Paleolithic Art: The Makapansgat Pebble
At first, I strongly disliked the opening of the first chapter in Gardner’s with the Makapansgat Pebble. When I taught the class, I just skipped over it. In my mind, we may as well have discussed how children can see shapes in clouds passing overhead. Also, the need to compare the found pebble to the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp felt to me like pandering.
Now, many months later, I may have a change of heart. First, an archaeological context permits us to speculate that some creature actually preserved the pebble. Perhaps, rather than describing it as the ante-type of Duchamp’s ready-mades, one could pose the question of how this pebble does in fact differ from the recognition of a familiar shape in a cloud formation, for this pebble does not represent some universal timeless phenomenon, but has an archaeological context that reveals its use, and a discussion of this discovery of meaning through the reconstruction of context creates an ideal prelude to the study of ancient and medieval art. Furthermore, the findspot of the pebble, South Africa, opens our mind to the existence of paleolithic art beyond Europe.
Web resources include material on the website of Jeffrey K. McKee, a professor of Anthropology at Ohio State University. A page of the website of the Australian Rock Art Research Association, headed by Robert Bednarik, also provides useful analysis. In each instance, appearance belies its authority.
On a side note, that the caption in Gardner’s does not identify the Natural History Museum in London as the holder of this pebble surprises me.