Posted on 07/27/2012 5:43:10 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Evidence of a community of prehistoric artists and craftspeople who "invented" ceramics during the last Ice Age -- thousands of years before pottery became commonplace -- has been found in modern-day Croatia.
The finds consist of 36 fragments, most of them apparently the broken-off remnants of modelled animals, and come from a site called Vela Spila on the Adriatic coast. Archaeologists believe that they were the products of an artistic culture which sprang up in the region about 17,500 years ago. Their ceramic art flourished for about 2,500 years, but then disappeared...
Most histories of the technology begin with the more settled cultures of the Neolithic era, which began about 10,000 years ago.
...Over thousands of years, ceramics were invented, lost, reinvented and lost again. The earliest producers did not make crockery, but seem to have had more artistic inclinations...
Vela Spila is a large, limestone cave on Korãula Island, in the central Dalmatian archipelago. Excavations have taken place there sporadically since 1951, and there is evidence of occupation on the site during the Upper Palaeolithic period, roughly 20,000 years ago, through to the Bronze Age about 3,000 years ago...
Broadly, the collection belongs to a material culture known as "Epigravettian" which spanned 12,000 years, but radiocarbon dating has allowed scholars to pin down the Vela Spila ceramic collection to a much narrower period, between 17,500 and 15,000 years ago. Those which can be identified appear to be fragments of modelled animals...
Although the finds bear some similarities with ceramics discovered in the Czech Republic, which date back a further 10,000 years, there are enough structural and stylistic differences -- as well as separation by a huge gulf in time -- to suggest no continuity between the two.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
If you Google "Vela Luka - Korcula Island - YouTube" the first one on the list should be one which is 2m56s long (there's an image of a large square white building at the start)--at 2:12 it shows a photo of the opening of the Vela Spila cave.
But the more militant feminists among the members of the tribe insisted on calling her a “shaperson” rather than a “shaman.”
I will, and in fact, I just did (the Digest #419 is up). :’)
Good luck with the fa-reakin’ IRS audit, but otherwise, enjoy exile, sounds better than regular life. :’)
I’d infer that a single artist made those. :’)
Don’t call me Surely!
;’)
If they were nomadic, they could also make pots wherever they camp, and leave them behind, knowing A) they’ll make more at their next camp and B) they can recover the current pots when they are again in that location. :’)
Neat
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