roberto...

Good observation. I guess "Mississippian Culture" in this contemporary context is just generic American culture, but one certainly could see what you cite as a kind of rite-of-passage ritual, a display of one's (in)ability to ingest ridiculous quantities of alcoholic fluid. (Of course I was always above this kind of thing...) With most people (not all, obviously), somewhere in their early twenties this quickly transitions into an awareness that the charm of puking onto one's shoes wears off after a while - and of course the ladies are not typically all that impressed by this display. I just enjoy a couple good microbrews or some single-malt scotch in the evening, stopping well short of sending forth new bird spirits from my mouth.

Enough of this...

Obviously you know your rocks, so perhaps sometime I'll seek your opinion on some things that appear here. I have a good "consultant" in the form of a nearby geology prof, but second opinions are always advisable.

Regards, Alan

War Arrow · Post by **War Arrow** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 7:19 am

AD wrote: Incidentally, early European explorers in North America reported that the people of the Mississippian culture had an impressive projectile vomiting ritual fueled by rapid ingestion of large quantities of hot yaupon tea. (And young Americans even today do something similar with beer, although without the spiritual component.)

Mostly we've all been there, and I'd say there can be a close on spiritual dimension, particularly if you vow never to drink cider again as a result of becoming reacquainted with the spaghetti strands of a previous meal and have to physically tug them out whilst "blowing chunks" (or "blowing strands" in this case). Upon recovery I was overwhemed with a sense of being glad to be alive and sober.
Sorry you all had to read that.

AD wrote: And speaking of professional verification, take a look at http://daysknob.com/H05.htm showing a very nice quartz sandstone figure clearly incorporating the human-to-bird transformation motif.

As the article points out, photographs don't always give a great impression of this sort of object, although it does look worked to me, even if I can't quite see what is described. The official verdict of it having been manually crafted though, is very exciting - and this image

surely has too much symmetry to be dismissed as a product of chance (quite aside from aforementioned second opinion).

Manystones · Post by **Manystones** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 5:04 pm

Since there appears to be so much collective experience here I thought I'd give this one a shot. Again, note carefully this one is from my friends site NOT mine.

The first picture shows what is potentially a map of the site it was found on. The site is bounded by four rivers and was formerly the pleistocene thames. Obviously I can't show a map of the actual site since that would give away the precise location but for those seriously interested in following this up please PM me I may be able to supply a copy of 1750 map before canalisation which matches very closely. In fact the stone map has lead to some extraordinary finds, including Roman key stones that seem to indicate that the flow of one river was diverted at a later point in time (i.e. after the stone map). The small triangular shape at the top left is marked out with a ditch on the ground and is just one of the many points of reference on it.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wi ... 20001a.jpg

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wi ... 20002a.jpg

My interest in this article is in the method of production. It _appears_ to have been masked? and exposed to light (in order to acheive the bleached white patination) with black lines.. see the detailed image. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wi ... 20003a.jpg
Note carefully there is no raised nature to the lines - they are in the surface of the flint. I haven't really seen patination like this before and the accuracy with the site (I have walked it several times) is uncanny.

Is this a technology anyone else has ever seen? Could it be a Geofact?

More images from this controversial UK site.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wi ... illa_1.htm

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wi ... laface.JPG

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wi ... rtzite.jpg

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wi ... /fish1.JPG

Manystones · Post by **Manystones** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 5:13 pm

sorry, for scale those yellow squares are approximately 6mm

AD · Post by AD » Tue Nov 07, 2006 10:23 pm

Hi Richard...

With regard to maps, I have to say I am skeptical, while readily admitting I am way beyond my shallow depth in this area. There is no doubt in my mind that you and your friend are seeing real artifacts incorporating a simple but quite identifiable and consistent zoo-anthropomorphic iconography, but the leap from this to accurate representations of geography is big even for me. Certainly I am not dismissing this possibility, but personally I would put it on the back burner for now. Just the obvious figures in the stones are enough to get you burned at the stake, so just concentrate on getting verification by physical scientists (and I don't mean archaeologists!) of human agency (or, actually, non-natural features, from their perspective) in these.

There is also the apparent likelihood that, in the London area, these stones are glacial outwash, so who knows whether or not their human modification took place in the locale in which they were recently found. And of course the features of any terrain change considerably over the time span we are considering here.

Regards, Alan

Charlie Hatchett · Post by **Charlie Hatchett** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 1:33 pm

Haven't forgot you, art brothers...just waiting to find something worth presenting. Check this piece out:

http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.co ... t%2024.jpg

http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.co ... t%2025.jpg

http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.co ... t%2026.jpg

Manystones · Post by **Manystones** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 1:39 pm

That middle one looks suspicously like a fish, another common theme. I guess that would make sense in the context of the site?

War Arrow · Post by **War Arrow** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 1:54 pm

The first one looks like that's a hole exposing a crystalline interior suggesting it's erm... a geode (is that the word I was looking for). So er... is that a hole or have I been sitting at the keyboard too long today?

Charlie Hatchett · Post by **Charlie Hatchett** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 1:57 pm

That middle one looks suspicously like a fish, another common theme. I guess that would make sense in the context of the site?

That was my take, bro, but I wanted to hear it out of someone else's mouth first.

All the photos are of the same piece...one side is, what I think, a fish motiff, and the other side is a bird motiff...then some...

The first one looks like that's a hole exposing a crystalline interior suggesting it's erm... a geode (is that the word I was looking for). So er... is that a hole or have I been sitting at the keyboard too long today?

The structure inside the hole is iron ore, degraded...note the iron staining on the other side...

Manystones · Post by **Manystones** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 2:41 pm

Ok that's clearer now...

The first looks to the left like a bear/feline or something - not unusual and would make contextual sense (for the lithic itself - and in relation to the site?) To the right - croc? Sometimes these things are very ambiguous - morphing between species. Often as simple as the suggestion of an eye.

AD summed it up when he wrote this;

My guess would be that perfunctory incorporation of zoo/anthropomorphic imagery in simple hand tools (expression of an animistic belief system?), was never intended as a display of artistic virtuosity, any more than the cross on a hot cross bun.

Charlie Hatchett · Post by **Charlie Hatchett** » Thu Nov 09, 2006 5:02 am

Ok that's clearer now...

The first looks to the left like a bear/feline or something - not unusual and would make contextual sense (for the lithic itself - and in relation to the site?) To the right - croc? Sometimes these things are very ambiguous - morphing between species. Often as simple as the suggestion of an eye.

Right...

Anyway, I thought you guys might get a kick out of the piece.

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Thu Nov 09, 2006 10:42 am

The ability to superimpose the tracing of a prehistoric gylph accurately oriented onto a topographic map of the area, and to have the tracing closely follow trails indentified by thirty or more rock art sites, including some seventyseven individual bedrock outcroppings with petrogylphs, strongly supports the likelihood of map making capalities by the early occupants of the region, the Martis Complex people.
(Gortner 1988:147-152)

At Picacho Point, the single most distinctive petroglyph at the site is a very large abstrct form clearly pecked on the largest panel on the back or eastern side of Clustr A... it was clearly an outline of a map of the ridge upon which the site was situated, allowing for slight distortion based on the viewers ground perception. After carefully evaluating this hypothesis we believe it to be warranted and offer figures for comparision of the mapped design with the topography of the ridge.
(Wallace and Holmlund 1986:147-148)

Again from A field guide to rock art symbols of the greater southwest. I believe that map making out of rocks was very common. I'm always picking up a rock and alingning it with the horizon to see if it fits.

Manystones · Post by **Manystones** » Thu Nov 09, 2006 12:55 pm

You have done it again Bruce!

You are a star.

Thanks.

AD · Post by AD » Sat Nov 11, 2006 4:59 pm

Greetings...

Re-reading some of the messages in this thread, I noted that Stan made the following comment with regard to a photo one of Richard's zoo/anthropomorphic stones:

I would like to see other views of that interesting detailed face! The photo seems taken from an angle to show it to its best advantage.

I thought this quite relevant observation warranted one of my own. Capturing the intended image to best advantage does require attention to the angle of perspective, just as with photographing a live human or animal. Just as important, maybe more so, is the placement of the light source for a photo. (A flash usually doesn't work at all - just washes out the detail.) From experience looking at and handling hundreds of such stones from here, and a few from Europe and Australia, I found that almost invariably one must put the light above the top of figure (assuming here that the figure is vertically positioned), such that it shines across it more or less at a grazing angle. That this is practically always true simply reflects the fact that these things were (one might well assume) crafted with the light source above - this being where the sun is during most of the day. (And this would also seem to be circumstantial evidence of human agency in the material.)

Alan

AD · Post by AD » Mon Nov 13, 2006 9:56 pm

This is not British, but I like it so much I'm going to inflict it on you anyway, in the context of our earlier discussion of the one-eye-open one-eye-closed motif. I just found it in an artifact-rich pit at the Day's Knob site here in southeastern Ohio. The photo shows two ends of the same small limestone (6 cm). Any doubt that a human made this?