Ice Age art-life and death

Overview of Ice Age art and how it might relate to the lives of the people of the time.

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  • Created by: Canar
  • Created on: 03-02-16 13:01
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  • Ice Age art-life and death
    • Venus figurines
      • Mainly in 24-000-26,000 BC
      • Made from mammoth ivory and soft stone
      • Highly emphasize buttocks, hips and breasts.
      • Can be covered in ochre
      • Theories of usage
        • Magic related to promoting successful childbirth?
        • Self-expression of pregnant women (proposed by LeRoy McDermott 1996)
        • Generalised notion of womanhood.
        • Protective goddess?
      • Example sites
        • Gonnersdorf-figures found on slate slabs
        • Willendorf figurine
          • 11.1cm tall
          • 28,000-25,000 BC
          • Carved from non local oolitic limestone
            • Evidence of trade?
          • Tinted with red ochre
        • Venus of Laussel
          • 18.11 inch high
          • Limestone bas-relief
            • Red ochre used again.
          • Around 25,000 years old.
          • Holds a bison horn with 13 notches-number of menstrual cycles in a year?
          • Has a 'Y' on her thigh.
        • Venus of Brassempuoy
          • Ivory head of a presumed female figure(although not actually sexed in anyway) dating to around 26,000-24,000 years BP.
            • One of earliest representations of the human face.
          • 3.65 cm high, 2.2 cm deep, 1.9 cm wide.
          • Absence of a mouth
          • Pattern on head made using small perpendicular incisions.
            • Many interpretations.
              • Hair
              • Wig
              • A hood
    • Bison of La Maeleine could just fir into period-estimated between 20,000 and 12,000BP.
      • Carved in Antler-depicts bison licking itself.
    • Lion-man from Holhlenstein-stadel
      • Ivory sculpture. Oldest known zoomorphic sculpture in the world
        • Ivory from woolly mammoth
      • C14 dating of the layer it was found in places it at about 40,000 years old.
      • 29.6 cm tall, 5.6cm wide and 5.9cm thick.
      • Seven parallel gouges in left arm
      • Different interpretations of its supposed gender.
      • Although older than cave paintings found in France shares some similarities of depictions of hybrid creatures. Combination of animal and man again-shamanism?
        • Possible precursor of cave painting?
      • After discovery a similar but smaller lion-headed figure found in nearby cave with other figurines and lutes.
        • Possible mythological function in society of the time?
    • Marks on bones found at Tossa de la Rocca in Spain have been suggested to represent the moon's phases-acting like a lunar calnedar?
      • Theories of usage
        • Magic related to promoting successful childbirth?
        • Self-expression of pregnant women (proposed by LeRoy McDermott 1996)
        • Generalised notion of womanhood.
        • Protective goddess?

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