Subtle Artifacts:
Utilization of Serendipitous Stone Media in a
Licking County Paleolithic Flint Votive Sculpture Hoard 

Kenneth B. Johnston

Hebron, OH

kennethbjohnston@hotmail.com

I.  INTRODUCTION         
In 2010, seven flint sculptures were found in close common context in disturbed garden soil, Licking County, Ohio. The material is Vanport chert, locally sourced from Flint Ridge, arguably one of the most beautiful and highest quality cherts in North America.

http://roymillerflintridge.com/

http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=2217

http://dnr.state.oh.us/geo/flint/tabid/11702/Default.aspx

http://www1.newark.ohio-state.edu/Professional/OSU/Faculty/jstjohn/Flint-Ridge/Flint-Ridge.htm

The artifacts were initially identified as flint manuports for intended tool manufacture but a later closer examination revealed significant human agency on the artifacts with intended anthropomorphic and zoomorphic iconography.  The primary images depicted by the sculptures, each standing in correct viewing orientation on a designed base, has been interpreted after much consideration and research as follows:

1)    Feline head (“lion”) 11lb slightly curved and leaning panel which stands upright

2 )   Human head 11lb sculpture in the round with grotesque left eye depiction 

3 )   Flint and crystal owl with bird at eye in movement, third bird perched at beak

4 )   Rabbit/ground squirrel split animals sharing same prominent teeth in stone

5)   Human head sharing horned bovid head/eye, second profile with proboscidean ear

6)   Short-faced bear head split with crude human head

7)   Letter “n" skull shaped sculpture with bearded man profile facing away, Janus-like

The sculptures, individual photos seen below after this introductory paper, strongly correlate to the European Pleistocene themes and types described by early art scholar Pietro Gaietto at his Museum of the Origins of Man.  The Ohio sculptures, along with a female figurine (seen in detail on Coarse Stone Art page) found 1200 feet away, represent the first 7 of the 8 types described by Gaietto here:  
http://www.museoorigini.it/pagina38.html

Richard J. Wilson (U.K.) writes of (Patterson 1983):
"He places value on recognising the patterns that characterise artefactuality including frequency:  Even if nature can produce lithic objects resembling simple man-made items, nature is not likely to do this often. Therefore, the frequency of occurrence at a given location of specimens with similar morphologies is important in demonstrating probable manufacturing patterns. Production of numerous lithic specimens with consistent morphology is certainly not a habit of nature. (Wilson, 2010). (emphasis added in bold)

II.  STONE WORKING TECHNOLOGIES USED TO MAKE THE SCULPTURES
        The manufacture methods used on the seven sculptures do not have the hallmarks of human agency many people look for from their experience with flint tools: free-flaking (hard and soft hammer knapping) and pressure-flaking.  The sculptures were made using ideal starting forms likely identified as potentially suggestive of the animals and people they now represent during the tool material procurement process.  A technology used was bipolar flint reduction using a partially buried anvil and a hammer.  Christopher Hardaker, author of First American, has a website which will be of interest to anyone interested in lithic technologies:
http://earthmeasure.com/bipolar/index_bipolar.html

http://www.amazon.com/First-American-Suppressed-People-Discovered/dp/1564149420

http://earthmeasure.com/first-american.html

JWP van der Drift, with 30 years of experience at collecting and interpreting old palaeolithic tools and a veterinarian in the Netherlands, writes in his 2009 paper "Bipolar Techniques in the Old-Palaeolithic:"

Schick and Toth (Making Silent Stones Speak) claim that “stone flaked by humans normally exhibits a breakage pattern that geologists call conchoidal fracture.” Most archaeology students learn the doctrine that this conchoidal fracture pattern distinguishes artifacts from geofacts. But we have seen in chapter 1 that the conchoidal fracture is based upon the idiomorphic or neutral cone shape. And we have seen in chapter 2 that bipolar fractures are not based on the idiomorphic or neutral cone. That makes it a simple and undeniable fact that bipolar fractures are not conchoidal fractures. Fortunately the oblique (or non-axial) bipolar percussion products often resemble conchoidal fractures and therefor they are often recognised as artifacts, certainly if there is a good archaeological context like in Vértesszölös or Tautavel. But unfortunately many bipolar artifacts have been rejected in the past for not fitting the doctrine of having the correct diagnostic features. (emphasis added in bold)
http://www.apanarcheo.nl/bipolair%20apanarcheo.pdf

Sometimes a hammer and an intermediate tool like a chisel was used.  Other human agency is exhibited by drilling to remove stone and make holes.  There is also evidence of grinding rough areas down to smooth surfaces to provide contrasting materials.  Just as the consideration of bipolar technology greatly expands the stone tool-set available for archaeological study, considered use of this technology and lesser known non-percussive stone working techniques in artistic endeavors must now expand the known morphologies of portable North American Ice Age art.  

The dichotomous approach of archaeology toward art and tools, where an artifact can generally be one or the other but generally not both, must no longer pervade because it precludes the identification of simple iconography incorporated into tools as a matter of routine.  Headway is made here thanks to Clovis point technology.  For many, an exquisite Clovis point is high-art.  Additionally, its basal concavity and fluting may indeed have had a symbolic meaning or meaning set associated with it.  However, just because some tools are so aesthetically pleasing to us today, or may have had meaning beyond their utilitarian purpose, does not mean tools per se are the only or preferred art forms archaeologists should keep eyes peeled for.  Quite the contrary:"There currently is a tendency among those having little knowledge of Paleolithic art to want or assume it to be useful in simple terms, to see it as primarily functional.... [but] we are faced here with at least two-thirds of art history, spanning 25 millennia and a vast area of the world. Indeed, when one takes into account such very early specimens as the Berekhat Ram figurine, Pleistocene art comprises about 99% of art history. ... It is obviously futile to try and encompass all this within one theory. "Paul G. Bahn, 1995/1996. New developments in Pleistocene art. Evolutionary Anthropology 4(6):213. III.  DESIRE OF THE ICE AGE ARTIST AND VIEWER:  PARTICIPATING IN AND DIRECTING THE OUTCOMES OF A COMPLEX INTERCONNECTEDNESS
Defining art: what is and what is not

1. requires creative perception both by the artist and by the audience

2. elusive

3. communicates on many levels and is open to many interpretations

4. connotes a sense of ability

5. interplay between the conscious and unconscious part of our being, between what is real and what is an illusion
6. any human creation which contains an idea other than its utilitarian purpose

This above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from  this Wikipedia article.
In her book The Creative Ice Age Brain,http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Ice-Age-Brain/dp/1934171107/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1296340452&sr=8-8
art historian Barbara Olins Alpert writes:  “The artistic use of found objects largely disappeared from the official art of the sophisticated European world until it was revived with bravura by the Surrealists, who carried the process to an outrageous conclusion.  Marcel Duchamp distinguished between objects that were usable as art just as he found them, which he called “ready-mades,” and objects that needed some addition or some modification, which he called “rectified objects.””

The Buckeye Lake Paleolithic Flint Votive Sculpture Hoard of artifacts may be thought of as rectified natural objects of their time.  In a likely animistic view of the world, the sky, rivers, even rocks, are often seen as alive or as an inseparable part of a wholly living and spirited world.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism

When a found stone was perceived as being a start to a greater possibility of images representing animals or people, artistic rectification was undertaken to complete the imagery to a desired end form.  Thus, an even greater connectedness, an intimate relationship to the spirit world in association with the sculpture object, is established.  It is a transformational process, uniting the physical and metaphysical worlds. The significance of this connectedness to found natural materials as an artistic medium is described by a 20th century artist:

“I don’t design my work.  I don’t carve it.  I just make what I see from found objects.  The wood- the insects has already created what it is, and time.  Time rots away a lot of wood, and inside that wood, these little people hide.  I just go to them and find what I see and bring it out.  I think that God is the artist in my work.  I’m just the hands that he blessed to do and the mind and the eyes that he blesses to do it for a purpose, and the purpose is to reassure the people that God’s love is real and it’s true.  It’s the only way we are going to survive here….. Most artists, our kind, especially the black ones, say they work for God.”  Bessie Harvey, eastern Tennessee, U.S.A., folk artist (pp 112- 113, Olins Alpert).  

According to Olins Alpert, “Dealing with such materials, found by chance, the artist often feels that the object’s serendipitous appearance and the intuitive sense he or she feels about how the material must be used are a spiritual communication.”   This relationship to the spirit world makes anthropomorphic and zoomorphic sculptures such these, especially when found in groupings, likely foci of shamanistic beliefs and practices.  The shaman often invokes animal and ancestral images as spirit guides, omens and message-bearers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism

This is how such “rough” or “crude” or “geofact-looking” sculptures to us today can actually have had the greatest of possible religious significance to the peoples who made and used them thousands of years ago.  They are messages from the other-world, modulated by the artist and then participated in by viewers who are also required to actively experience their own perception and interpretation.  An affirmation of the images in the sculptures by the viewers creates interrelationships among them, the natural material, the sculpture artifact, the artist and/or the shaman, the other-world and the spirit of existence.

IV.  THE ORDEAL WITH “EXPERTS”:  A TRANS-ATLANTIC SHARED EXPERIENCE
        The art sculpture modality of the Pleistocene has long been identified, described and openly made available to any interested party.  For fully 25 years, Ursel Benekendorff of Germany has been gathering, curating and studying the largest collection of Pleistocene stone art in the world.  http://www.schafftwissen.de/index.htmlBenekendorff discovered and identified a remarkable site at Pampau, in gravel bed excavations and attempted to call attention to her context and finds. Benekendorff’s words here are two decades old and still ring true: This research grew out of a confusing even misleading evaluation of human traces on the most lasting of all materials STONE. The private initiative induced to recover artifacts, that were considered of "no archeological  value" by the authorities, took place now  without any  prehistoric studies, special knowledge about ART nor any training or experience of stone shaping or  knapping. But it was precisely the lack of interest or responsibility of such trained persons, that "ignited" here personal activities. It was simply customary when presenting "unknown,” but artificially shaped objects of stone, to any "official person," that they became often very conveniently, completely rejected, in an argumentative way, not fully to the understanding of the finder. Explanations such as "nature-freaks", shaped by geo-dynamic forces, seemed adequate to provide for a disqualification. These decisive circumstances were met here again,  as well as more problems connected and revealed  gave not only me  some more "insight" on the subject matter with a very long history, but is  now hoped to "open eyes" also to all, who  will be  confronted with similar experiences. (U. Benekendorff, 1990-1991).  http://www.schafftwissen.de/index.html

Among archaeologists, there seems to be a limiting fear of being influenced by pareidolia, the psychological phenomenon of inferring meaning from random sensory data, to the extent they will infer no meaning on objects or deny its possibility.

http://pleistocenecoalition.com/newsletter/january-february2011.pdf#page=18

Alan Day, Cambridge, Ohio, (Guernsey County) writes of this phenomena.  Alan seriously revisited the "almost lost figure stone concept" pioneered by Boucher de Perthes.  Day’s Knob, a registered site in the Ohio Archaeological Inventory, is located about 70 miles east of the Ohio sculpture hoard find location.  Alan and his website have been greatly informative to this author.

"After many rather Kafkaesque experiences presenting to archaeologists the figure stones from my now very large collection of these ("I don't see it.  It's not there.  You're just imagining it.", etc.), in 2007 I seized upon an opportunity to call their bluff by testing one of these (a particularly compelling one consistently rejected by archaeologists as "amorphous") against image-processing software developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.  (A doctorate- level professor of geology and petrologist had earlier assessed this piece as having a high level of probability of artificial modification.)..."  Read the rest of his account at this weblink.

http://www.daysknob.com/Face_Recognition.htm

 
Max Planck Society, July, 2010, paper press release "Recognition at First Glance" http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/documentation/pressReleases/2010/pressRelease201007011/index.html

Richard Wilson, of England, a long-time independent investigator of Pleistocene art,  has delivered the much needed paper of our time, convincingly demonstrating the great likelihood that Jacques Boucher de Perthes was as equally correct positing the pierres-figures (figure stones) phenomenon, a primitive art enterprise around Abbeville, France, as he was with his revolutionary idea that humans may have been on the planet longer than the biblical account of a few thousand years.  He hypothesized ancient humans had used tools he found in association with fossilized bones of extinct fauna, a truly radical and unheard of proposition for its time.  Though his “antedelluvian man” theory finally got traction and was ultimately vindicated thanks to the emerging work of Sir Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin and others, his claims of having detected primitive stone art forms were roundly criticized and he was not able to gain attention for them before his death. Wilson's paper was presented Autumn 2010 at the International Federation of Rock Art Organizations (IFRAO) congress in France and rehabilitates Boucher De Perthes’  figure stone idea by unraveling the basis for its original invalidation and reassessing the evidence in a new light.  Boucher de Perthes's life work only now is upright on the two solid legs he intended:   Pleistocene art stands alongside Pleistocene tools.  Wilson’s work should signal students of Stone Age art and culture to begin to explore in earnest the possibilities presented by these more subtle stone art expressions of our ancestors and cousins.   Wilson’s work should also be considered an excellent independent context paper for the archaeological and analytical framework supporting the artifactuality of the imagery in the Ohio flint votive sculpture hoard artifacts detailed here.   Please see link below to WILSON R, “Cultural cobbles or a load of cobblers? Identifying artefactuality and the detection of iconography” Congrès de l’IFRAO, septembre 2010 – Symposium : L’art mobilier pléistocène (Pré-Actes) IFRAO Congress, September 2010 – Symposium: Pleistocene portable art (Pre-Acts).

http://ifraoariege2010.fr/docs/Articles/Wilson-ArtMobilier.pdf

Richard Wilson concludes his paper addressing the topic of intended iconography by taking on a familiar topic:

“It is proposed that the frequency of often palpable iconography –as seen in the CVA–is a credible indicator that there were processes at work above and beyond those that can be comfortably attributed to fortuity. The persistence and consistency of iconography identified co-occurring with intentional flaking and marking refutes the null hypothesis that they are purely a manifestation of pareidolia.” 

V.  THE BENEKENDORFF EXPERTISE HAS BEEN TWICE INDEPENDENTLY CONFIRMED
        The Benekendorff collection has been examined by two of the leading world scholars of Paleolithic art, mind, symbolism and stone work.  James B. Harrod, Ph. D., http://originsnet.org/
of Maine, U.S.A., writes an explicit endorsement calling for recognition, preservation and further scientific study.  Harrod’s compilation of once disorganized data on 500 old world archaeological sites, systematic descriptions of period art and tool technologies, then linking art/technology packages to major early hominin population diasporas, places him in a completely unique interdisciplinary approach to scientifically validate and geographically track the artistic and creative expressions of early people:
http://www.schafftwissen.de/23.html

Arsen Faradzhev, Pd. D., University of Moscow Dept. of Archaeology, acknowledges the palaeoart status of the Benekendorff collection and has written an analysis of several of the sculptures.  He addresses the role of the often selective archaeological investigator and the state of archaeological science in relation to the subject of very old stone art: 

The institutional researchers have the long list of systematical results received by several generations of scientists. Nevertheless, from time to time, it happens that young generations can see that scientists who promoted some views yesterday were equally wrong (Bednarik 2005, RAR Vol.22., n.2 p.148).

Therefore, it is an illusion that they are able to judge the point of view of the private collectors. However, everybody has to remember, that the scientists are searching for the truth and are not the truth bearers themselves. For such an example of a not proper scientific institutional judgment stands the field research assemblage of Mrs. Ursel Benekendorff from Geesthacht near Hamburg, Germany. http://www.schafftwissen.de/20.html

 VI.  TWO OHIO SCULPTURES EVIDENCE EUROPEAN CULTURAL INSTRUCTION VIA MORPHOLOGIC AND THEMATIC SIMILARITIES TO GERMANY SCULPTURES
        In early 2011, six months after the Ohio Paleolithic Votive Flint Sculpture Hoard was identified and initially interpreted, a more thorough online review of the Benekendorff collection revealed two flint sculptures, in particular, which correlate strongly to very similar flint sculptures from the Ohio group of seven.  On first sight, these two Benekendorff sculptures evoked a visceral similarity to the Ohio sculptures in their raw material selection, design, construction and intended imagery.  Further examination and study has confirmed the initial perceptions were directive and in fact go deeper into multi-levels of symbolic signification shared between the sculptures. 

The first, labeled Ohio sculpture #2 Human head, is similar to the Benekendorff sculpture identified as a “mask.”  A photo of the German sculpture may be seen below in sculpture #2 section.  The sculptures were independently interpreted by Johnston and Benekendorff, respectively, as having “grotesque left eye depiction” and “closed or missing left eye.”   Benekendorff presents several head shaped artifacts which demonstrate the repetition of the “one eye working” (usually the right eye looks open) theme.  Johnston noted an intentional and designed distortion of the entire left side of the Ohio mask face, following a vertical line of focus incised and carved out of the Ohio sculpture.  A similar line of visual distortion (looking like scar or wound) traverses vertically the left side of the face of the Benekendorff mask.  Both sculptures show the mask mouth in aghast positions.  Johnston described “significant calcite leaching” from the flint material of the artifact and Benekendorff described hers as made of two materials, flint and “calcit.”  The back ends of the Ohio and German masks both show additional anthropomorphic head/skull images according to Johnston and Benekendorff.

The second type match to the Benekendorff collection was made with Ohio sculpture #6 interpreted as a split bear/human head with two human head visages on the bear-side panel.  A photo of the German sculpture may be seen below in sculpture #6 section.  Benekendorff’s corresponding sculpture is not interpreted as a “bear” or “human head”  on her website and side 2 of the sculpture is not displayed in photos or described.  However, the standing orientation, organization, sloped angle of the sculpture’s neck truncation relative to the horizontal plane, and silhouetted profile, have multiple matching points, to scale, with Ohio #6 and statistically cannot be attributed to coincidence or independent co-invention.  The Ohio and the German sculptures are presenting the same idealized form, almost exactly reproduced by two learned and skilled artists on two continents.   This almost exact outline shape on both sculptures becomes the “canvas,” or alternately the “frame,” or both simultaneously as the artists likely had no concept of either as we do today. 

The artists then highlighted or revealed extant images (e.g. Benekendorff), and/or manufactured them in contrasting relief (e.g. Johnston), to each create two skull or ancestral forms/spirituous human heads on each sculpture.  In the German example, the heads are in a ghostly creamy white flint inclusion on a grey background.  The heads are in the upper right corner, joined at the nape of the neck and facing away from each other. 

The Ohio example has a brown flint abstract skull in relief vertically oriented on a pole transecting 2 and 8 o’clock in the upper right.  In the lower right a quartz crystalline inclusion on the flint appears to have had a semi-circular indent shape added to create the top of a head.  Then some grinding and incising was done on the crystal material to create eyes, nose and mouth a white and grey skull-like face.  The face is “faint” to detection on photos and highlights are made on a second, edited, photo on the artifact to show these location places so they can referenced on a plain photo of the artifact displayed nearby in Sculpture #6 section below.

As objects of cult or religious activities, the Ohio and Germany sculptures were not created randomly but rather are culturally determined.  The determination of the Ohio and German artists, however far separated by time and distance, is thus a shared aesthetic value, and a mediated method of artistic expression within the acceptable confines of well defined and shared ideological elements- perhaps even a more fully describable cultural tradition. 

VII.  OHIO n-TYPE SCULPTURE EVEN FURTHER CONFIRMS EUROPE CONNECTION 
        A fair visual comparison of Ohio votive hoard sculpture #7 to Gaietto’s #5.24 example of the same letter “n" shaped type, demonstrates even further compelling evidence of a European cultural influence on the maker(s) of the Ohio sculptures.  According to Gaietto, it represents a skull without jawbone with a second human depicted on the rear of the skull, facing away, Janus-like.  (A photo of Ohio #7 and more links to Gaietto's photos and work follow photos of sculptures 1-6 below).

The Ohio #7 sculpture cannot exist wholly independent, however far in time and distance, of influence from the peoples who made sculpture #5.24 found at Campo, Liguria, in northern Italy.  The morphology is too complex, so tied to deep culture, spirituality-- and so very similar, that Ohio #7 cannot be an artifact of independent invention or coincidence.

Gaietto's descriptions of letter “n" shaped or "two-headed" sculptures, first identified by Jacques Boucher de Perthes c. 1850, helped identify a bearded man right facial profile image on #7, which was not detected prior but found in place by Johnston as predicted by Gaietto.  The successful interpretation of the Ohio sculpture using previously described methods helps confirm its status as a European influenced American art sculpture.  Likewise, Gaietto's descriptions of proto-art, pre-sculpture and early sculpture of hominins, which is not accepted by mainstream archaeology, is validated by being applicable (replicable) and informative to this case and must be so credited and duly recognized.

VIII.  IBERIAN (NOT SIBERIAN) MIGRATION HYPOTHESIS COMPATABILITY 
        In Ohio sculpture sections #2, #6 and #7 below, it is shown via three comparative, common-on-two-continents, sophisticated, ritualistic and culture-bound art sculpture types, the two Benekendorff Germany examples and Gaietto's Italian example, that people of original European influence migrated into eastern North America early enough to be compatible with and explained by the "Solutrean north Atlantic ice-edge" migration hypothesis proposed most recently by Bradley and Stanford. 

http://planet.uwc.ac.za/nisl/Conservation%20Biology/Karen%20PDF/Clovis/Bradley%20&%20Stanford%202004.pdf

The Licking County Ohio Paleolithic Flint Votive Hoard is likely closely associated in time to the last glacial maximum (LGM, around 22,000 years BP). The sculptures are thus among the oldest art pieces in the Americas, putatively dated to ca. 18,000 to 15,000 BP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum

This is in line with radiocarbon date ranges of human activity in secure and controlled strata from Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Avella, Pennsylvania. The Ohio hoard location is at the terminus south west of Meadowcroft, which might have been attractive for people accustomed to living close to the glacial edge.  This edge is actually a bountiful environmemt because it means working two ecosystems for food in a relatively narrow corridor.  More menu diversity in seasonal transitions.  Meadowcroft is 109 miles as the crow flies from the Ohio sculpture hoard find location.  The glacier did not advance as far south and was 50 or so miles north of Meadowcroft.   Human activity would be possible in Licking County, Ohio, as the Wisconsinan glacier made its retreat. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadowcroft_Rockshelter

Ritualism, associated iconography and artistic expression, in the tradition of Eurasian relatives, such as Neanderthals, was likely shared in by some anatomically modern humans. See Washington University in St. Louis (2008, December 11). "The Last Neandertals? Late Neandertals And Modern Human Contact In Southeastern Iberia."  ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 3, 2011, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081209221750.htm

The Upper-Pleistocene Ohio sculpture makers were carrying a Middle-Pleistocene flavored religious art package with them out of Western Europe, perhaps preserved by Périgordians then their westward Atlantic ice-edge migrating descendants near the time of the LGM.  Thus, it is quite conceivable typically Mousterian sculpture forms like the human head/mask with distorted eye/left side of face and the two headed letter "n" shape, could wind up in early inhabited Ohio.  This is thanks to Homo sapiens sapiens and Neanderthals Europe comingling, then an ongoing population of Homo sapiens sapiens who maintained this culture in the Bay of Biscay area of southern France and Northern Spain during and after Neanderthals’ fade to black.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Cantabrian_region

IX.  CONCLUSION
The early American archaeologist Warren K. Moorehead wrote these words, which seem apropos.  Appreciate he wrote it 125 years ago:

“… The museums are full of axes, celts, pipes, banner stones, discoidals, hematites, tubes, slate ornaments and ceremonials, pestles, hammers, etc.  What the museums need (as of great value to Archaeological Science) are collections from a single locality including everything found in that locality.  They want the finds of the village site, the studies in unfinished specimens, the poor and the good, the imperfect as well as the perfect.  In this regard, the collectors make a great error.  Most of them do not save everything but cling to the ‘pretty relics’ and discard the rough and the rude.  Personally, I would give more for a collection, provided it contained all the types, all the finds of a certain valley than for just the fine, perfect objects of that valley.  From a collection of the latter, I would be misled, for if I accepted it as indicative of the people of that valley, I would say they made the most beautiful works of aboriginal art, nothing rude or unfinished being turned out by their artisans.  In such a statement, I would be unpardonably wrong (Moorehead, 1884-56).”

        To date, no group of artifacts like this flint votive sculpture hoard has been described in the Americas, likely, in part, because of the age and corresponding preservational rarity.  Most significantly, the imagery is so subtle, the morphology and manufacture technology so different from what most viewers, including archaeologists, expect, they are passed off as geofacts, misdiagnosed as manuports or forsaken as humanly impossible "lusus naturae," whims of nature.  Closer examination of the stone material proves human agency to create images, from which we must deduce express compositional, or artistic, intent.  It is time long overdue for recognition, collection, appreciation, curation, study and scientific validation of Stone Age art forms which have not been given their deserved consideration in the stories of our human origins, including the peopling of the Americas.  Now, there's a herd of Woolly Mammoth in the room.  

X.  EPILOGUE
        Please enjoy the photos and interpretations of these very unique American flint sculptures.  You'll discover naturalistic subtlety and artists' sophistication abound together in this earliest art of the Ohio River valley.  Several of the sculptures are evocative of the European masters of cave art, such as the feline head below with a complex side profile perspective... as if she has just noticed (you) out of the corners of both her eyes...  


#1 Feline head left profile view, tip of chin is far left, ear is rough area in lower right corner of frame.  Feline is seen looking sideways out of both eyes toward viewer.
American lion (Panthera leo atrox) now extinct







#2 Human head sculpture, full standing bust in the round, looking at face.  Flat forehead in sunlight at top, two eye sockets, chipped nose, mouth, chin and stands balanced on a base in viewing orientation.  11.2 lbs. is an anatomically correct weight of a head of a 150 lbs. human.  There has been significant leaching of calcite from this piece of flint giving it a bumpy appearance which also obscures the original image.



(Below, German Mask with closed left eye, distorted left side of face,  similar to Ohio example above which seems to depict the left eye hanging from the eye socket.  A similar line of visual distortion traverses vertically on the left side of both Ohio and Germany faces, as if to depict a wound or scar or similar disfigurement.)

Copyright 2011.  Ursel Benekendorff.  All Rights Reserved.


Ohio Sculpture # 2, back side, has human skull icon on back (tilt your head left to 11 o'clock for best viewing orientation) with a second face with eyes, nose, mouth emerging from it in the bottom left, seen as a rounded protrusion.

Below, the rear of the German mask also depicts another human facial form like the Ohio sculpture.

Copyright 2011.  Ursel Benekendorff.  All Rights Reserved.




#3  Flint and Crystal Owl with second bird, in flight (symbolic of life) at owl's eye on photo left, third bird just below the owl's beak (symbolic of death), carved in cookie cutter like silhouette.  See highlighted illustration below.







# 3 The Flint and Crystal Owl (front and back pictures above)
Is eight inches tall, a sculpture in the round.  The top of the owl’s head, including the eyes and beak, are quartz crystals which display a dazzling array of sparkles in the direct sunlight.  Evidence of cutting/scraping the crystal to make the final eyes and beak is present.  Beams of crystal reflection shoot from both of the owl’s eyes while facing south in the afternoon sunlight. While a current popular symbolic meaning of the owl is of "wisdom," the owl more often holds a symbolic place of "death" in world cultures, folklure and mythology, likely because of its predatory, silent flight and all-seeing nocturnal nature.

The Ohio owl has a small second bird image carved as if in flight (life), incorporated into the owl's eye at photo left and a third small bird in static profile just below the owl's beak (death).  The owl has built in hand grips on the bottom for the left and right hands where left stabilizes vertical orientation and right holds weight of owl, allowing it easily to be carried in a display position, facing away from the holder (hypothesized a shaman) toward his audience.  http://s813.photobucket.com/albums/zz56/kenbjohn/Flint%20and%20Crystal%20Owl%20Sculpture/ 

Back of owl with illustrated holds, interpretation of 2 more owls and 1 more bird/small mammal (outlines added illustration below):


This is the rear view of the owl, seen as the holder would see it, presenting the crystal studded front to a viewing audience.

a) The white arrow at left points up to a finger slot to accomodate the left hand middle finger, reaching around from the left front side of the sculpture.
b) A white line indicates a separation in the flint, creating finger grooves, which is not visible due to darkness. 
c) The second arrow from left pointing up indicates a seperate finger slot for the left hand index finger, reaching around from the left front of the sculpture. 
d) The clear down arrow at far left indicates a point of the sculpture base which rests in the curled thumb and palm of the left hand while the fingers are in slotted gripping position. 
e) The large white arrow pointing left shows the grooved but smoothed surface to rest all the weight of the sculpture perfectly on the open palm of the right hand.
f) The arrow pointing right identifies a brown creature like a bird at the beak of an owl carved into the back of the sculpture (lines added to aid perception). 
g) That owl is in turn positioned at the beak of an even larger owl, utilizing the same head, eye and beak format (highlighted in black arcs) carved into the stone as the owl depicted on the front side of the sculpture. 
h) The circle at the top of the owl surrounds a crystal cavity which is seen as a dark spot I propose intentionally depicting the owl's right eye.  The artist leaves it up to a viewer to piece together two full eyes from the visual elements provided in two partially constructed eyes.

So, the same theme from the front (bird at the beak of a bird) is repeated again, twice, on the back side of the sculpture.  A full cycle of life and death, a predatory hierarchy of an owl, eating an owl, eating bird/small mammal, is depicted. 

The primary face of the owl and full crystal head like in the 3 top owl photos are seen by the audience the holder is presenting it to.  As the right hand holds the whole weight of the sculpture with no problem on the palm, the finger grips on left side are like stabalization rudders, allowing one to manipulate the owl in many varied and sudden seemingly precarious positions (like a flying puppet).  I propose a shaman could have had control of the owl during dance or other active ceremonial activities.  It was built to be moved aggressively with confidence.  The back side of the sculpture would have been visible to the shaman himself and to the audience to his right.



Above is a portion from the left front of the owl with highlights added for discussion.  James B. Harrod, PhD., early human art, language and religion scholar and founder of originsnet.org,
http://originsnet.org/
noted a possible "horned caprid" on (in) the owl sculpture, depicted in the flint coloration and shape and circled in black and highlighted.  It is a left profile of a hypothesized pronghorn antelope, black line dwawing to show place of eye, ear, horn, nose, mouth, chin and neck.  A possible feline image (face in white circle) was detected by Johnston based on knowledge shared by amateur archaeologist and specialist in feline stone imagery, Allen Deibel (see links page for his artifact drawings).  This puts the predator in an above, looking down, advantage (pre-kill) position of its prey.  In a third case, the life/death cycle of predator and prey is depicted in this one sculpture.  Eight total animals may be depicted in the Flint and Crystal Owl, Ohio sculpture #3.


Sculpture #4
(Below, a rabbit facing right.  The next photo show the other side, a chipmonk facing left.)

# 4 Two Split Zoomorphs: Rabbit/Ground squirrel
This is a 3 dimensional flint sculpture, approximately 10cm in length.  One side depicts a rabbit and the other side depicts a chipmonk type animal.  Rabbits and rodents have a certain similarity in tooth prominence, though the two species are unrelated.  The two animal figures share the same teeth at the front of the sculpture which are visible from both sides.  The artist captured an element of the flint, an inclusion of an anomalous flat, white rock material, and features it as teeth protruding from the mouths of both animals.  A crystalline cavity visible in the top rabbit photo may represent the power of the reproductive proclivity of the species.
http://s813.photobucket.com/albums/zz56/kenbjohn/Rabbit%20and%20Rodent%20Sculpture/

 

# 5 Two Effigies:  Facial Side Views and Profiles
This sculpture is oblong with a human facial profile on each long side.  The first picture also depicts a horned bovid, whereby the human and the bovid are sharing the same eye.  The second picture depicts the human with a proboscidean ear (mastodon likely).  The ear is a perfect shaped elephant-like flap, attached to the back part of a little mastodon head to ensure the viewer understands the context for the ear.  No need for the rest of the mastodon face or trunk because the information conveyed about the ear was complete.  These two faces could "see like a horned bovid" and alternately "hear like a mastodon."  Elephants are known for great hearing related to animal vibratory ground noise.  They can predict trains and stampeding herds hours in advance in Africa. The sculpture sits on a perfectly flat base which is the top of the neck of the person. It is 16cm x 16cm x 8cm and weighs 5.3 lbs.  The very tip-top of the sculpture’s head is a cluster of quartz crystals. 

http://s813.photobucket.com/albums/zz56/kenbjohn/Effigy%20Face%20Flint%20Sculpture/


             

Above, Flintknapper Robert Doyle's state of Maine found stone human head profile.  Doyle replicates ancient stone technology and identified this stone as an intentionally worked artifact.  When I saw it I immediately associated it with Ohio #5 photo 2 which seems to depict the same idealized person's profile.  The Ohio sculpture has faces on two sides but Doyle's depicted only one face, the right profile.  All three images have a subtle smile.


The horned bovid sharing the human eye and top of head depicted in sculpture #5, top photo, could be Bootherium bombifrons, or Harlan's Musk Ox.  This species became extinct around 11,000 BP.  The above photo is of a fossilized skull cap and horn core of this animal, discovered at Hebron, Ohio, during highway construction and now on display at The Ohio Historical Society in Columbus.  It is known as "The Hebron Musk Ox Skull" and was found only about one mile from the find location of the sculpture hoard.




#6  Interpreted as likely representing Arctodus, short-faced bear head profile facing left, white face, white muzzle and white jaw line depicted, ear in upper right.  The head image is cut off from the neck as is typical in Pleistocene sculpture according to Gaietto. Note the crystalline sunlight reflection captured in the photo. The bear side is studded with crystals and there are none on the human head side of this sculpture.  The bear's known jaw strength may be represented by quartz crystalline formations left in this area on the sculpture material.  The base and the cut neck are heavily worked to be flat, smooth surfaces.  The darker brown flint represents the darker area of the bears' eyes.  Skull fossils of this now extinct species, larger than any bear species today, show a heavily recessed eye and it was likely dark to absorb light reflection. 

This is speculated to have been the most feared carnivore of its time, also called the "long-legged bear" because it would have been a direct threat to any animals which came within its scent range first and then its running range.  Estimated running speed was 32 miles per hour.  As a scavenger, it would have used its smell sense, estimated to cover a 6 mile radius, to detect even freshly killed fauna and used its long gracile legs to get itself there fast to compete with any other carnivores present- including humans.  It was among the last of the megafauna to have gone extinct around 10,000 years ago and covered almost all of the present United States, from coast to coast. 

In the Coarse Stone Art section there is a picture of a sculpture of a bi-facial limestone bear head with its distinct nose pointed to the highest place, checking the breeze for scents.  To further its artifact status, it has an eye made in pigment on the stone visible in the middle photo. It is seen standing on its neck as a 3-D sculpture. Could this be a semiotic piece, like a campground warning sign of today, to remind one not to make any smells which could draw the attention of the bear's prolific nose?

model of Arctodus (Short-faced bear, now extinct)

   Modern human to scale with Arctodus

# 6 Side 2 of short-faced bear head depicts crude human head in profile facing right.  Several blows were made to the flint to evoke the rough shape of a human head.  A split human and animal motif is common and this artifact likely served in ritual practices along with other sculpture hoard pieces.  The human head form is sufficient to be suggestive, requiring intended participative interpretation on the part of the viewer.  It does not need to be fully representational for its makers and viewers of 20,000 years ago, as we expect today because of our cultural biases about what Art must be, usually visually pleasing or even decorative. This was intended as a "bear/man head" sculpture for religious purposes and would have served sufficiently as such.

http://www.museoorigini.it/pagina57.html

Below, sculpture from Benekendorff collection, Germany, with an interpretive photo of Ohio #6 immediately below for comparison.  Two faces joined together may be seen in the upper right in a creamy white aspect of the flint.  Both faces have two eyes, noses, mouths.
Copyright 2011. Ursel Benekendorff. All Rights Reserved.
From Germany
Above from Germany, Ursel Benekendorff collection
Below (pictured again with highlights) from Ohio.

 

(above) Like the German sculpture of the exact same shape, two skull/faces are depicted on the Ohio sculpture, highlighted in black.  Refer back to top of this section #6 for the same photo without the lines added to see the images in their unaltered state.


(below) #7 The Ohio shaped like letter "n" two-headed sculpture further demonstrates European influence 
Originally identified by Jacques Boucher de Perthes c. 1850 as a common morphology among the stone tools and extinct faunal remains he was finding near Abbeville, France.  Described more recently by Pleistocene art investigator, pre-sculpture and early sculpture scholar, Pietro Gaietto of Genoa, Italy.  According to Gaietto's interpretation guidance illustrations seen below, #7 depicts a human skull without jawbone facing left, with a second human face profile being depicted on the rear of the skull, facing right.  The two humans thus share part of the same head and face away from each other, Janus-like.  The Ohio "n-shaped" sculpture form is based on the skull as seen in illustration at left below, without the teeth and missing the jaw bone as depicted by the hash marks.The hash marks in the second illustration, which shows how the artist combines human heads facing away from each other, show what the sculpture would look like with the left jaw bone intact and what it looks like without one.  Instead of two skulls, the Ohio example has the skull portion like the one facing left and a more refined image of a bearded man facing right.

illustration is Copyright 2011 Pietro Gaietto All Rights Reserved



Please compare #7 Ohio (photo above) to Gaietto's sculpture from Campo, Liguria, northern Italy, (photo below):
http://www.museoorigini.it/imgs/50amag.jpg

 Italian (Mousterian)

and further described here in section #5.24
(photo above Copyright 2011 Pietro Gaietto All Rights Reserved).
http://www.museoorigini.it/pagina59.html

(above)  Original drawings of letter "n" shaped sulptures by Jacques Boucher de Perthes, ca. 1850, Abbeville, France.  Number 18 (below) captures the morphology of the Ohio and European (northern Italy) examples being compared.

Gaietto is Founder and Curator, The Museum of the Origins of Man, Genoa, Italy.  Author of, and informative to this sculpture hoard, Presculpture and Prehistorical Sculpture. The book, with 164 images (photos and drawings), is in Italian but all the captions are translated in English.  Mr. Gaietto is also author of Phylogenesis of Beauty – Unified Theory of Human Evolution.

For full details please see Gaietto's work, illustrations and online museum at these pages and more:

http://www.museoorigini.it/pagina38.html

http://www.museoorigini.it/pagina56.html

http://www.museoorigini.it/pagina57.html

http://www.museoorigini.it/pagina63.html

http://www.museoorigini.it/pagina99.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3197402.stm





Below photo has archaeological investigator interpreted image outlines added to aid in analysis of this image. The large oval indicates the stone removal to create an ear, small flat oval on the right is the eye.  The bearded man is seen from the side, facing right.  Goatee tip at far right.






The early American archaeologist Warren K. Moorehead wrote these words, which seem apropos.  Appreciate he wrote this 125 years ago:

“… The museums are full of axes, celts, pipes, banner stones, discoidals, hematites, tubes, slate ornaments and ceremonials, pestles, hammers, etc.  What the museums need (as of great value to Archaeological Science) are collections from a single locality including everything found in that locality.  They want the finds of the village site, the studies in unfinished specimens, the poor and the good, the imperfect as well as the perfect.  In this regard, the collectors make a great error.  Most of them do not save everything but cling to the ‘pretty relics’ and discard the rough and the rude.  Personally, I would give more for a collection, provided it contained all the types, all the finds of a certain valley than for just the fine, perfect objects of that valley.  From a collection of the latter, I would be misled, for if I accepted it as indicative of the people of that valley, I would say they made the most beautiful works of aboriginal art, nothing rude or unfinished being turned out by their artisans.  In such a statement, I would be unpardonably wrong (Moorehead, 1884-56).”

-Kenneth B. Johnston
Hebron, Ohio, U.S.A.

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