“Art is the cultural bedrock of a civilization
and its worth is beyond measure.”
Richard McKinley
3D Photogrammetric Documentation of Eroded Rock Art Panel at the Millstone Bluff Site in Southern Illinois
By Kayeleigh Sharp (SIUC) and Mark Wagner (SIUC) Millstone Bluff is a blufftop Mississippian-era (AD 1250-1500) site in southern Illinois that contains three rock art panels containing religious images that link together to form a cosmogram that expresses the Mississippian villagers’ belief in a three-tiered universe (Upper World, This World, and Under World). The eastern panel contains only Upper World images (birds), the western panel contains only Under World images (snakes and serpent-like monsters), and the central panel contains a combination of Upper and Under World images. The central panel is terribly eroded and the images are indistinct. In 2018 Kayeleigh…
ESRARA BIENNIAL MEETING INFORMATION (2021)
The ESRARA constitution and bylaws require the organization to have a meeting every two years. Our last meeting was at Falls Creek Fall, Tennessee, in 2016 so we should have had one somewhere in the eastern United States in 2018. The biennial meeting typically consists of a business meeting including election of officers, a morning of paper presentations where members discuss their current research projects, and tours to local rock art site.
Massive Rock Art Discovery in the Amazon
Photo: José Iriarte. Archaeologists recently discovered eight miles of painted rock face in the Colombian Amazon, sited along the Guayabero River. The Colombian and English researchers studying the works suspect that there could be upward of 100,000 individual paintings on 17 walls, dating from the time when humans first arrived in South America and then traveled through Central America. The thousands of paintings, made by people who lived there 12,500 years ago, have captivated viewers the world over. Now, Artnet News has obtained more photographs of the giant sloths, armadillos the size of a car, and countless other animals, as well as…
Oldest Known Paintings Created by Neanderthals, Not Modern Humans
Hand stencils in Maltravieso Cave in Spain. Photo credit: H. Collado The oldest known cave paintings were created more than 64,000 years ago, and were not made by modern humans, according to a study published last week (February 23) in Science. Instead, the report concludes, the artists were probably Neanderthals. The findings add to mounting evidence that our ancient hominin cousins were capable of greater cultural and creative complexity than generally assumed. “Neanderthals appear to have had a cultural competence that was shared by modern humans,” John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who wasn’t involved with the study,…
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Ancient rock art at Carnarvon Gorge destroyed after walkway explodes in bushfire
It has been revealed that ancient rock art was destroyed after a recycled-plastic walkway intended to protect the site exploded during a bushfire in Carnarvon National Park. The incident has prompted an archaeologist working with local Indigenous people to call for the removal of all flammable structures at vulnerable sites around the country. The destruction at Baloon Cave occurred during 2018’s devastating Queensland bushfires, but has not been spoken about publicly until now to allow the site’s custodians time to come to terms with the loss Read the rest of the article here…
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2017 and 2024 Total Solar Eclipses in Illinois!!!
Mark J. Wagner,ESRARA President Carbondale, Illinois, in deep southern Illinois holds the unique distinction of being the only location in the United States to be situated directly at the crossroads of the routes of the 2017 and 2024 total solar eclipses. Although the 2017 eclipse is now behind us, the 2024 eclipse is upcoming in only five years. Southern Illinois is a rural area with many state parks, campgrounds, and sections of the Shawnee National Forest that can accommodate visitors in addition to the towns of the region. In 2017 visitors from around the country camped, went to wineries, or…
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