Genitals of Stone

So, if you have not yet heard, there is a bit of buzz out right now regarding the discovery of 37,000 year-old rock art in France.  The discovery, made in 2007 and being published currently, indicates the early presence of Homo Sapien Sapien (ya' know, our species) in Europe, and corroborates a narrative that holds that anatomically modern humans were in Europe by 40,000 years ago. 

Also making a bit of a buzz is the claim that the rock art depicts a vulva. 

While most of us are interested in this find because of its age, there is a contingent of my colleagues who are fascinated by the proposed subject matter of the image.  And get your minds out of the gutter, the interest comes from the fact that for so much of human history, we have had an obsession with either discussing or not discussing sex and genitals, and it is really not understood where this cultural predilection comes from, nor what it means about us as a species.  So, when we see early examples of either genitals or sexual intercourse in ancient art, it gives us another piece in the puzzle that (we hope) illustrates just how much our sex obsessions are based in biology, and how much they are based in culture.

Or, at least, it gives us another piece if the rock art actually represents what we think it represents. 

See, the problem is that many of the images that we see in rock art are not clear insofar as what they represent.  When we deal with recent rock art, we can often ask the people who made it, or their direct descendants, what the images may mean and reach some sort of conclusion.  With older rock art, it is much less clear.  Even when we know what an image represents, we still have to work out its actual meaning - sure, that's a painting of a wild goats, but does that mean that you were hunting goats?  That you were using some form of sympathetic magic to take on some attribute of a goat?  That you just like goats? 

Often, we can find clues to help us make a bit more sense in the surrounding rock art, or from features and artifacts present at the rock art site.  However, even then, our ideas regarding the meaning of the rock art remain preliminary and incomplete. 

I wrote, several years ago, about a rock art site in California where we saw images that have typically been assumed to be vulvae.  At the time, I was struck by just how amazingly close the rock carvings were to another human body part: the eye.  These things seriously looked like human eyes that were just glaring at anyone passing by.  However, much of the rock art interpretation written for the area described them as female genitals, which just seemed odd to me.  While I am admittedly not an expert on rock art, I really felt like repeatedly writing the phrase "sometimes an eye is just an eye" on the site forms.

The rock art from Europe, pictured below (linked to Gawker media), may represent a vulva.  It also may represent some other object, or perhaps even be an abstract representation of a concept.  I don't know.  I am, again, not an expert on rock art, but when I read about rock art, I often have to wonder just how many experts on rock art actually are experts.  While many of the descriptions seem reasonable and make sense, it is just as common to read odd flights of fancy about the alleged inherent human bio-psychology regarding colors or shapes that, frankly, typically makes little sense.






So, does the presence of a circle with a line in it indicate an early human attempt to represent genitals, and thus sexuality?  Yeah, maybe, it's a perfectly plausible explanation.  However, it is also entirely possible that we're applying our own often loopy post-Freud assumptions about sex onto ancient peoples who were trying to represent something completely unrelated. 

Rock Porn

I have spent the last week in the field recording one of the coolest archaeological sites that I have ever had the good fortune to see. The site consisted of over seventy milling features (bedrock mortars bedrock mortars - see a picture here - and milling slicks – smooth spots on rocks from grinding seeds into flour, etc.), a lot of debitage (waste products from making flaked stone tools such as arrowheads, spear-tips and knives), and pieces of the tools used for grinding seeds against the milling features. Most interesting, though, is the rock art that is spread throughout the site.

This rock art runs the gamut from “cupules”* ground into the surfaces of boulders to large panels of human and animal figures, abstract images, and geometric designs painted with red, black, and white paints. Most of the art had eroded off of the rocks over time, but what remained was fantastic – I can only imagine how amazing it must have been, say, 200 years ago, when it was fresh.

One of the types of rock art found at the site was shaped ovoid inclusions. Inclusions are parts of the rock that have a different density than other parts of the rock and therefore tend to erode differently when exposed to the elements – in this case they eroded more slowly and therefore were exposed as darker bumps on the surface of the bedrock. These darker bumps were then ground and carved into different shapes – in one case the shape was pretty clearly intended to be an eye, in others it was more difficult to determine what the shapes were supposed to be.

When you read the various different books and articles on the subject, you find a lot of different possible interpretations for these features, but one of the most common is that they represent a vulva and are likely fertility symbols. So, as I was recording one, I called Kay and, when she answered her phone, I said:

“Hey! I just thought I’d let you know that I’m recording stone representations of women’s genitals.”

She was silent for a moment, and then said “you’re recording stone representations of women’s genitals?”

“Yep. It’s rock art at this archaeological site that I’m working on. I thought that you’d appreciate knowing that.”

“You know, I really do” she answered with some enthusiasm.

I then hung up the phone and went on about my work. She, however, went to her Twitter page and mentioned that I was out in the field recording rock art representations of human genitals. This, apparently, prompted a flurry of responses ranging from the incredulous to people thinking that I have the coolest job on Earth. It also prompted one of her friends to start referring to me as “porn rock.”

And, you know, if you are going to have a nick-name, you could definitely do worse than “porn rock.”

…but I digress. We finished recording the site on Friday, and while the rock art is really fantastic, I am still no closer to having a clue as to what any of it meant**. What I do know is that there is a lot of literature out there on the interpretation of rock art, and it ranges from possibly relevant work based on ethnographic interviews to analysis of locations (is it hidden, implying secret rituals, or open implying public use, and is there different iconography between the different locations?) to complete nonsense based on Freudian analysis (so, let me get this straight, you want to use a largely antiquated system of analyzing the dreams of 19th century Europeans to figure out the meaning of stone-age hunter-gatherer rock art?), or, my recent favorite, color analysis – wherein a group of researchers have reached convoluted but ultimately arbitrary conclusions about what the colors in rock art mean, and attempt to use this to unlock the secrets of our ancestors.

Anyway, rock art can probably tell us a lot about the people who made it, if only we can figure out how to read it. There is one of the biggest challenges in prehistoric archaeology, both one of the most tantalizing and one of the most frustrating.

Rock Porn out!





*These cupules are common throughout California. Sometimes they may not be rock art, but may be used for grinding something such as seeds or ochre – they are sometimes found in direct connection with bedrock mortar cups indicating that they were used with the mortars, but they are sometimes found in places where they could not possibly have been used for grinding. These cupules are often interpreted as fertility symbols – for some reason fertility and hunting success are the most common interpretations of rock art – but while this is likely the case for many of the cupules, I suspect that there are other purposes as well.

**I would love to post pictures here, but for various professional ethical reasons it is generally considered a bad idea to post pictures of rock art when you are uncertain of the importance of the art to the local native groups.