Questions and Anomalies / a)bifprofgow

Image submitted by Ursel Benekendorff, Geesthacht, Germany.

Gowlet (1984: 61): "An Acheulian handaxe from the North African desert. It is fashioned from sandstone that has been polished by sand and wind. The missing corner was perhaps a more supple or softer stone, now eroded." (Translation from German edition.)

Comment: On the contrary it could be an intentional flake removal to generate a 'profile head' in the corner. This artefact needs re-examination to confirm or disconfirm this possibility. In any event, it would also need to be determined if this is a curated or manuported object or naturefact.

Photo © Gowlet, J. A. J. (1984). Ascent to civilization: The archaeology of early man. New York: Knopf.

Submitted Comments.
2/2004 Deborah Goodale-Marchand affirms that the mouth and nose are very clear, the eye not so clear. She suggests that there are possibly interweavings of images within images, with multiple layers of meaning,"like a vision". There could be in the indented upper lip, a hominid profile and perhaps an owl or feline face; and in the lower lip, perhaps a skull in profile. The shadowy area at the neck or base looks like a canid with long pointed ears, facing left. Above it in the lighted area there is a reddish doglike profile and possibly other faces or symbols. Moving upward in the lighted area toward the point, it seems like there are other possible animal and human profiles made with tiny pecked dots. She suggests that even if these appearances are "a natural impurity in the rough stone...I feel the hominid must have recocognized a visual impression of an animal there also...a spirit in the stone." This may belong to "the transpersonal or collective unconscious" of the hominid.
OriginsNet responds: Goodale-Marchand responds to this biface in a manner that we know is typical of, for example, the Upper Palaeolithic cave painters, who saw shapes in the stone that were 'already' zoomorphic or anthropomorphic and which they then elaborated upon with intentional markings, or left unmarked, to be as they are, stone spirits without the need for human artifice. This is also a known principle in, for example, Zuni 'fetish' carvings, as pointed out by Cushing FH (1883/1990) in Zuni fetishes, where he notes that the natural stones that vaguely looked like animals were more highly prized than those carved with a more precise resemblance.