Wikipedia:GLAM/British Museum/Ice Age art

The Venus of Dolní Věstonice, coming from the Czech Republic

Palaeolithic tools made from reindeer antlers, c. 13,000 years old, with artwork showing horses. Photograph taken during British Museum behind the scenes event with WM-UK in October 2011.

Winter 2012 to the exhibition in 2013

The exhibition has been announced -"Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind" BM page. It will run from 7 February – 26 May 2013. This piece in The Observer gives a good preview. We have been given the list of BM objects that will be included, and expect the full list of loan objects, mostly from European museums, shortly, once this is finalized. In the meantime this PDF of foreign loans is on the BM website. There are 31 BM objects in the exhibition, of which we have Commons photos, mostly from the 2011 day at Franks House (below) of 18, and articles on 7. Any additions are most welcome. All have the key information, and sometimes more, on the BM collections database. The Commons photos are most easily found at the Commons page: Objects in Sieveking, Ann "A catalogue of .Palaeolithic art in the British Museum", which uses the same BM Sieveking "Palart" catalogue references as the BM database.

The Commons page Objects in the 2013 British Museum exhibition of Ice Age art has been created to hold all the photos Commons has of objects featuring in the exhibition.

The list is:

• BM objects with Commons pics: 102 Wolverine pendant of Les Eyzies, 309, 310 Baton fragment (Palart 310), 311, 419,420,421,451, 454, 455, 471, 505, 518 Montastruc decorated stone (Palart 518), 550 Swimming Reindeer, 551 Mammoth spear thrower, 618, 658, 855 Robin Hood Cave Horse, 1959.1203.1 Kendrick's Cave Decorated Horse Jaw.

• BM with no Commons pics: 201, 205, 312, 313, 516, 517, 519, 520, 566, 628, 691, St 582a.

• Loans from abroad: see 34 page PDF listing with images here - not quite final? Mostly from Russia, Germany, and France. Includes key pieces from Hohle Fels (including the Hohle Fels Flute, perhaps the oldest known musical instrument) and other sites, the Venus of Lespugue from France, this (article in Spanish) and this piece. According to the Observer (above), these star pieces are also coming: Lion man of the Hohlenstein Stadel from Ulm, Venus of Dolní Věstonice.

There are a number of items it would be great to have photos of before they are taken off display in the Kunstkamera in St Petersberg, the Museum für Ur- und Frühgeschichte Thüringens in Weimar, the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle ("Musée de l'Homme" section), Schloss Hohentübingen Museum in Tübingen, Landesmuseum Württemberg in Stuttgart, and the archaeological museums in Konstanz, and the Kremlin at Zaraysk, Russia.

Johnbod (talk) 03:22, 8 December 2012 (UTC)and later

Participants 2011

• Please sign up if you are interested in participating, wherever you are. It is helpful to give your usual location & any particular relevant expertise you have:

• London, Johnbod (talk) 14:49, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
• York, PatHadley (talk) 09:44, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
• London, no expertise. Fæ (talk)
• Reading or London, Philafrenzy (talk) 23:06, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
• London, no expertise Gordo (talk)
• Milan, art historian, but no expertise in the specific field, --Iopensa (talk) 10:29, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Events in 2011

• Wikipedia:GLAM/BM/Ice Age Event - October 13, 2011
• Two training sessions for BM staff were held in September and October

Topics

List of possible articles/topics, currently 24 in total:

• Ice Age art of Europe - redirects to Art of the Upper Paleolithic (short & global) - best sources? Would be great if we could have a page just on ICE AGE ART in Europe - such a big topic, and would be more focused then - without having to discuss / confuse with the Upper Paleolithic from other areas of the world...
• Discovery of human antiquity
• Ice age horse carvings - Bâton de commandement
• Spear-thrower
• Magdalenian
• Cave painting

BM objects

• Wolverine pendant of Les Eyzies - X BM Highlights
• Grays Inn Lane Hand Axe - X BM Highlights. We have Hand axe and Biface
• Swimming Reindeer - expand
• Hoxne Hand Axe - X BM Highlights
• Mammoth spear thrower - X BM Highlights; (also from Montastruc Plaque with animals)
• Robin Hood Cave Horse - BM Highlights
• Pinhole Cave Man - BM Highlights
• London female figures - X? Courbet BM Highlights
• Kendrick's Cave Decorated Horse Jaw - X BM Highlights, BM Quarterly 1971 JSTOR, JC quoted in Antiquarian's Attic, near the bottom
• Baton fragment (Palart 310) - BM Highlights
• Montastruc decorated stone (Palart 518) - BM Highlights

• "X" = Photos on Commons, at the categories for Room 2 and Room 1

Objects/sites elsewhere

(XX if exhibited)

• Lion man of the Hohlenstein Stadel, Ulm, Germany XX
• Kendrick's Cave on Great Orme - BM touring exhib
• A top painted Euro-cave: Spain, Cave of Altamira; France, Lascaux, Chauvet Cave, or???
• Big Bone Lick - US with mastodons etc. Currently very basic article. Jawbone in BM Enlightenment Gallery. Good story - Lewis and Clark Expedition etc
• Czech ceramic figures & ?ivories XX - where are they from? -- Dolní Věstonice
• Abri de la Madeleine, basic, unreferenced

Biographies

• Sarah Baartman - the Hottentot Venus - expand on existing ok factual bio to cover early perceptions of Venus figurines - doing a version there too
• Hans Sloane - under-rated as researcher. Short biog seems to have plenty of EB 1911 still
• John Conyers - London's first archaeologist; good story & new biog - Burnby abstract,
• Henry Christy (1810–1865), English ethnologist, archaeologist and collector who left his substantial collections to the British Museum. Improve short biog.
• Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes (1788–1868) - update biog which seems nearly all EB 1911
• Worthington George Smith

Other

• Cave of Forgotten Dreams - 2010 Werner Herzog 3D film on the Chauvet Cave - JC review in BM mag

Sources

• Abramova, Z.A., Page, C. and Chard, C.S. 1967. Palaeolithic Art in the U.S.S.R. Arctic Anthropology 4(2), 1-179. Old but good introduction to the archaeological contexts.
• Cook, J. The Swimming Reindeer, 2010, British Museum Press (Objects in Focus series), ISBN 978 0 7141 2821 4. - covers rediscovery of IAA, and other pieces.
• Conkey, M.W., Soffer, O., Stratmann, D. and Jablonski, N.G (eds) 1997. Beyond art: Pleistocene image and symbol. California: University of California Press.
• Gamble, C. 1999. The Palaeolithic socities of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Lawson, A. 2012. Painted caves: Palaeolithic rock art in Western Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Lewis-Williams, D. 2002. The mind in the cave: consciousness and the origins of art. London: Thames and Hudson.
• Mithen, S. 1996. The prehistory of the mind: a search for the origins of art, religion and science. London: Thames and Hudson.
• Sandars, Nancy K., Prehistoric Art in Europe, Penguin (Pelican, now Yale, History of Art), 1968 (1st edn.) - Jill, is this still useful? Fairly old now and out of date.
• Sieveking, A., A Catalogue of Palaeolithic art in the British Museum, British Museum Press, 1987, ISBN 071411376X, 9780714113760
• Stringer, C. 2006. Homo Britannicus: the incredible story of human life in Britain. London: Penguin Books.

-please add!

Work in progress or done

New articles:Wolverine pendant of Les Eyzies, Grays Inn Lane Hand Axe, John Conyers, Robin Hood Cave Horse, Discovery of human antiquity

Improved:Bâton de commandement, Spear-thrower, Henry Christy, Augustus Wollaston Franks, Ethnological Society of London

Related, even if distantly: List of periods and events in climate history (new), and Marine isotope stage improved (expert attention welcome!), Aborigines' Protection Society improved, Niger Expedition of 1841, Augustus Henry Keane (Victorian ethnologist), monogenism (was just redirect)

Pictures: At least 105 photos added to Commons at Category:BM_Ice_Age_Art_event,_October_2011, with new categories Category:Ice Age art at Franks House, British Museum, Category:Stone_tools_at_Franks_House, Lithic refitting (right name?),

• New page on Commons: Objects in Sieveking, Ann "A catalogue of Palaeolithic art in the British Museum" putting the photos of the 50-odd objects we've got in sequence. Johnbod (talk) 16:08, 30 October 2011 (UTC)