Swabian Jura Ivory Carvings

Vogelherd Cave

In 2006, archeologists from the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology at the German University of Tübingen unearthed the first completely intact mammoth ivory figurine from the Upper Paleolithic era of the old Stone Age. Dated to 33,000 BCE, it is the oldest figurative carving known to archeology, the oldest piece of European sculpture and one of the most outstanding examples of late Stone Age art.

Ivory Carving of Horse, Vogelherd
Cave, from about 33,000 BCE.

PREHISTORIC ART in IRELAND
For details of arts & culture
during the Pleistocene and
Holocene epochs, see:
Irish Stone Age Art
Mainly megalithic architecture
Irish Bronze Age Art
Celtic metalwork, tomb-building
Irish Iron Age Art
La Tene Celtic culture, sculpture

Other remarkable discoveries included four other mammoth ivory animal sculptures, including a lion figurine, fragments of a second mammoth figurine and two unidentified carvings. All the artifacts were found at the site of the Vogelherd Cave in the Swabian Jura, in southern Germany. The Vogelherd mammoth is the earliest art of prehistory after the Bhimetka Petroglyphs, the Venuses of Berekhat Ram and Tan-Tan, and the Blombos Cave engravings.

Stone Age Caves in the Jura

The Swabian Jura, a plateau in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, is home to a large number of prehistoric caves and rock shelters (including Vogelherd, Hohlenstein-Stadel, Geißenklösterle and Hohle Fels) that have attracted the interest of Paleo-anthropologists and archeologists ever since the early 20th century. Several were successfully excavated in the early 1930s by the Tübingen archeologist Gustav Reik. During the late 1990s and early 2000s more ivory figurines of animals and birds, all dating from the Aurignacian culture of the Upper Paleolithic, were found at various sites in the region. The recent systematic investigation, which was run by Nick Conard and his colleagues Michael Lingnau and Maria Malina, began in 2005 and has already generated more than 7,000 sacks of sediment. It continues until 2009. Preliminary findings have already appeared in the journal Archäologische Ausgrabungen in Baden-Württemberg.

The Cave Art

The woolly mammoth figurine - the first of the dozen or so Paleolithic Stone Age figurines discovered in Swabia to be recovered intact - measures 3.7 centimetres in length and weighs only 7.5 grams. Sculpted in exquisite detail using stone tools, it has a slim form, pointed tail, powerful legs and arched trunk. It is decorated with six short incised grooves, and the soles of the mammoth's feet exhibit a crosshatch pattern. The lion figurine is 5.6 centimetres in length with an extended body and neck. Its spine is decorated with a number of crosses. (Note: Lions, mammoths and other large predators dominate the cave painting in the caves of the Swabian Jura, as they do also at Chauvet, Pech-Merle, Cosquer, Lascaux and Altamira.)

Dating

Geological and radio-carbon dating tests show that the Swabian Jura figurines were created during the Lower Périgordian/Aurignacian culture of the Upper Paleolithic period, associated with the replacement of Neanderthal Man by anatomically modern humans. They have been dated to at least 33,000 BCE, if not slightly earlier.

Cultural Significance

Archeologists and art historians have always considered the creation of figurative art to be a key indicator in human evolution. These new finds reveal the outstanding artistry of the Stone Age inhabitants of the Swabian Jura and chronicle an aesthetically-appreciative culture that was far from primitive. Like the other archeological discoveries in 2003 of animal and therianthropic sculpture at the Hohle Fels cave, the Vogelherd cave figurines confirm that the area around the Upper Danube was an important centre of Stone Age art and a site of great cultural innovation during the early Upper Palaeolithic.

Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave

During the 1990s, the Hohlenstein-Stadel rock shelter in the Swabian Jura witnessed the discovery of another ancient figurine - The Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel. Carved from mammoth ivory and standing 28 centimetres in height, this anthropomorphic sculpture is dated to the Aurignacian culture, roughly 28,000 BCE.

Exhibition

Preliminary results from the Vogelherd excavation were presented at a special exhibition of ancient art at the Museum of Prehistory in Blaubeuren (June 2007 – January 2008). In 2009, the ivory carvings will be shown at the Stuttgart exhibition "Cultures and Art of the Ice Age." Further analysis and data can be seen in the article "Palaeolithic ivory sculptures from southwestern Germany and the origins of figurative art", by N. J. Conard, Nature 426, 830–832 (2003).

For more examples of European prehistoric art from this period, see the famous "Venus Figurines", like the Venus of Kostenky, created three years later, the Venus of Willendorf (eight years later) and the Brassempouy Venus (carved about a decade years later).

• For the history and facts about painting and sculpture in Ireland, see: Irish Art Guide.

• To update this mini-review of Ivory Carvings from the Swabian Jura, click here.