List of Stone Age art

This Bradshaw rock painting from Australia shows tasseled costumed figures in various poses or actions.

This list presents a small selection of the work of artists who lived during the time that writing hadn't as yet been invented and popularized in human societies. This page contains, by sheer volume of the artwork discovered, a very incomplete list of the paintings, drawings, sculptures, engravings, and other works by the artists who created what we now call Stone Age art. For fuller lists see Category:Prehistoric art and its many sub-categories.

Masterworks and other art

"Bison Licking Insect Bite", in carved antler. In the al Museum of Prehistory, Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil

• Art of the Upper Paleolithic
• Art of the Middle Paleolithic
• 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.
• Bird stones. People have found thousands of these 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.^[1] It's exhibited in the National Museum of Prehistory in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, not far from where it was found.
• Lion man of the Hohlenstein Stadel is an ivory sculpture that is both the oldest known animal-shaped sculpture in the world and, at 40,000 years,^[2] 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. The artist has scratched or engraved a human figure - which appears to be female - as he or she decorated a fragment of a piece of limestone used as a lamp. From Courbet Cave, France, it now resides in the British Museum.
• Mask of la Roche-Cotard is a disputed piece which may or may not depict the upper part of a face.
• 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.^[3][4] "Robin Hood Cave Horse" is now housed in the British Museum.
• 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.
• Carved Stone Balls
• Stone circle
  • List of stone circles
  • Stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany

Cave paintings and other Rock art

A group of wild or domesticated horses depicted by an unknown artist. (from Chauvet Cave in France)

• Petroglyph, with a List of petroglyph sites
• Bhimbetka rock shelters (India) - oldest evidence of humans 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.^[5] These artworks are well over 20,000 years old.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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

• 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.^[6][7] It is 5,000-10,000 years older than caves so-far found in France.^[8][9]
• 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 sites ceilings.^[10][11]
• 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.
• Les Combarelles (France) - two galleries showcase more than 600 engravings. The over 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.^[12]
• 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)
• Rock art of south Oran (Algeria)
• Rock art of the Djelfa region (Algeria)
• Rock art of the Iberian Mediterranean Basin
• Saharan rock art
• Santimamiñe cave (Spain)
• Tadrart Acacus World Heritage Site (Libya)
• Tassili n'Ajjer (Algeria)
• Toquepala Caves (Peru) - The best known cave is "Abrigo del Diablo", and the caves contain at least 50 noted pieces. The artists used paint made from hematite and painted in seven colors,^[13] with red being dominant.^[14][15]

Venus figurines

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

• 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^[16]
• 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.
• Venus of Dolní Věstonice
• Venus of Galgenberg
• Venus figurines of Gönnersdorf
• Venus of Hohle Fels
• Venus of Laussel
• Venus of Lespugue
• Venus figurines of Mal'ta
• Mal'ta Venus
• Venus of Monruz
• Venus of Moravany
• Venus of Petřkovice
• Venus of Savignano
• Westray Wife
• Venus of Willendorf

See also

Blombos Cave Ochre processing kit

• The British Museums' Department of Prehistory and Europe
• Werner Herzog.
• Blombos Cave: Ochre Processing Workshop
• History of painting
• History of sculpture
• Indigenous Australian art
• Pre-Columbian art in the Americas
• Projectile points

References

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 (move scanning bar to the right).