what/when is the EXACT moment a petroglyph ~ becomes ~ graffiti?
now this is a particularly niche rabbit hole I'm dragging you down but there's going to be really cool photos and some 🔥🔥🔥 art if that helps.
qotd:
"As a writer, one is busy with archaeology."
- Michael Ondaatje
Now today’s newsletter is essentially me hashing this out as I write, with little to no desire to come to any sort of definitive conclusion but I genuinely think this is a topic that WARRANTS some thrashing about. Before we dive in, I’ve got to hit you with some definitions (alas, not Merriam-Webster, we’re stuck with screenshots of the dictionary that lives in my laptop):
So petroglyph just means an old rock carving (as petro means rock we now see where we get the word ‘petrified’ from and hieroGLYPH means sacred carving - how fun are words???)
This one is pretty obvious right? I thought so too, UNTIL I was trotting around Mdina, an ancient, walled city in Malta earlier this week and saw a whole bunch of graffiti, some of it very very old, and started spiralling because I couldn’t decide what exactly separates ancient rock carvings from graffiti when the graffiti in question is old as f*ck.
Do my eyes deceive me or are those Roman. Numerals.
Bill and Anne, those absolute hooligans carving their names back in 1959, are probably more firmly in the graffiti camp than the petroglyph party but whoever was behind the Roman numerals poses more of a CONUNDRUM.
All this reminded me of some more “graffiti” that I saw when I was in Khartoum, visiting the Sudan National Museum.
Now this fellow with the fabulously long name carved it right across this gorgeous ancient relief - it is, of course, tragic but do we give them more of a pass because they did this back in the 1850s???
This photo was ALSO taken at the Sudan National Museum because honestly I just thought the Greek looked STUNNING. Maybe we’re less mad because it’s not as-obviously-on-top-of ancient art as old mate’s tag in the previous pic, maybe I am less mad because I think it’s just more aesthetic, but when you look at it are you thinking it’s an ancient inscription or ghastly graffiti? This is not a rhetorical question, I am genuinely very curious as to where you land!
On the topic of petroglyphs, I just HAVE to briefly bang on about one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
I took the above photo a few years ago when I was travelling around Mongolia - these absolutely mind-blowing petroglyphs were in the Bayan-Ölgii province, the area of Mongolia that shares borders with both China and Russia. It was, without a doubt, one of the more out-there places I’ve ever been and the STAGGERING archaeology just seared the trip into my memory. These particular petroglyphs are very difficult to date and incredibly hard to access (they’re found in the super remote High Altai valleys) so there’s not a HELL of a lot I can tell you with any certainty but they’re pretty damn old - like this rock has scratch marks on it from when Pleistocene glaciers slid across it back in the day and these scratch marks are on TOP of the petroglyphs. Stone age (at LEAST) seems like a pretty safe bet. If you’re intrigued by this particular site just let me know and I will GLADLY dedicate an entire newsletter to it - I have about 600 photos including a bunch of close-ups I’d be delighted to share with you.
Now, on the topic of graffiti, I’m really just going to shoe-horn PichiAvo in here because 1) any excuse to write about them 2) I feel like they’re not as well known amongst classics/history nerds as they probably should be.
PichiAvo is made up of a pair of Spanish artists who combine classical art with the MOST urban/contemporary type of art - GRAFFITI (it’s all coming together). They do EPIC, large-scale installations that are just stunning. Seeing one in person is 100% on my bucket list (who wants to make a weekend of it??).
Visit their website here PichiAvo and/or head to their instagram @PichiAvo to fall down an absurdly aesthetic rabbit hole.