A UNIQUE THEME IN PALEOLITHIC PORTABLE ART - THE BIRD ON A TURD:

Spear thrower, carved antler, showing

an  ibex or chamois giving birth,

Mas d'Azil, France. Public domain.

Continuing with the practice of classifying Paleolithic portable art as related to the category of rock art I am writing today about a theme that has fascinated people for many years. Among the amazingly realistic antler Paleolithic carvings decorating spear throwers there is a theme sometimes known as "bird on a turd". This theme consists of an animal (deer, ibex or chamois, or bovine) with its tail raised and a protuberance from its anal area with one or two birds sitting on the protuberance. The animal usually has its head twisted around to look back at the scene.

Spear thrower, carved antler, showing

an  ibex or chamois giving birth,

Mas d'Azil, France. Public domain.

Spear thrower, carved antler, showing

an  ibex or chamois giving birth,

Mas d'Azil, France. Public domain.

Spear thrower, carved antler,
showing an ibex or chamois
giving birth, France.
Public domain.

A number of these spear throwers have been recovered from Paleolithic sites in France, some so nearly identical that the assumption is that they may well have been created by the same hand. " Perhaps this explains the similarities between particular objects found at different sites (the famous antler spearthrowers of the Pyrenees, for example), which are so clear they must have been the product of a single  individual." (Pettit 2016:26) Others are quite like each other but show differences in workmanship and detail, so we can also assume that the motive that led to their creation was spread more widely than to just one individual. Note the different handling of the legs, some examples are pierced through while others remain filled in.

My original assumption, based upon a quick observation many years ago, was that the birds were picking seeds out of the excrement, a phenomenon that I have seen on farms and ranches with the droppings of cattle or horses. A closer look, however, and a little reflection leads to the conclusion that it cannot be that because the anal expression is all wrong for excrement. Deer (or ibex, or chamois) droppings consist of relatively small balls of matted digested vegetation, not one large protuberance as in the carvings.

Deer droppings. Photograph

Public Domain.

Deer giving birth. Photograph

from www.spiritualbirth.net,

Public Domain.

The most likely explanation of this theme is that the animal is a doe in the process of giving birth. Paul Pettit wrote in "Ice Age Splendor: Redrawing The Past, in the October/November 2016 issue of World Archaeology Magazine: "Another genitive element in the art is the so-called "bird and turd" antler spearthower crooks of the Pyrenean Magdalenian. Bahn prefers the old interpretation of these: a doe, turning her head back to look at one or two birds that have landed on an excrement emerging from her behind. Deer scats do not have this morphology, and others have suggested that these represent does giving birth - but why should birds be present? In fact, corvids have been observed feeding on the cauls of deer and cattle newborn. This artistic expression both of life and death seems a far more plausible interpretation of some of the most characteristic Upper Palaeolithic portable art objects than imaginary scatological humor." (Pettit 2016:29)

Spear throwers from La Madeleine

rock shelter, France. Photograph

public domain.

Spear thrower from La Madeleine

rock shelter, France. Photograph

public domain.

Spear thrower showing a bovine

giving birth. La Madeleine rock

shelter, France. Photograph

public domain.

As noted above there are also examples of this basic them with other animals as in the spear thrower from La Madeleine that shows a bovine instead of an ibex or deer, and lacks the birds perched upon the anal extrusion. A number of examples have openings pierced through between the animals legs, but Guthrie (2005:290) has pointed out that this leads to a weakness because of lack of material in that portion of the spear thrower, a weakness that was corrected in the example above by portraying the animal as posed with its rear legs folded under it.

Spear thrower, carved antler, showing

an  ibex or chamois giving birth,

Mas d'Azil, France. Public domain.

Note that in the most famous example the spear thrower's hook that fits into the depression on the base of the dart or spear is the bird's tail. Examples from Mas d'Azil, as well as La Madelaine, and others, show a variety of animals fitting into the same general category. The upright position, as well as the patterning of the birds suggest that they are intended to represent woodpeckers.

           

Woodpecker.

Woodpeckers possess a stiff tail that they can use as a support prop when holding on to a surface. "The stiffened tails of woodpeckers are crucial for their climbing and foraging techniques."  (Wikipedia).

In this theme we have yet another example of art that is useful to identify animal species (the woodpeckers, doe, bovine), multiple identifiable works by a single artist, and ancillary works by other, less skilled artists influenced by the theme.

Because of the context the most obvious conclusions would involve hunting magic, and/or game animal fertility affecting the food supply (although these themes are pretty much discounted in modern interpretation), yet I have not seen this theme on any of the Magdalenian period painted cave walls, and that brings up the very interesting question - why not? Why would we have multiple examples of this theme carved on spear throwers, and not see it in the more numerous examples of deer painted on cave walls? This suggests that the theme was contextual, that it was somehow logical to portray on an instrument of the hunt, but not to portray it on a cave wall. If there are other examples, or examples in other contexts, please let me know. Also, I will be interested in the other interpretations of this theme by my readers, so let me know that as well. 

Just think how wonderful it is that we have such a number of examples of this theme, from this long ago, and some of them are so similar that they were probably carved by the same hand.

NOTE: The images reproduced above were obtained by an internet search for public domain imagery. If any of them were not public domain they have been used accidentally and I apologize.

REFERENCES:

Guthie, R. Dale

2005 The Nature of Paleolithic Art, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Pettit, Paul

2016 Ice Age Splendor: Redrawing The Past, p, 22-29, World Archaeology Magazine, Issue 79, Vol.7, No. 7, October/November 2016,

Wikipedia

THE HOLLY OAK PENDANT - PALEOLITHIC ART, OR HOAX?

 

Negative image of the Holly Oak Pendant from the cover

of Science Magazine, 21 May, 1976. Note, the mammoth

image has been picked out from background details.

It is easy to see the lack of feet.

In this column I have periodically presented examples of what have been claimed to be very early examples of art in North America. These examples have included some rock art, but also other images in different media. So far, I fear, the extant examples have all proven to be hoaxes.

The Holly Oak Pendant is a fraudulent artifact created as a shell gorget bearing the image of a mammoth on the converse side. It was originally presented in 1889 as an authentic Paleolithic artifact from North America, given the image of the mammoth engraved on it.

 

 An engraving of the mammoth carving from La Madelaine,

France. Note this image is missing its feet.

Late in 1863, Edouard Lartet, the paleontologist, with Henry Christy, his friend and benefactor, had turned a few shovels of earth in the rock shelter of La Madeleine by the side of the Vezere River in France. They found remains of stone, bone and ivory tools so they returned in the Spring of 1864. That May, Lartet’s dig crew recovered five fragments of an ivory plate. When reassembled they displayed a wonderful engraved mammoth with almost all of the details of its appearance clearly defined. All this engraving lacked was the feet, which may have been on an un-recovered piece of the plaque or may have never existed because of lack of space on the surface.

 

Illustration of the Holly Oak pendant

from www.museumofhoaxes.com.

In 1889, an archaeological assistant at Harvard's Peabody Museum named Hillborne T. Cresson, announced that he had discovered a prehistoric seashell pendant/gorget that bore the engraving of a woolly mammoth on one surface. He stated that he had discovered it near Holly Oak railroad station, in northern Delaware, in a layer of peat in the forest. This find was suspected of being fake by some establishment figures. One reason for suspicion was the unusual circumstance of its discovery. Cresson claimed he had discovered it in 1864, when he was a teenager, in the company of his music teacher, Mr. Saurault. He offered no explanation for why he had waited twenty-five years to share the discovery, even though its significance should have been obvious to him — especially since his music teacher was himself a student of archaeology. (http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/holly_oak_pendant)

 

“The Holly Oak Pendant was accepted as authentic by many when it was discovered in the middle of the nineteenth century. The pendant, found in Delaware, appeared to be an incised drawing on shell of a prehistoric woolly mammoth. It reminded many of the Paleolithic cave paintings and carvings of the Europe of 20,000 years ago, convincing some of the existence of a similar – and similarly ancient – artistic tradition in North America.

The Holly Oak Pendant, if genuine, should have dated to more than 10,000 years ago, since that is about the time that woolly mammoths became extinct – obviously, people would not have been drawing mammoths long after they had disappeared. In fact, the shell turned out to be only about 1,000 years old. The artifact was a fake, though cleverly carved on an old piece of shell. “(Feder 2010:139)

 

 

Mammoth carving on mammoth ivory,
La Madelaine, France. Note in this ink
drawing the mammoth's feet are missing.

The 1864 Holly Oak Pendant/Gorget bears a very similar engraved mammoth to the one portrayed on the ivory plaque from La Madeleine – even down to the missing feet. That is the first detail that gave rise to suspicion that the image was fraudulent. The mammoth on the Holly Oak Pendant/Gorget had been copied from a published image of the ivory plaque from La Madeleine and the feet could not be included, even though there was sufficient room on the shell, because the forger did not know what they should have looked like.

“Thus something is terribly wrong with the context Cresson provided or created. Occam’s Razor slices right through this one – the Holly Oak Gorget, with its wonderful wooly mammoth, is not a genuine prehistoric artifact of any significant age. Indeed, the shell gorget itself, with no engraving on it, may well be from the very late Fort Ancient culture of Ohio. Cresson dug on one such site, and he was fired for stealing artifacts in Ohio. A radiocarbon date recently run on the shell gorget dates it to less than a thousand years ago. Even (Barry) Fell’s Epigraphic Society Occasional Publication volume branded it a fake based on the carbon 14 finding!” (Williams 1991:127)

This strongly suggests that the shell gorget in question was one of the artifacts stolen by Cresson, with the mammoth image later added to manufacture the evidence that would ensure his fame. The dating was carried out by Accelerator Mass Spectrometer C¹⁴ analysis, and resulted in a date of AD 885 within a range of AD 750 to AD 1000. (Meltzer 1990:55) The irony of this all is, of course, that we now know that not only were there also mammoths here in the New World, but there were people here hunting and eating them – only somewhat earlier than Cresson claimed, and just not carving their pictures on shells.

Note: Readers who find these subjects to be of interest will be well served to read the books referenced above, and listed below in my References list.

 



REFERENCES:

Feder, Kenneth L.

2010    Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis to the Walam Olum, Greenwood, Santa Barbara, Denver, and Oxford.

 

Meltzer, David

1990    In Search of a Mammoth Fraud, New Scientist, July 14, 1990, Volume 127, No. 1725, p. 51-55.

 

Williams, Stephen

1991    Fantastic Archaeology, The Wild Side of North American Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.

 

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/holly_oak_pendant