Articles
Altamira Cave, SpainAltamira cave is Spain is one of the most pristine examples of paleolithic cave art, but the pictographs discovery is rooted in controversyRead more
Chauvet Cave the discovery of 36,000-year-old artalmost 30 years ago explorers forced their way into Chauvet cave in France, what they found astounded the world.Read more- Dstretch, an algorithm adapted from NASA helps us see ancient rock artHow do we see rock art that is mostly faded away?Read more
- The New York Times says we are one of five accounts you should follow on InstagramThe 36,000 year old Horse Panel of Chauvet This week, New York Times arts critic Martha Schwendener called the Ancient Art Archive one of the 5 instagram accounts that you should follow right now. “…the Ancient Art Archive journeys to caves, mesas, buttes and other sites around the world, documenting the paintings and marks made by our ancient ancestors.” She called out two of our posts in particular, one from Chauvet Cave in France and another from the Maze Panel in Arizona. The Maze Panel in the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument. It is an honor to be featured in the Times. The explosive growth of our Instagram feed shows what we have long known, people are hungry for these images from the past.Read more
- Hard dates on the Kimberly Paintings 17,000 years ago!An article published today in the Journal Nature Human Behavior (here subscription requited) establishes the date of some of the Kimberly rock art paintings as 17,000 years ago. Rock art is notoriously hard to date. The authors of the study took radio carbon dates from wasp nests built on top of paintings to establish minimum dates. One painting in particular is dated to between 17,500 and 17,100 years ago by dating material in overlying and underlying nests. CNN provides and excelent synopsis here.Read more
- Bears Ears National Monument is 3 years oldThe Bears Ears National Monument is 3 years old!Read more
- Big News from IndonesiaThere was big news from Indonesian earlier this month. A multinational team has identified the oldest known figurative paintings in the world on the island of Sulawesi. The new dates 44,000 years BP are in line -yet older- than other dates from Sulawesi and Borneo. In their paper in Nature Maxime Aubert has identified not just animals but therianthropes “abstract beings that combine the qualities of both people and animals.” (there is an excellent discussion of the article in Smithsonian) Six humanoid figures with animal features surround an anoa, a small type of buffalo, in a 44,000-year-old Indonesian cave mural. (Ratno Sardi) Therianthropes are incredibly rare in paleolithic cave art. The most famous example is the transforming bison from Chauvet made famous by Cave of Forgotten Dreams and there is a lesser-known anthropomorphic figure from Tito Bustillo in Spain. A therianthrope figure in Tito Bustillo cave, Spain. Aubert’s find further confirms...Read more
- Platinum Palladium PrintMaster platinum-palladium printer and Guggenheim Grant winner Pradip Malde produced an exquisite, limited-edition print to support the Ancient Art Archive. Pradip and I chose a photograph of the Head of Sinbad rock art site on the San Rafael Swell in Central Utah for this print. The paintings are Barrier Canyon Style and thought to be between 2,000 and 4,000 years old. I shot the image this spring with Pradip’s printing in mind. Platinum print by Pradip Malde, image by Stephen Alvarez image size approximately 9" x 14"Read more
- Good News for the San Rafael SwellBuckhorn Wash Pictograph Panel on the San Rafael Swell Those of you who have been following the Ancient Art Archive's work are familiar with our efforts to document Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) artworks. BCS is one of North America's most enigmatic and evocative styles. It is known, primarily from the San Rafael Swell of Central Utah. In general conservation news has been bad in Utah for the past few years. Both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monuments were significantly reduced. However, last month a mammoth public lands bill passed both the House and Senate that will increase protections on many National Lands. Among many other things the bill adds 660,000 acres of wilderness designation to Emery County Utah, home of much of the San Rafael Swell. You can read more here. The Rochester Rock Art Panel in Emery County UtahRead more
Pahranagat representational stylePahranagat anthropomorphic figures are unique to the Pahranagat Valley of Southern Nevada. There are two types of figures;Read more- Grotte Pair-non-Pair, Aquitaine FranceThe paleolithic cave Pair-non-Pair was found when a farmer went looking for a lost cow who had fallen in a hole, the cave he discoveredRead more
- A nearly 1 million year old hominid fossil in EuropeA recent study of a hominid tooth found in the Atapuerca Mountains of Spain has confirmed through direct dating that the fossilized remains are nearly 1 million years old. The dating estimate is between 750,000 and 950,000 years before present. It is consistent with sediment deposits at the site but represents the first direct date from a hominid that old. The ESR dating and challenges are explained in Phys.org here. The Atapuerca Mountains have continued to yield very interesting clues about the first hominid inhabitants of Europe. While this new discovery confirms previous associated dates it is exciting in that it opens up the possibility that there will be other direct dates from Hominid fossils both in and out of Europe.Read more
- The story of human evolution is written in ochreMixing ochre paint under a tree in Omungunda Namibia. "Smeared on shells, piled in graves, stamped and stenciled on cave walls from South Africa to Australia, Germany to Peru, ochre has been a part of the human story since our very start — and perhaps even earlier. For decades, researchers believed the iron-rich rocks used as pigment at prehistoric sites had symbolic value. But as archaeologists turn up evidence of functional uses for the material, they’re realizing early humans’ relationship with ochre is more complex." read more in Discover Magazine hereRead more
- New light on human evolutionNew light on human evolution Groundbreaking research puts human evolution in a new perspective as significant archaeological findings reveals sign of modern human behavior 300 000 years ago. "This discovery suggests that the earliest African Homo sapiens populations were already cognitively, socially and technologically complex", says Francesco d’Errico. He is a professor at UiB and Principal Investigator at the Centre for Early Sapiens Behavior (SapienCE). He is also part of the international team behind the remarkable findings in Kenya, and one of the co-authors of the article that has been published in Science, covering these discoveries. Sophisticated early life It is not every day that investigators stumble over findings that can change the understanding of human history, but these particular discoveries may be just one of these great moments. Francesco d’Errico is not denying the fact that these discoveries are significant. Continue Reading on UIB.NORead more
