Untitled - Fundação Museu do Homem Americano

Drawing Lions
John Clegg, Austrália
In this paper I apply the suggestion that insights from observing the processes of drawing as they now
happen could help to elucidate ancient rock art. For archaeology, this idea necessarily assumes that similar
aims, capacities and constraints applied then as they do now. Other approaches, such as aesthetics or
art history need not make any such assumptions, unless they are applied also to the past. The suggestion
is tried out on two puzzling lion drawings in Grotte Chauvet, presently the oldest authenticated rock art
in Europe, using observations from recent life drawing classes in Australia.
When archaeologists study the past, they often rightly assumed that some characteristics of humans
and their behaviours have remained constant, or that similar needs were met then as they are now.
We eat to satisfy hunger, drink for thirst, shelter against inclement weather, and so on. Recently and
without controversy (Alpert 2009, Watson 2009), it has been assumed that Homo sapiens brains then
were much like our brains now, and that insights from the results of brain-scans into the workings of our
brains are likely to be true for the whole species, at least for brain characteristics which not acquired by
learning, just as we assume that the physical aspects of grinding and flaking stone were similar then as
now. (Some studies of rock art that are not archaeological in nature need not make such assumptions;
aesthetics, for example, may allow us to appreciate aspects of rock art that were not necessarily relevant
to its makers or original consumers.)
Nonetheless, I suggest that fundamentals of both making and seeing drawing and sculpture, – making
representations or designs as well as marks, sculptures as well as harpoons – may also be similar
between then and now. These are assumptions that are usually made, and without controversy, for how
else could one expect to recognise prehistoric pictures as pictures of (depictions, representations) or
even plain pictures or designs? My intention is slightly different: to make these assumptions deliberately,
in the hopes of enhancing the power of archaeology, and on the way potentially testing the assumptions,
which are being used also as hypotheses.
62
(Artigo 56 IFRAO2009)
FUMDHAMentos IX