Paleolithic Flint "Figure Stone"

Formerly in the collection of artist Tony Berlant (b. 1941).

With EU license 2025DMF0222 permitting export, issued by the French Ministry of Culture

First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone. 27 January - 29 April 2018. Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas.

The Origins of Sculpture. 27 September 2023 - 7 January 2024. Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece.

Berlant, Tony, and Thomas Wynn. First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone. Nasher Sculpture Center, 2018, Cat. 68.

Galanidou, Nena, et al., editors. The Origins of Sculpture: Archaeological Finds from the Old World and Lesbos 2.5 Million to 50,000 Years Before Present. University of Crete/Benaki Museum, 2023, Cat. 75.

A RARE NEANDERTHAL FIGURE STONE RESEMBLING A MAMMOTH

Recovered from the important Paleolithic site of Fontmaure in central France, this substantial flint nodule belongs to a small and much discussed group of objects often described as “figure stones.” Unlike fully worked tools, such pieces appear to have been selected for their natural form and then modified to emphasize suggestive imagery.

Figure stones have long occupied a controversial place in Middle Paleolithic archaeology. Once dismissed as detritus from Neanderthal sites, these often strikingly aesthetic and sculptural stones have received considerable reevaluation in recent years, as scholars have reconsidered the cognitive and representational abilities of Neanderthals, and thus reconsidered their ability to create and appreciate what we may consider "art" or "sculpture." Archaeologist Thomas Wynn, once a critic of figure stones as early attempts at aesthetic representation in Neanderthals, has since become one of the most forceful exponents of Neanderthal representational ability, as evidenced by his co-curation of the exhibition First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas in 2018, where this piece was prominently displayed.

The present example is particularly distinctive for its strongly mammoth-like appearance. The stone has been carefully reduced along several edges to create a compact, grounded body, while a rounded projection at one end reads as a head or trunk-like extension. In First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone, the present piece is specifically described as mammoth-like in form, an interpretation strongly supported by its low horizontal mass and pronounced projecting front.

As with other examples from Fontmaure, the fascination of the object lies in the balance between natural form and human intervention. Here, the shaping is more assertive than in many related figure stones, yet still guided by the underlying structure of the material. Rather than imposing a wholly artificial image upon the stone, the maker appears to have recognized and clarified a form already latent within it.

Its inclusion in the Nasher Sculpture Center’s landmark exhibition First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone and the Benaki Museum’s The Origins of Sculpture places it within a key group of objects central to current discussions surrounding the origins of representation in early human history.

Objects of this type suggest not only the recognition of form, but also a willingness to stabilize and develop that form through selective working. In the present example, the result is an unusually powerful object that exists somewhere between tool, image, and sculpture.

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