Module 7

• Prehistoric art


  • Art made before cultures developed more complicated ways of expression and communication, such as a written language
• Prehistoric art


  • Cave paintings
  • Prehistoric sculpture (e.g. Venus figurines)
  • Monoliths (e.g. Gobekli Tepe)
• Prehistoric artists


  • Constrained by the resources available to them at the time
  • Used tools and canvases that were easily available, such as cave walls, bones, and pigments like ochre and burnt wood
  • Painted on surfaces with various pigments
  • Carved images on bone, stone, and walls
  • Created clay sculpture and pottery using local resources
• Periods of prehistory


  • Paleolithic
  • Mesolithic
  • Neolithic
• Paleolithic period


  When hunter-gatherers roamed Europe between 40,000 and 10,000 BCE
• Paleolithic art


  • Stone figures and implements
  • Cave paintings (e.g. Lascaux)
  • Sensuous female figures (Venus figurines)
• Mesolithic period


  • Lasted from 10,000 to 5000 BCE
  • Creation of the bow and arrow
  • Development of fishing
  • Earliest agricultural cultivation
• Neolithic era


  • Thousands of large stone buildings and earthworks
  • Menhirs (giant standing stones)
  • Dolmens (vertical stones supporting a stone roof)
  • Earthworks such as mounds and trenches
• Prehistoric art


  • African rock art (e.g. Apollo 11 and Wonderwerk Caves)
  • Painted caves in Europe (e.g. Lascaux and Chauvet)
  • Rock art in Australia (e.g. Ubirr)
• Egypt is known from modest scatters of stone tools and animal bones at such sites as Wadi Kubbaniya
• Why is prehistoric art mostly depicting everyday life?

  • Art is an essential aspect of any civilization
  • Once basic human needs are met, cultures begin producing artwork
  • This process began in the Predynastic Period in Egypt through images of animals, human beings, and supernatural figures
• Egyptian art


  • Images were created with the intention of benefiting a divine or deceased receiver
  • Statues have a formal frontality (oriented straight ahead) as they were created to face the ritual being performed before them
• The majority of Egyptian artworks were never intended to be seen - they were produced for lower-status people and served the same purpose as those made for the elite
• The works on exhibit in museums are the result of royal or elite workshops and are the most compatible with our modern aesthetic and concepts of beauty