Die Felsbilder Europas by Herbert KühnReview by: Marija GimbutasAmerican Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Apr., 1956), pp. 187-188Published by: Archaeological Institute of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/500700 .

Accessed: 19/12/2014 00:26

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Archaeological Institute of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toAmerican Journal of Archaeology.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Fri, 19 Dec 2014 00:26:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS

DIE FELSBILDER EUROPAS, by Herbert Kiihn. Pp. 323, figs. 114, pls. iii, colored pls. 5. W. Kohlhammer

Verlag, Stuttgart, 1952.

This is the first attempt to represent the rock carv- ings of Europe of all periods. In addition to the Palaeo- lithic rock pictures the author describes those of the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Ages. The mono- graph contains four chapters: I) the engravings and paintings of the Glacial period between 6o,ooo and 1o,000 B.c., 2) those from between Io,ooo and 2,000 B.c., 3) the pictures of the second and the last mil- lennia B.c., and 4) the author's interpretation of the rock pictures. The chapter on the Mesolithic rock engravings includes a description of the pictures of eastern Spain and Scandinavia; that on the Neolithic, those of Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Ireland, Ger- many, Norway, Sweden, and Russia.

The author's purpose was to present these basic remnants of prehistoric art from the standpoint of the history of art. In this monograph we find the same Herbert Kiihn whom we know from his series of studies dedicated to the prehistoric art of Europe as Die Kunst der Primitiven (I923) or Vorgeschichtliche Kunst Deutschlands (I935). In 1954 appeared his last book Die Kunst von Alteuropa. His works are out- standing for their splendid illustrations and excite- ment about the masterpieces of prehistoric man. In Felsbilder, as in his other books, Kiihn does not oc- cupy himself precisely with the question of chronology or with the accurate characterization of cultures to which the art objects belong. He uses round dates, such as 6o,ooo, 10,000, 3,000, 2,000, I,000, 500 B.c. For Palaeolithic art he still uses the date 6o,ooo to 10o,ooo. The revised chronology of the Late Palaeolithic (Peri- gordian-Magdalenian periods) based on the dates achieved by stratigraphy and Carbon 14 dating is re- garded at present to be from ca. 30,000 to ca. 8,ooo B.c. Recent dates for Upper Perigordien IV are: 23,600 - 800 and 24,000 I,000 B.c. (cf. H. L. Movius, Une fouille preliminaire

' L'Abr: Pataud, Les Eyzies, Bulletin de la Societe' d'Jttudes et de Recherches Pre- historiques, No. 5, 1955.) But the accuracy of an archae- ologist was not the author's purpose. Kiihn's idea was to make the earliest art alive and understandable.

The two poles of art, naturalism and abstractionism, repeat alternately throughout the entire history of art. Naturalistic and abstract art appear in prehistoric pe- riods as well as in modern times. The prehistoric nat- uralistic or abstract art stands as the beginning of the chain. According to the author, the roots of modern art such as those of impressionism, can be seen in the Palaeolithic impressionistic animal engravings; those of expressionism, in the Neolithic symbolic art. Pre- historic art manifests itself in powerful ingenious com- positions. These are to be found not only in well-known

Palaeolithic caves, but also in most schematic and abstract figures of the Neolithic.

In comparing modern with prehistoric art, Kiuhn gives interesting examples. He sees for instance a close relationship between the fancy abstract drawings of Neolithic Spain and those of Picasso, Klee, Baumeis- ter or Mir6. The reasons for this relationship depend on the period in which the artists live. There are times when people concentrate on reality only, but these are succeeded by periods when mankind turns from reality toward the dream world. These changes are basic for the classification of prehistoric art. In nat- uralistic Palaeolithic art the moment and impression are of importance. It is no more than magic. The art of o,000 to 2,000oo B.. belongs to the transitional pe- riod from naturalistic to stylized forms, from sensorial to imaginative art. The post-Palaeolithic art of eastern Spain is a kind of informative art. It expresses the conquest by man of the world around him. It rep- resents man in motion, which was not known to the art of the Late Palaeolithic. The naturalistic rock en- gravings of Mesolithic Scandinavia represent the per- sistence of Palaeolithic art. It is not so rich in nuances with regard to the drawings, but certainly no poorer in magic powers.

Entirely different is the art of the Neolithic period when symbolism replaced naturalism completely. From Kiihn's point of view, this represents a great step for- ward. Symbolic art belongs to the food producers and their religion. The food producer is concerned not so much with the present moment of life, but with the future and eternity. His thinking is symbolic only with regard to the basic ideas of fertility, happiness, well- being, life. He draws symbols important for his religion, such as sky bodies, rain, water, deities. This religion, as Kiihn understands it, is animistic. The ab- stract human creatures so frequently engraved on the walls of the tombs or elsewhere are conceived by the author as ghosts or deities. From this particular chap- ter the reviewer got the impression that the author sees too many ghosts in the symbolic figures. These are rather depictions of female or male deities. The name "animistic religion" perhaps does not indicate the es- sence of the religion of the food-producer: it is rather "nature religion of a farmer." Some of the author's explanations of the symbolic figures have less strength than those given by Oscar Almgren (1929, 1934) and Frederick Adama van Scheltema (I936-I94I) of the art of northern Europe. Nevertheless, Kiuhn pictures symbolic art in lively sentences as being very distinct from the preceding naturalistic art.

The book contains page after page of the finest line drawings of the animals and sorcerers with animal masks from the Palaeolithic caves of Altamira, Lascaux, Trois Frbres, Pair-non-Pair, Font-de-Gaume, Niaux, Montespan, Les Combarelles, and others; the human figures in motion from the post-Palaeolithic Valltorta, Gasulla, and other localities of eastern Spain; the elks,

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Fri, 19 Dec 2014 00:26:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

188 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY [AJA 60

fish, and ships from the rocks of Norway and Sweden, the fancy representations of human idols and animals of Neolithic Spain and France; the ships, male human and animal depictions, spears, daggers, axes, etc., of the rocks in Germany, Sweden and northern Russia. The plates are very good. Many of them are better reproductions than those of the same subject in the original publications. Among the plates some represent enlarged important details. Several colored plates with rock pictures of Altamira and Font-de-Gaume animals and later abstract figures from rocks in Spain give the reader the feeling of how great these masterpieces are. In addition, the text is followed by extensive notes, bibliography, maps, and lists of the art monuments.

MARIJA GIMBUTAS PEABODY MUSEUM

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

NEOLITHIC CULTURES OF THE BRITISH ISLES, by Stu- art Piggott. Pp. xix + 420, figs. 64, pls. 12. Cam- bridge University Press, 1954. $I5.00.

Professor Piggott's book in his own words is, "... an attempt to make a detailed study of a series of interrelated communities in prehistoric Britain at the beginning of the second millennium B.c." The end product offers much more than that, for the book is a model of archaeological synthesis written in a lucid style all too rare these days.

Eschewing dry non-historical definitions of archaeo- logical cultures based exclusively upon ceramic evi- dence, Piggott, in classifying these cultures, also'takes account of a whole group of related features including type of agriculture, burial rites, field monuments, mining technique, etc. These characteristics are dis- cussed systematically. The criterion offered for the be- ginning of the Neolithic phase in Britain is the intro- duction of agriculture by people from France. The end of the period is taken to be the transition from collective burial under long barrows or cairns to single graves around I500 B.c. Though isolated bronze and copper objects (imported for the most part) occur before this time, the true Bronze Age cannot be said to begin earlier. The transition in burial rites is nearly simultaneous with the beginnings of domestic bronze production and serves as a more accurate indicator of the great change taking place. This idea seems worth- while, for it is related more closely to actual historical and social changes than are the largely formal ap- proaches based on types of metal objects.

The first agriculturalists to arrive from France pro- duced leather-like pottery of the Western Neolithic style known over much of France, Belgium, and West Germany. They have, since their first clear identifica- tion in the 1920's, been known by the type-site name of Windmill Hill in north Wiltshire. They were re- sponsible for a number of field monuments on the chalk downs among which are the famous multiple ditch enclosures called "causeway camps," and the

unchambered long barrows. Windmill Hill folk, says Piggott, were primarily stock raisers, though grain- growing did exist as an ancillary feature. The cause- way camps are thought to be seasonally occupied cat- tle enclosures rather than fortified habitation sites of a more permanent nature. The primary occupation of the culture was limited by grazing opportunities, largely to the open downlands, and did not push far into the forest zone.

In a comparatively short time, perhaps after only a few generations, the primary Windmill Hill culture was extended by colonization to the regions beyond the chalk massif into the thinly wooded Cotswolds, along the line of the Icknield way into the Cambridge chalk land, and up to Norfolk, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire. In the latter areas, there are again found the characteristic long barrows, and several habitation sites producing pottery derivative of the original Wind- mill Hill ware. Piggott finds unconvincing C. F. C. Hawkes' view that the Lincolnshire and Yorkshire cultures represent a late migration from the Continent, and from Belgium in particular. He sees the similar- ity of the pottery as attributable to an earlier under- lying cultural unity. This reviewer, on the basis of an on-the-spot study of the Belgian material, agrees with Piggott, though the relationship may be more direct than he is willing to admit.

A major feature of the Neolithic occupation of the west and north of Britain, including Scotland, Ireland, and the Isles, is the practice of collective burial in chambered stone tombs. Piggott follows Dan- iel on the interpretation of the English and Welsh monuments with useful modifications. New and most important is his systematic description of the Scottish and Irish monuments. He classifies all the chambered tombs into four regional groups of gallery graves and seven of passage graves.

The impact of the techniques brought in by the Neolithic immigrants on the indigenous Mesolithic population of hunters and fishermen is a vexing prob- lem. Piggott proposes a brilliant solution in his con- cept of Secondary Neolithic cultures. The essential feature of these is a survival of Mesolithic tool tradi- tion, and this is coupled with a mixed economy in which hunting still plays an important role. The situa- tion is paralleled on the Continent in the Seine-Oise- Marne and Horgen cultures with the production of "Campignan" tool types in Late Neolithic contexts. Though these types seem to be formally between the Mesolithic and the Neolithic, the author shows that they are in reality quite late, but strongly influenced by Mesolithic traits. He defines five regional secondary cultures in Britain, and his account of their putative connection with Continental "corded ware" cultures is based to some extent on the theories of Gjessing.

The last chapter of the text deals with the content, relationships, and absolute chronology of the British Neolithic taken as a whole. It is regrettably short. The author does not draw the extended historical conclu- sions on social developments and their origins in the period which the evidence at hand so richly affords. An-

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Fri, 19 Dec 2014 00:26:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions