~ PREHISTORIC PROJECT ~
Project Sheet PDF

Competency: 
Identify & describe major works in Art History & Illustrate using Conte Crayons/Chalk Pastels

Objective: 
Understand the artistic trends of the Prehistoric era and illustrate using the visual themes of that time.

Project: 
Using 'earth tones' of conte, pastels and charcoal create your own cave painting in the style of the time period as well as depicting the prehistoric themes on the appropriate paper to the criteria as detailed in PDF above.

Key Points:
From Class Lecture, Reading Packet with Activities, Movie & Web Sources

• Ritual Art & Magic

• Ziggurats

• First Sculpture 30,000

• Cave Life & Hunting

• Farming/Domestication = Permanent Communities

• Ice Age 40-10,000 BC

• Paleolithic 15-10,000 BC

• Neolithic 10-4,000

The earliest pictorial records of dress are found in prehistoric cave paintings from the Old Stone Age, or early Paleolithic period some 30,000 years ago.

Looking back through eons of time we find that man living in caves and under rocky cliffs were mainly concerned with the securing of food and the preservation of his life. Dress did not exist.

There were several reasons why primitive men chose to clothe their nakedness, but modesty was not one of them. The notion that nudity was shameful is a fairly recent development in the long history of clothing and it is one that had no influence on prehistoric Adam and Eve who were the true inventors of costume. It seems likely that men and women alike first covered their private parts to emphasize rather than to hide them. Man's first clothing served as weapons in a fight against fear. The use of body paint was the first step in the development of clothing.

Next came the use of ornament. Necklaces of lions' claws or bears' teeth, horns, ivory or bone from various animals, capes of leopard helped early man capture the strength of virility both of the animals he preyed upon and those that preyed upon him. These gave man an increase of confidence. The lion-skin cloak still retained the animistic power of its owner, and it also served as a constant reminder of how its owner had come to obtain it.

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Costume was also used to enhance man's earliest religious rituals. A painting from the cave of Lestrois Freres in southern France, dating to about 20,000 B.C., shows a mysterious figure wearing the antlers and mask of a deer and the skin of some other animal with a long, bushy tail, perhaps a horse or a wolf. The figure, popularly called "The Sorcerer", seems to be dancing. He is heavily bearded and displays his private parts.

Preoccupation with sex, with female fertility and male virility no doubt led to the development of the official fig leaf. Private parts were first covered as a form of sexual display rather than from shame. Leaves, ferns, animal hair, and feathers, selected on the basis of presumed magical natural powers.

No doubt these ornaments also called a man's attention to the sexual availability of a lady. One of the earliest preserved records of female costume supports this theory. A little Paleolithic fertility figure, the Venus of Lespugue, is entirely naked except for a curious apron at the rear, worn under rather than over her buttocks. It is believed that women were probably the first to cover their sexual organs.

Magic began the idea of wearing forms of costume and from this emerged other reasons for wearing costume. Then, as now, men and women were preoccupied with protection, comfort, sexual attraction, and social status.

It used to be assumed that clothing originated as protection against weather, yet a period of one thousand years must have passed before man migrated to a climate where it was necessary.

Man spread out throughout the land searching for food and experienced colder weather especially during the ice age. From observing animals they noticed fur bearing ones survived better during bad weather. People began to wear skins to protect themselves from eliminates.

At first they draped the skins around their body. The hide became stiff and uncomfortable. Eventually they discovered by putting holes in the skins and using needles made from bones they could sew skins into better fitting garments.

In warmer weather they used leaves, bark and grasses. They were used more for protection from insects. Some were worn only in religious ceremonies.