Red ochre

I vaguely remember using yellow ochre in art classes, a colour I remember rather liking. So I was intrigued to come across the observation in reference 1 that stone age graves in Finland from around 4,000 years ago are strongly associated with red ochre. Furthermore: ‘… It was a common practise in Neolithic cultures to cover the dead with red ochre…’. Shortly after that reference 2 was brought to my attention and I decided that a bit of digging was in order. Which got me to reference 3 and the Blombos caves in South Africa with artefacts from say 100,000 years ago.

I have now learned that the various ochres – mostly yellow or red in colour – are iron oxides and that the actual colour depends on the context, in particular the amount of oxide in the material in question. The colour can be changed by heat, but the archaeological record on that point is scanty.

Lots of coloured stones which have clearly been used either as things to be engraved, for rubbing their colour onto something (crayons) or for producing pigmented powders have been found at prehistoric sites. And from around 150,000 years ago, a lot of this was red, blood red even.

So given the strong association of red ochre with prehistoric sites, what was it used for? Reference 3 dismisses its use in tanning leather and doubts whether its use in binding perforated stone axe heads to their wooden shafts is sufficient explanation. Which leaves, it seems, body painting for ritual purposes. With ritual being held to have arrived at about the same time as language: an expensive device for building the group within which the cheap device of language would become possible.

It seems likely that there is some triangulation between the physiology of our tri-chromatic vision, the occurrence of colours in the world around us and the use of colours in ritual which determines the emergence (or not) of names for colours. ‘… Subordinate to this universal binary classification [black/white, light/dark, warm/cool and others], the color of a restricted range of objects or states could be described using the terms for four pigments (pipe-clay, yellow ochre, red ochre, and
charcoal), constituting the four ritually recognized colors…’.

Body painting was usually geometric and abstract because body painting supported a ritual which was defining something new, not to be found out in the real world. Definition by means other than spoken language.

Red – the colour of blood – often seems to be the first colour named after the arrival of the black/white binary classification, during the evolution of language and of the naming of colours.

We are given an exposition of the basic colour term theory (BCT) and the female cosmetics coalitions theory (FCC). The former being driven by physiology and the latter by reproductive strategy, in particular by using red cosmetics to confuse the perception by males of the menstrual cycle, a practise which then evolved into some more general purpose ritual or custom.

Reference 2 updates this story to Europe, starting around 50,000 years ago. No mention of Finland, graves or FCC.

In sum, the evidence for the widespread use of red ochre for at least 100,000 years is conclusive. Evidence for why red and what for seems less so.

PS: I come away with a sense, from the outside and quite possibly quite wrongly, that those building theories about our distant past – say 50,000 and more years ago –  are building elaborate edifices on rather sketchy foundations. I have also learned that scientists are not the only people to turn out difficult prose.

References

Reference 1: Finland – Ella Kivikoski – 1967.

Reference 2: Ochre and pigment use at Hohle Fels cave: Results of the first systematic review of ochre and ochre-related artefacts from the Upper Palaeolithic in Germany – Elizabeth C. Velliky, Martin Porr, Nicholas J. Conard – 2018.

Reference 3: Red ochre, body-painting, and language: interpreting the Blombos ochre – Ian Watts – 2009. The source of the snap above, as well as most of the text.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/01/favourite.html. Notice of the purchase of reference 1.