Abstract:

Engravings are important archaeological materials that prehistoric humans deliberately scribed, and play an important role in revealing and exploring the development and evolution of cognitive and thinking expression abilities of ancient humans. At present, the discovery and research of engravings are mainly concentrated in Europe, southern Africa and west Asia, but there are few engravings found in China. This article emphatically introduces the current findings and researches on engravings at home and abroad. On this basis, we summarize the identification and analysis methods of engravings and try to explore the differences of engravings in different time and space. The interference factors for the identification of engravings mainly include two aspects: One is the unconscious or functional modification by prehistoric humans; The other one is the taphonomic influence. Macroscopically, the scratches produced by these interference factors are usually scattered and irregular, and different from the purposeful, conscious and designable engravings. Microscopically, the researchers usually use microscope and build 3D digital models, so that they can more carefully observe the characteristics of the engravings and get more quantitative statistics, which can be used for comparative analysis to identify authenticity more scientifically and rigorously. In the early Paleolithic, there are few engravings, and the carved patterns are simple, but they have obvious artificial design intention. In the middle Paleolithic, the engravings not only increased in distribution area and the number of specimens, but also became more diverse in carrier types and graphical representations. More than 20 middle Paleolithic sites with engravings were found in Europe. The types of carrier include bone, nummulite, chert and bedrock. Engraving patterns are mainly parallel or sub-parallel lines, stacked chevrons with more complex graphic design and technological process also appear. In addition, there are also cross intersection, zigzag and cross-hatched design. Compared to Europe, the sites with engravings in Africa are less, but the specimens in individual site are more. The non-utilitarian ochre and ostrich eggshells become the main carriers, which is obviously different from the situation in Europe. The carved patterns found in Africa are generally more standardized, more designable, and more complex in graphical representation, mainly reflect in fan shaped motif, hatched band motif, curved lines that cross a central line and diamond shaped pattern found in Klipdrift Shelter, Dieploof Rock Shelter and Blombos Cave. And part of these patterns are often found in different layers of the site, there is inheritance and continuation. The engravings of the Middle Paleolithic in Asia are mainly found in Western Asia and Lingjing site in China. Among them, the engravings at Quneitra site in Israel with some disconnected parts forming a unified whole are the most distinctive. The characteristics of the engravings at Mar-Tarik, Qafzeh Cave and Lingjing site are similar to those in Europe, with parallel or sub-parallel lines being the main pattern and with bones being the main carrier. It is worth noting that ochre pigments are found on the engravings of Lingjing site, further increases the symbolic significance of these specimens.

Key words: Paleolithic, Engravings, Geometric figure, Bones, Ochre