Stone Age art and construction created the foundation for all that followed; these people were the original innovators and inventors. They had no examples to follow; every tool, design and construction technique had to be created from scratch. These innovations were happening all over the world, and found their way to Ireland with the first farmers.


Media and Areas of Practice


Corbelling Corbelled chambers are the oldest roofed structures still standing in Western Europe (Fig. 20.1).


At Newgrange, grooves were cut in the top surface of the roof stones to help shed any water that might have seeped down into the mound. The roof stones were sloped outward to shed water and to distribute the weight away from the centre, thus reducing the risk of a collapse.


Corbelled vaults were built on the standing stones of the chamber of a passage mound in gradually decreasing circles of large flat stones sloping slightly outwards. These rings of stones became self-supporting as the circles grew smaller, until the dome could finally be closed by a single stone.


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Chip Carving Lines and patterns on stones were made by cutting into the surface with a sharp flint or obsidian edge, or by picking or pecking with a stone chisel or point driven by a hammer stone (Fig. 20.2). This technique was used to create areas of low relief.


Smoothing The surface of the stones was sometimes smoothed by hammering or by rubbing with a rough textured stone. The lines on the entrance stone at Newgrange were smoothed and deepened in this way.


Hammer stone Flint point


Figure 20.2 Chip carving. 10m


Figure 20.1 A section of a corbelled vault.


Stone dressing: Most of the stones at Knowth and Newgrange have been dressed. This means rough areas and a thin layer of stone have been removed with a stone chisel to improve the colour and surface of the stone.


Incision: Simple cuts or scratches are made using a sharp flint on the less elaborately decorated stones.


Note: 288


Wood and stone were the only materials available for building


and making tools and weapons during the Stone Age. Some hard stones like flint could be broken and shaped to produce sharp edges that could be used as knives, scrapers, chisels, axes, spears and arrowheads (Fig. 20.3).


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NEW APPRECIATING ART IRELAND AND ITS PLACE IN THE WIDER WORLD


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