List of Stone Age art

In this Bradshaw rock painting from Australia the artist portrays tasseled costumed figures in various poses or actions.

This is a descriptive list of art from the Stone Age, the period of prehistory characterised by the widespread use of stone tools. This page contains, by sheer volume of the artwork discovered, a very incomplete list of the works of the painters, sculptors, and other artists who created what we now call prehistoric art. For fuller lists see Art of the Upper Paleolithic, Art of the Middle Paleolithic, and Category:Prehistoric art and its many sub-categories.

Sculpture

Bison Licking Insect Bite, in carved antler, National Museum of Prehistory, Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil

• Adam of Govrlevo, or "Adam of Macedonia". At more than 7,000 years old, the sculpture is the oldest artifact found in the Republic of Macedonia. The artist depicts a sitting male body, and shows details of his spine, ribs, navel, and phallus. The piece is now exhibited in the Skopje City Museum.
• Ain Sakhri lovers, an 11,000 year-old figurine from the Ain Sakhri caves near Bethlehem, is the oldest known representation of humans engaged in sex.^[1] It is now displayed in the British Museum.
• Bird stones (5,000 to 2,500 years old) are portable bird-shaped stone sculptures created by generations of North American sculptors.
• Bison Licking Insect Bite, an app. 15,000-year-old carved and engraved fragment of a spear-thrower made of reindeer antler, the piece depicts a member of the now extinct Bison species steppe wisent. The artist carved the bison's head turned to its right and licking itself as if bitten by an insect.^[2] It's exhibited in the National Museum of Prehistory in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, not far from where it was found.
• Elk's Head of Huittinen is an eight to 9,000 year old sculpture exhibited at the National Museum of Finland.
• Löwenmensch, or Lion Man, is an ivory sculpture that is both the oldest known animal-shaped sculpture in the world and, at 40,000 years,^[3] the oldest known uncontested example of figurative art. The sculpture is now housed in the Ulm Museum in Ulm, Germany.
• Mammoth spear thrower, a spear thrower carved by the artist into the form of a Mammoth, was discovered at the rock shelter of Montastruc, Tarn-et-Garonne, France. It is now exhibited in the British Museum.

Magdalenian Horse, c. 15,000 BCE, Musée d'Archéologie Nationale, France

• Montastruc decorated stone is an app. 13,000 years old scratched or engraved human figure on a piece of limestone – which appears to be female –used as a lamp. From Courbet Cave, France, it now resides in the British Museum.
• Perforated baton with low relief horse is from Abri de la Madeleine, an overhanging cliff situated near Tursac in France, and is stored in the British Museum.
• Pinhole Cave Man, or Pin Hole Cave Man, has become the common name for an engraving of a human figure on a woolly rhinoceros rib bone. The piece was found in Pin Hole Cave, Creswell Crags, Derbyshire, England, and is now in the British Museum.
• Robin Hood Cave Horse (previously known as the Ochre Horse). This fragment of rib that the artist engraved with a horse's head was discovered in the Robin Hood Cave in Creswell Crags, Derbyshire, England. It is the only animal-related Upper Paleolithic portable artwork ever found in Britain.^[4][5] Robin Hood Cave Horse is now housed in the British Museum.
• The Shigir Idol, a 11,000 years old wooden sculpture, resides in the Historic Exhibition Museum in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
• Swimming Reindeer is a 13,000-year-old (Magdalenian) sculpture of two swimming reindeer ornately carved from the tusk of a mammoth. The sculpture is now in the British Museum.
• The Alunda moose is a Neolithic artistic stone axe c.2000 B.C. that was found in Uppland, Sweden. It is displayed in the Swedish History Museum.
• Stone circle
  • List of stone circles
  • Stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany

Cave paintings and other rock art

The artist depicts a group of wild or domesticated horses. (from Chauvet Cave in France)

Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain

• In September 2018, scientists reported the discovery of the earliest known drawing by Homo sapiens, which is estimated to be 73,000 years old, much earlier than the 43,000 years old artifacts understood to be the earliest known modern human drawings found previously.^[6]

• The Petroglyph (incised rock art) article features a list of petroglyph sites
• Altamira cave (Spain) – in 1879 the first prehistoric paintings and drawings were discovered in this cave, which soon became famous for their depth of color and depictions of animals, hands, and abstract shapes.
• Bhimbetka rock shelters (India) – the shelters, decorated with art from 30,000 years ago, contain the oldest evidence of artists exhibiting their work on the Indian sub-continent.
• Bradshaw rock paintings (Australia) – Aboriginal artists painted well over a million paintings in this site in the Kimberley, many of human figures ornamented with accessories such as bags, tassels and headdresses.^[7] These artworks are well over 20,000 years old.
• Cantabria cave (Spain)
• Çatalhöyük (Turkey) – probably the best preserved large Neolithic site, its artwork includes murals, figurines, and depictions of animals. The Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük was found here.
• Chauvet Cave (France) – some of the earliest cave paintings known, and considered among the most important prehistoric art sites.
• Chufin cave (Spain) – small cave with engravings, stick figures, and artwork schematically portraying red deer, goats and cattle.
• Coliboaia cave (Romania) contains the oldest known cave paintings of Central Europe, radiocarbon dated to 32,000 and 35,000 BP, corresponding to the Aurignacian and Gravettian cultures of the Paleolithic period.
• Cuciulat cave (Romania) features several red paintings of animals, including horses and felines, which are about 12,000 years old. These were the first manifestations of this kind known in Central Europe.
• Cueva de las Manos (Cave of Hands) (Argentina) – a series of caves exhibiting hundreds of outlines of human hands, hunting scenes, and animals painted 13,000 to 9,000 years ago.
• Côa Valley (Portugal) – artists engraved thousands of drawings of horses and other animal, human and abstract figures in open-air artwork completed 22,000 to 10,000 years ago.
• Cosquer Cave (France) – hand stencils from 27,000 years ago, and 19,000-year-old animal drawings that portray bison, ibex, horses, seals and what may be auks and jellyfish, showcase this gallery.
• Draa River (Morocco)

A 16,000-year-old masterwork from the Lascaux cave in France

Rock carving of Pelorovis antiquus at Tassili n'Ajjer, southern Algeria

• El Castillo cave, one of the Monte Castillo caves (Spain) – contains decorations in red ochre paint which has been blown onto the walls in the forms of hand stencils as long as 37,000 years ago, and painted dots. One faint red dot has been dated to 40,800 years ago, making it the oldest dated cave decoration in the world.^[8][9] It is 5,000-10,000 years older than caves so-far found in France.^[10][11]
• Font-de-Gaume in south-west France contains over 200 polychrome paintings and engravings from artists who worked over 17,000 years ago. The cave's most famous painting is a frieze of five bison, although renditions of many other animals, including wolves, are featured.
• Gabarnmung (Australia) – this rock-art site in the Northern Territory features the oldest artwork in Australia at over 28,000 years. Aboriginal artists painted fish, crocodiles, people, and spiritual figures, mostly on the site's ceilings.^[12][13]
• Caves of Gargas, France, features numerous negative hand stencils, some with one or more fingers absent.
• Kapova cave in southern Ural Mountains (Russia) – presently 173 monochromatic ochre rock paintings and charcoal drawings or their traces are documented, presenting Pleistocene animals and abstract geometric motives. They are about 18,000 – 16,000 years old, from Late Solutrean to Middle Magdalenian.
• Lascaux caves (France) – contains some of the best known artworks of early painters, many of those portraying large animals.
• La Marche (France) – due to the style the legitimacy of the cave paintings here are in dispute.
• La Pasiega cave (Spain) – an art gallery created in prehistoric times, the exhibition of artwork here runs for at least 120 meters. Contains ladder-shaped abstract drawings dated to older than 64,800 years and thus presumably the work of Neanderthal artists.
• Les Combarelles (France) – two galleries showcase more than 600 engravings. The more-than-11,000-year-old artwork portrays such subjects as reindeer drinking water from the river that flows through the cave, cave bears, cave lions, mammoths, and various symbols.^[14]
• Malipo's 4000+ year old 'Great King' pictographs at Wenshan Prefecture, Yunnan, China.
• Roc-aux-Sorciers (France) – a rock shelter famous for its 14,000-year-old relief wall carvings.
• Rock carvings at Alta (Norway) – artwork includes images of Bear worship.
• Rock art of Figuig (Morocco) – engravings from the Neolithic age.
• Rock art of south Oran (Algeria)
• Rock art of the Djelfa region (Algeria)
• Rock art of the Iberian Mediterranean Basin
• Saharan rock art – there are over three thousand known sites where artists carved or painted on the natural rocks of the central Sahara desert. From the Tibesti Mountains to the Ahaggar Mountains, the Sahara is an open-air museum containing numerous works by artists of the era.
• Santimamiñe cave (Spain)
• Sydney rock engravings (Australia) – Contains around 1,500 pieces of Aboriginal rock art, which date from 5,000 to 7,000 years old.^[15]
• Tadrart Acacus (Libya) – rock art with engravings of humans and flora and fauna, which date from 12,000 BCE to 100 CE.
• Tassili n'Ajjer (Algeria) – over 15,000 pastoral and natural engravings; the earliest rock art is from around 12,000 years before present, with most dating to the 9th and 10th millennia BP or younger.
• Toquepala Caves (Peru) – "Abrigo del Diablo" and the other caves contain at least 50 noted pieces. The artists used paint made from hematite, and painted in seven colors with red being dominant.^[16][17][18]

Figurines

The Venus of Monruz is an 11,000 year-old stylized pendant, 18 mm in height.

Prehistoric figurines made from stone, ceramic or other materials have been found around the world. Notable examples included the Venus figurines of Upper Palaeolithic Europe and female anthropomorphic figurines from Neolithic Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe.^[19]

• Venus of Brassempouy, also known Dame à la Capuche ("Lady with the Hood") is a fragmentary ivory figurine from 25,000 years ago. One of the earliest known realistic representations of a human face, the artwork is in the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris^[20]
• Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük is a baked-clay nude female form seated between feline-headed arm-rests which is missing its original head and right side hand rest (although reconstructions of the artist's possible intent have been added). Resides at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, Turkey.
• The Venus of Hohle Fels is an Upper Paleolithic Venus figurine made of mammoth ivory that was located near Schelklingen, Germany. It is dated to between 35,000 and 40,000 years ago,^[21] belonging to the early Aurignacian, at the very beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, which is associated with the earliest presence of Cro-Magnon in Europe. This female figure is the oldest undisputed example of a depiction of a human being yet discovered. In terms of figurative art only the lion-headed, zoomorphic Löwenmensch figurine is older. The Venus figurine is housed at the Museum in Blaubeuren (Urgeschichtliches Museum Blaubeuren).
• Venus of Dolní Věstonice is a Venus figurine, a ceramic statuette of a nude female figure dated to 29,000–25,000 BCE (Gravettian industry). It was found at the Paleolithic site Dolní Věstonice in the Moravian basin south of Brno, in the base of Děvín Mountain (Czech Republic).
• Venus of Galgenberg
• Venus figurines of Gönnersdorf
• Venus of Hohle Fels
• Venus of Laussel
• Venus of Lespugue
• Venus figurines of Mal'ta
• Venus of Buret'
• Venus of Monruz
• Venus of Moravany
• Venus of Petřkovice
• Venus of Savignano
• Venus of Willendorf
• Westray Wife

Swimming Reindeer, a 13,000-year-old mammoth-tusk sculpture now residing in the British Museum, depicts a female on the right and a male on the left.

See also

References