A palette of cultural traces : A sample study of Predynastic animal depictions on palettes and D-ware pottery

Abstract: There are no written sources are available from the Predynastic period, but an array of art decorated artefacts has been found. This essay will take a closer look at one type of these artefact; the animal shaped stone palette to see what art of this artefact can tell us about the culture that made them.      I will do so by looking at the animal depictions found on the palettes, to allow comparison I will include D-wear, a decorated Predynastic pottery type. I have put together two data sets for the respective artefact that forms the base for this study. My theoretical perspective is that the art depictions of artefact as traces of the culture that made them. The palettes show a variety of patterns that can be seen as such traces in which type of animals are most common, how the animals can be connected by habitat and which animal depiction gets decorated features. My look at the D-ware data set is only brief but shows that animals are quite rare on the pottery and includes only three different kinds of animals. These still correlates with the animal palettes by both artefacts having birds as the most common. The bovids has an almost equal occurrence on the palettes and D-ware in my data sets. Other than this the animal depictions differ notably between the two artefacts. As the traces of culture does not provide any details, this study has given new questions that can be studied further in greater depth.