Art for art's sake alive and well in the Neolithic

"Art history" typically begins to follow a prescribed course: Iron and bronze are discovered; then, ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt arise, make art, and are followed by art in the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome.

After this, we civilized people of the world hang out in Europe for the next thousand years, eventually moving on to the New World, which subsequently shares artistic honours with Europe. This route is commonly known as "Western Art", and is often the focus of any art history and/or art appreciation syllabus.

However, the sort of art that has been described in this article as "Neolithic" (i.e.: Stone age; that of pre-literate peoples who hadn't yet discovered how to smelt metals) continued to flourish in the Americas, Africa, Australia and, in particular, Oceania. In some instances, it was still thriving in the previous (20th) century.

During the Neolithic period, the "new" arts to emerge were weaving, architecture, the construction of megaliths and increasingly stylized pictographs and so people were well on their way to writing.

The earlier arts of statuary, painting and pottery stuck with (and still remain with) us. The New Stone Age saw many refinements to each. Statuary (primarily statuettes) made a big comeback after having been largely absent during the Mesolithic age.

Its Neolithic theme dwelt primarily on the female/fertility, or "Mother Goddess" imagery, (quite in keeping with agriculture, and paganism). There are animal statuettes, however these weren't lavished with the detail the goddesses enjoyed. They are often found broken into bits.

Additionally, sculpture was no longer created strictly by carving something. In the Near East, in particular, figurines were now fashioned out of clay and baked. Archaeological digs at Jericho turned up a marvelous human skull (c. 7,000 BC) overlaid with delicate, sculpted plaster features.

Painting, in Western Europe and the Near East, left the caves and cliffs for good, and became a purely decorative element. The finds of Çatal Hüyük, an ancient village in modern Turkey, show lovely wall paintings (including the world's earliest known landscape), dating from c. 6150 BC.

As for pottery, it began replacing stone and wood utensils at a rapid pace, and also became more highly decorated.