Women & cave art

If women were tasked with caring for children, then they'd be in more of a position to paint the wall or potter around inventing things while watching kids

Can well imagine that women were making the pigments

This thread brings to mind Germaine Greer's moving speech at Town Bloody Hall in 1979 on the 'masculine artist'. The findings about the cave art is wonderful, but also a sad reminder that we grow up without being able to know the full extent of women's artistic and cultural contributions, which have often been made, in Greer's words, by those "with no ego, and no name."

Also painting pics of male hunters doesn't mean the painters had to be male - they would be at least as likely to be observers.

It seems obvious when you think about it - and I've often wondered the same about inventions and developments with tools, technology etc. You always see illustrations of male prehistoric people chipping away at tools and carving bones, but if physical size and strength did mean that men were more often out hunting or doing the more heavy lifting type work, then it would be women who were more in the sphere of doing smaller-scale, less heavily physical but more thought-based jobs. If women were tasked with caring for children, then they'd be in more of a position to paint the wall or potter around inventing things while watching kids.

Well," she said, rather wryly, "The textbooks have had to be changed, of course. In addition to illustrations of groups of men bravely hunting bison, we now have illustrations of groups of men bravely foraging for nuts and berries."

I've had some nasty encounters with brambles, tbf.

Anyhow... if it becomes established that prehistoric painting was mainly done by women it will presumably become downgraded from significant art to home decor.

I thought the 28 days was for the moon cycle? I love that anecdote though.

When I saw some ancient Aboriginal 'cave' paintings (under an overhang, rather than a proper cave) I just assumed it was women painting to entertain the children.

I think they made their paintings to show how brave their spouses and kids fathers were. "This is Daddy fighting a bear" not "here is Daddy eating earth worms and caterpillars because he's starving and they haven't even managed to catch so much as a rabbit in 3 weeks"

If the art had been mostly done by heterosexual men it would be all scantily clad or naked women frolicking in nature together like during the Renaissance. Instead it's hunters. That's not cave art, it's the portrait of their men. So the women and kids don't forget what he looks like while he's off fighting sabre tooth tigers with his bare hands, or whatevs.

[quote CaveMum]It’s a bit like Sandy Toksvig’s anecdote about her anthropology professor:

Years ago, when I was studying anthropology at university, one of my female professors held up a photograph of an antler bone with 28 markings on it. "This," she said, "is alleged to be man's first attempt at a calendar." We all looked at the bone in admiration. "Tell me," she continued, "what man needs to know when 28 days have passed? I suspect that this is woman's first attempt at a calendar."

www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jan/23/gender.uk[/quote]
The other anecdote I love is the one about the anthropology professor asked what impact it had made to the curriculum when it had been discovered that typically women hunted small game and men engaged in some gathering activites in early hunter-gatherer civilisations.

"Well," she said, rather wryly, "The textbooks have had to be changed, of course. In addition to illustrations of groups of men bravely hunting bison, we now have illustrations of groups of men bravely foraging for nuts and berries."

Sorry, ArabellaScott, I wasn't attempting to offer evidence to support that assumption being realistic. I was attempting to explain why, if asked to make an assumption on the spot, I might have answered that most cave paintings were probably made by men. The first image that pops into my head when I think of cave paintings is hunting scenes but it's not a subject that I've looked into in the past so any knowledge would be based on popular culture.

This story's in the Guardian too. I'm wondering if they had to type the phrase 'both sexes' through gritted teeth...

Fascinating thank you for sharing OP

but for me the possibility of the artists being female was a bit of a mental shift.

In terms of assumptions, I was thinking about why I might imagine a person drawing a hunt to be male. From a modern perspective, I would say it's because hunting is more of a hobby and not significantly dangerous in a developed nation, so recording it seems self aggrandising.

The biggest limitation to this method is that it requires the artist to 'provide' a full hand print, while a fingerprint might be left accidentally. I'm unable to access 'Who painted that? The authorship of Schematic rock art at the Los Machos rockshelter in southern Iberia' because the journal is not part of my subscriptions.

It’s a bit like Sandy Toksvig’s anecdote about her anthropology professor:

Years ago, when I was studying anthropology at university, one of my female professors held up a photograph of an antler bone with 28 markings on it. "This," she said, "is alleged to be man's first attempt at a calendar." We all looked at the bone in admiration. "Tell me," she continued, "what man needs to know when 28 days have passed? I suspect that this is woman's first attempt at a calendar."

www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jan/23/gender.uk

Old archeologists made the 'male as default' assumption the whole time. Any body buried with armour was assumed to be male, if the skelton appeared small it was assumed to be a boy rather than a woman.

Viking warrior
Scythian warriors

Come to think of it, older evolutionary psychology stories are full of similar biased assumptions about men vs. women.