from the found-in-10,000-year-old-kindergarten dept.
Archaeologists find 10,000-year-old crayon in Scarborough
An ochre crayon thought to have been used to draw on animal skins 10,000 years ago has been found by archaeologists. The crayon, which is just 22mm long, was discovered near the site of an ancient lake which is now covered in peat near Scarborough, North Yorkshire.
An ochre pebble was found at another site on what would have been the opposite side of the lake. The area is near one of the most famous Mesolithic sites in Europe, Star Carr. [...] The ochre - a pigment made from clay and sand - pebble has a heavily striated surface that is likely to have been scraped to produce a red pigment powder.
[...] Lead author of the study Dr Andy Needham said the latest discoveries help further our understanding of Mesolithic life. [...] He added: "One of the latest objects we have found looks exactly like a crayon, the tip is faceted and has gone from a rounded end to a really sharpened end, suggesting it has been used."
Also at University of York.
The application of micro-Raman for the analysis of ochre artefacts from Mesolithic palaeo-lake Flixton (DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.12.002) (DX)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Monday January 29 2018, @08:18AM
So nothing ever changes, even 10k years ago the darn kids couldn't put their crayons away after using them ...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday January 29 2018, @04:11PM
It's fun to see the rock in the article. I paint with ochre I find on the north shore of Long Island when I'm fishing at Sunken Meadow State Park. My rocks tend to acquire circular grooves as that's my grinding pattern, but the scratches on the one in TFA are recognizable.
I don't know that I would describe it as a "crayon," though, because that implies something you hold in your hand and draw directly with, like you would with a chunk of charcoal. Ochre you need to grind like a mortar & pestle and mix with water.
It should be mentioned that ochre also presents in yellow. Sources I have found like the North Shore tend to predominate in one shade or the other, but you can find the alternate in that source if you hunt around more. Then you have two shades to work with.
Recently I've been adding vegetable sources. Pokeweed berries (a ubiquitous weed in the Northeast US) produces a rich purple, and goldenrod (again, a ubiquitous weed in the Northeastern US) produces yellow. Both are available in massive quantity toward the end of the summer into the early fall. A walk in the park will get you all you need for years.
It's liberating to work with raw, natural materials. Art supplies are exorbitant. The formal practice of art is also divorced from human experience. Both my parents are artists but I never connected with what they did because there was constant pressure to not waste the paint or the paper and making mistakes seemed a sure path for a scolding. So I avoided the scolding by eschewing the activity altogether. With ochre, though, it doesn't matter because a chunk of it will last indefinitely, like an everlasting gobstopper, and if you want a different shade all it takes is a walk on the beach and a sharp eye to find it.
Using the natural colors carries a charge for me, too, that is almost like communing with the primal ancestors in a time when art was an expression of faith and no authority loomed over your shoulder, trying to extract value from your creativity or control the expression of your heart.
Washington DC delenda est.