rekordy: Sculpture in Scotland

Evidence: 52 • authority: 88

The Oldest Portable Art: the Aurignacian Ivory Figurines from the Swabian Jura (Southwest Germany). Four cave sites in the Swabian Jura have yielded a spectacular array of portable art: Hohle Fels, Geißenklösterle, Vogelherd, and Hohlenstein-Stadel. Some of these ivory figurines are well known, and others less so. In all, about fifty such objects or fragments of objects are known from the region. They occur in the same archeological levels where have been found musical instruments (flutes) and early examples of painting. Drawing on recent research as well as archival records from earlier excavations, this contribution chose a simple question- and-answer format in order to revisit issues of…

Evidence: 38 • authority: 92

Divergence in the evolution of Paleolithic symbolic and technological systems: The shining bull and engraved tablets of Rocher de l'Impératrice.. The development of the Azilian in Western Europe 14,000 years ago is considered a "revolution" in Upper Paleolithic Archaeology. One of the main elements of this rapid social restructuring is the abandonment of naturalistic figurative art on portable pieces or on cave walls in the Magdalenian in favor of abstract expression on small pebbles. Recent work shows that the transformation of human societies between the Magdalenian and the Azilian was more gradual. The discovery of a new Early Azilian site with decorated stones in France supports this hy…

Evidence: 38 • authority: 92

Boats on the rocks: Late prehistoric nautical iconography and landscape, from Northwest Iberia to Scandinavia.. This paper offers a comparative analysis of prehistoric rock art boat depictions found across northwest Iberia and southern Scandinavia. We apply advanced digital documentation techniques, including high-resolution 3D recording and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based landscape analysis, to study the Iberian petroglyphs' iconography and geographic placement in detail. The study identifies significant typological and iconographic parallels between Northwest Iberia and Nordic images, which provides a comparative basis to propose a Late Bronze Age chronology (c. 1300-800 BCE) f…

Evidence: 38 • authority: 72

The visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the visual artistic practices of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from ancient times to the present. These include works from South America and North America, which includes Central America and Greenland. The Siberian Yupiit, who have great cultural overlap with Native Alaskan Yupiit, are also included. Indigenous American visual arts include portable arts, such as painting, basketry, textiles, or photography, as well as monumental works, such as architecture, land art, public sculpture, or murals. Some Indigenous art forms coincide with Western art forms; however, some, such as porcupine quillwork or birchbark biti…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

In archaeology, a stone ball or petrosphere (from Greek πέτρα (petra), "stone", and σφαῖρα (sphaira), "ball") is the name for any spherical man-made object of any size that is composed of stone. These mainly prehistoric artifacts may have been created or selected, but altered in some way to perform their specific function, including carving and painting. Several classes of petrospheres exist, such as: the stone spheres of Costa Rica, painted pebbles from Scotland, stone charms from Scotland and sandstone balls from such sites as Traprain Law, the carved stone balls, which are mainly from Scotland, although they have also been found in Cumbria and Ireland, and carved stone shot for cannons a…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Carved stone balls are petrospheres dated from the Late Neolithic, to possibly as late as the Iron Age, mainly found in Scotland, but also elsewhere in Britain and Ireland. They are usually round and rarely oval, and of fairly uniform size at around 2+3⁄4 inches or 7 cm across, with anything between 3 and 160 protruding knobs on the surface. They range from having no ornamentation (apart from the knobs) to extensive and highly varied engraved patterns. A wide range of theories has been produced to explain their use or significance, with none gaining very wide acceptance. They are not to be confused with the much larger smooth round stone spheres of Costa Rica.

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Links of Noltland was a large prehistoric settlement located on the north coast of the island of Westray in Orkney, Scotland. The extensive ruins includes several late Neolithic and early Bronze Age dwellings and is place of discovery of the Westray Wife figurine, uncovered during an excavation in 2009. Historic Environment Scotland established the site as a scheduled monument in 1993.

Evidence: — • authority: 72

This timeline of prehistoric Scotland is a chronologically ordered list of important archaeological sites in Scotland and of major events affecting Scotland's human inhabitants and culture during the prehistoric period. The period of prehistory prior to occupation by the genus Homo is part of the geology of Scotland. Prehistory in Scotland ends with the arrival of the Romans in southern Scotland in the 1st century AD and the beginning of written records. The archaeological sites and events listed are the earliest examples or among the most notable of their type. No traces have yet been found of either a Neanderthal presence or of Homo sapiens during the Pleistocene interglacials, the first…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The Westray Wife (also known as the Orkney Venus) is a small Neolithic figurine, 4 centimetres (1.6 in) in height, carved from sandstone. It was discovered during an Historic Scotland dig at the Links of Noltland, on Westray, Orkney, Scotland, in the summer of 2009. It was the first Neolithic carving of a human form to have been found in Scotland, and to date it is the earliest depiction of a face found in the United Kingdom. A second figurine of about the same size and shape as the Westray Wife, but made from clay, and missing its head, was discovered by archaeologists at the same Links of Noltland site during the summer of 2010. This figurine, 3.4 centimetres (1.3 in) in height, has a rec…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Prehistoric art in Scotland is visual art created or found within the modern borders of Scotland, before the departure of the Romans from southern and central Britain in the early fifth century CE, which is usually seen as the beginning of the early historic or Medieval era. There is no clear definition of prehistoric art among scholars and objects that may involve creativity often lack a context that would allow them to be understood. The earliest examples of portable art from what is now Scotland are highly decorated carved stone balls from the Neolithic period, which share patterns with Irish and Scottish stone carvings. Other items from this period include elaborate carved maceheads and…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Sculpture in Scotland includes all visual arts operating in three dimensions in the borders of modern Scotland. Durable sculptural processes traditionally include carving (the removal of material) and modelling (the addition of material), in stone, metal, clay, wood and other materials. In the modern era, these were joined by assembly by welding, modelling, moulding and casting. Some installation art can also be considered to be sculpture. The earliest surviving sculptures from Scotland are standing stones and circles from around 3000 BCE. The oldest portable visual art are carved-stone petrospheres, and the Westray Wife is the earliest representation of a human face found in Scotland. From…