Archaeologica.org

Pics of two of the faces of the Klei Kliphuis ochre can be seen here .
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 0307002051
In this case it is quite clear that the striated face is a result of grinding to produce powder while the incised face of the same block has a raised shoulder which would have made the rubbing as suggested in your initial post very unlikely . Further we know in the case of the Blombos ochre that rubbing was not the preferred method of application due to the accompanying tool –kit .

Tiompan wrote:Pics of two of the faces of the Klei Kliphuis ochre can be seen here .
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 0307002051
In this case it is quite clear that the striated face is a result of grinding to produce powder while the incised face of the same block has a raised shoulder which would have made the rubbing as suggested in your initial post very unlikely . Further we know in the case of the Blombos ochre that rubbing was not the preferred method of application due to the accompanying tool –kit .

Yes the marks on the first, seem to have little to do with a grinding process, and the striations on the second are in line with the movement of the grinding. Where as if what I am saying stands up. the marks on the Blombos ochre are at an angle to the grinding. If you look at the Klei Kliphuis ochre fragments they are both concave, not just the first with the incised grid pattern. Which even if they were both meant for and the result of grinding, points to a different procedure to that which I am suggesting for the Blombos examples. At this point I would speculate the relative size of the pieces might have a bearing on that.
Tell me more about what you allude to about the tool kit at Blombos.

I may not have made it obvious but the two faces of the KK ochre are from the same piece .

http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/se ... uth-africa .
Slightly more info than previous link . The tool kit(s) suggest that the method of application was a paste rather , than rubbing on (damp ) material .

If I am rubbing on a damp surface, it creates a paste, if i wet the surface which I am rubbing to get material from it will be a paste. if I wet the material that has been rubbed off the surface it is in contact with will also be wet. I don't see how that could be otherwise. I don't see how you could set it up so you either had a wet surface or a wet paste, if they are in contact the water would wet them both. As such this is a pointer to my suggestion rather than an objection of it.

So if it is the same piece, that two sides are both concave that is interesting.

The paste is made from grinding the block to produce a powder which is them mixed with a liquid in an abalone shell . The process is described as
"Pieces of ochre (FS1 and FS2) were rubbed on quartzite slabs to produce a fine red powder, and some were knapped with large lithic
flakes. The ochre chips resulting from the latter were crushed with quartz, quartzite, and silcrete hammerstones/grinders. Quartzite grinders were
used to crush goethite or hematite-rich lutite. Medium-sized mammal bone was crushed, probably with a stone hammer. The red or reddish
brown color and cracked, flaky texture of some of the trabecular bone suggest that it was heated before crushing, probably to enhance the extraction
of the marrow fat. The hematite powder, charcoal, crushed trabecular bone, stone chips, and quartz grains and a liquid were then introduced
into the Haliotis shells and gently stirred "
No need or mention of any rubbing rubbing on damp material .If the pigment was to be applied to material it could have been done so from the shell with an applicator possibly the same implement as used for stirring .

Yes that is what is said, but what is the evidence that water was or was not used in the grinding process? It would make sense to grind wet because the paste would be easier to control, than dust. This is where somebody used to using different techniques would be better qualified to talk about a process than somebody who knows about the age of an artifact. If in fact if you look at the action of grinding you will find it is almost always done with the presence of liquids, even when heat dissipation is not an issue. The grinding of flower is one of the very few, exceptions that a thing is ground dry.


Too much of a sweeping statement, I will add the proviso, using liquid in the grinding process when you are interested in keeping the residue.

The excavators would be aware of how ochre is mined and produced . Maybe 20 th C western artists use water in the grinding process but if f you look at the action of grinding from an ethnographic perspective it is usually done dry .

http://www.aboriginalartshop.com/ochre-aboriginal-art/
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/ca8c0/
http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/methods/methods.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlxWQ2UXq3w
Nothing new but worth seeing . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3MjKL0doqc

You will notice in the Australian Aboriginal site that you linked to, there is a round bowl, and presumably they are using that article for the grinding, you will find I have made reference to grinding that way a number of posts back, and as far as I am aware there were no clay vessels contemporary with the Blombos ochre, but I am not expert so you can inform me if I am wrong. Also in that they are only grinding sufficient for the application of pigment at the site of making the image from not power prepared elsewhere, but pieces of rock this is also significant.
With the Himba people they are using the grinding apparatus that is the same as that used to grind flower. So they are grinding grains of ochre dry. Now reading the article itself, we read-

"It is not possible to visit Himba people without leaving covered in the red colouring: it is everywhere – on clothes, seats, the walls of huts, pots and even on the chickens running around."

First you will notice the girl in the video is not grinding from rock, but is further refining already ground powder. It is not that they do not mind the dust blowing about everywhere, but they actually want that to happen. They want the ochre to cover everything.
Now I know ochre is present in a lot of prehistoric sites and you could put forward those people like the Himba wanted to cover everything in ochre, but there are references to the paste in the shells having different things added to vary the colours produced, and while you may presume that the ochre at one site would all be of the same colour that would be far from the truth there is a lot of variation in the colour of ochre even from the same seam. So as these people were trying to produce separate colours from a small area they would not want lots of dust blowing about that could muddy any particular colour they were trying to produce at any one time.
Actually far from disproving what I have said, it only helps my argument, maybe when talking about the preparation of pigment, consulting somebody who knows about it and has tried different methods could be a good idea, what do you think?

What is clear from ethnogrphy is that the method of preparation is dry. Henshillwood and anyone writing on ochre preparation would have been aware of this including personal practical investigation .There is nothing in the links that support your belief that the markings are an aid to application on material or that the markings aid the grinding process when used along with water . Even if water was used it doesn't mean that the engravings would have been part of the process . Don't you think it would be a good idea to consult people who actually do the process as it has been handed down in their culture or done so experimentally contarsting and comparing a variety of methods as opposed to one method taught in a late 20th C western art college ?

In answer to the above, I would like to know your evidence for the presumption I have not consulted and used the methods and been taught by many masters of a number of different cultures. You seem to place me in an art collage and that being my only experience. You have presumed too much. Maybe it might be worthwhile finding out what experience I do have before you presume to imply what it is. The reason why I do not answer questions of what I have experience of or how many images of an age I have not just looked at but studied intently, has no bearing on if my supposition is true or not, I am not here to gain credit, that has no interest for me. I am here to get over an idea, that is my agenda.

Upwards and onwards.

To start again.
To understand the Blonobos ochre fragments, which have been marked by a human, with some intent, it might be worthwhile to look at them from a craftsperson’s prospective, and in so doing discover details about the way those marks are made, and in doing that we might uncover the intent of these marks.
The first problem I have is that I have no access to the actual ochre, only photographs, which people tend to think of as impartial recorders of the facts, but in truth are selected views, that do not tend to tell the full story. I will come back to that issue at a later time.

So the first thing we want to do is examine the material how soft or hard is the ochre, We might know ochre is generally called a soft stone, but that does not give us information on a particular fragment as there is variation. I have found this paper which has proved very enlightening.

http://in-africa.org/wp-content/uploads ... lombos.pdf

Engraved ochres from the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa
Christopher S. Henshilwooda,b,
*, Francesco d’Erricoc,a
, Ian Watts d
a
Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Wits 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa
b
Institute for Archaeology, History, Culture and Religion, University of Bergen, Postbox 7805, 5020, Bergen, Norway
c
CNRS-UMR 5199 PACEA, University of Bordeaux, Avenue des Faculte´s, 33405 Talence, France
d
58, Eastdown House, Downs Estate, Amhurst Road, London, E8 2AT, UK


From page 30

“The principal factor influencing the likelihood of a piece being
scraped rather than ground was hardness (adapting Mohs scale, cf.
Watts, in press). For the total sample (n¼1534), 21.1% were softer
than hardness three, a figure that is fairly constant across temporal
phases. Among scraped (non-ground) pieces (n¼106) this
percentage increases to 36.8%, compared to just 7.4% of ground (nonscraped) pieces (n¼163). Themanner of powder production appears,
therefore, to have been primarily determined by contingent considerations. Softer pieces are less likely to be particularly iron-oxide
enriched (cf. Watts, in press). Consequently, compared to ground
pieces, scraped pieces provide a higher proportion of intermediate or
pasteldrather than saturateddnuances, a higher proportion of
lighter nuances, and a higher proportion of yellowish hues.
Among the scraped pieces, some bore striations inconsistent
with powder production that may represent instances of intentional engraving. Examples are:
1. Lines that produce an apparently arranged pattern such as a fan
shaped or cross-hatched design
2. Thin incised lines on small, but apparently complete ochre
pieces that would have produced insubstantial amounts of
ochre powder
3. Sinuous lines, the production of which required a controlled
hand motion, that are incompatible with effective powder
production
4. A portion of an originally complex engraved pattern found on
a fragmented ochre piece
5. Juxtaposed similar incisions with a regular cross section
showing that constant pressure was applied during the incision
process and that the lines were produced by the same lithic
point in a single session.
We are aware that the above features do not guarantee the
identification of intentionally made engravings. In this paper, we
have therefore included a number of pieces that meet one or more
of the above features, despite us being unsure whether the lines
were incised to create a deliberate pattern. Potentially symbolic
markings cannot be taken out of the context of other modifications,
nor should they be restricted to only the most compelling examples. While the majority of the pieces to be described came from the
analysed 1998/99 sample, two came from the 1997 excavation, one
from the 1999 test-pit from in front of the drip line, and two were
recovered in 2000 (Table 3).
M”

The information that is relevant to my argument from this section.
Firstly that the ochre varied in hardness and the major factor between those fragments that had incisions made on them was that these pieces were of a harder material, and also they tended to be of a different colour the others.
These incisions are presumed not to be made for the extraction of ochre, because, very little ochre would be extracted directly by the making of these incisions. Thus a presumption of marks made for another reason. And it has been presumed that reason is to make some sort of graphic design.
It is my contention that the marks made on the ochre at a site used for the extraction of ochre are probably about the extraction of ochre, and that these marks fit my experience of turning raw pigment into a usable form.

I should also note here that I do not think the fragment M1-6 is of an even hardness there seem to be parts which are harder and some which are softer. I will return to this when I talk about the way in which the incisions are made on its surface.

Lastly at looking at the fragment itself, There is a peculiarity, if the marks are as has been put forward, are a design to be viewed; if we look a the photographs on page 34 of M1-6; it is odd is it not that the widest face of the fragment is not the face with the design on it, but a slim face is chosen to put the design on. And the fragment has been deliberately cut to produce a slim face as mentioned in the text of the paper. If you wanted to make a graphic image on an object it is a very odd choice to make that image on a part which is the most difficult to display.

Now I will say about what I am going to do in further posts, I have only just come across the above paper, which depicts a large number of fragments, not all of which I have thought about, whereas fragment M1-6 I have been studying for a while so I will concentrate on that fragment not because I am avoiding talking about other pieces, but that it is the piece I have studied and will be best used to display my turn of thought. As such initially I request that we study M1-6 then later when my supposition is fully unfolded can we look at other pieces to see if there is a consistent argument.
Next I want to talk about the incisions themselves and the way they seem to have been created. To do that I am working on a number of illustrations as such it is taking me quite some time, so it will be a few days at least. But in the mean time I would like to know your reactions to what I have written so far. To see if there is anything you are not sure about.

It was you who mentioned that you had learnt the technique , as a student ,which at least dates it if not situating it .

“The reason why I do not answer questions of what I have experience of or how many images of an age I have not just looked at but studied intently, has no bearing on if my supposition is true or not. “ The problems with your initial idea has little to do with your knowledge of other examples of Paleolithic engravings but it is central to your comment “If we look at examples of so called primitive art there is almost never a quality of sketchiness to it ” .If you had any knowledge of the subject you wouldn't have made the comment and if you didn't have much knowledge you should have been more circumspect .

I don't see how the cited paper supports your idea in any way . What it does is support what I have been suggesting from the first post on this subject . The engravings are not common whilst ochre pieces used for pigment production are and therefore unlikely to be part of a utilitarian process . It is pointed out that the engraved ochre was ground and scraped prior to engraving which wouidn't make much sense if the the point of the engraving was part of the process . The designs are part of a tradition

As for the narrower face being chosen to engrave rather than the expected wider face . It is what might be expected , so often the surfaces chosen to be engraved in rock art are the least likely ,it is one of the most common puzzles “why that surface and not all of these which appear to us to be far more suitable ?”

Nobody else seems interested
You win, well done!