Off her rocker!

" Off her rocker!"I can hear it as well as "Dismiss, dismiss, dismiss!". It is a hard choice for me to post because posting about very little rocks which could have some sort of carving on them is becoming more and more unbelievable and the chance of finding someone in the archaeological field patient and curious enough to come and see what I have found becomes slimmer and slimmer. This was the choice I was faced with: to see and deny or to see and accept. I chose the second one.I am still accepting begrudgingly, shuffling my feet, thinking " This shouldn't be!". This morning I examined a sample of little rocks on my kitchen table and sorted them. On the bottom right corner are little rocks with a tiny eye, a tiny cut for a mouth. They are all different. On one of them I found 3 portraits following each other interlocked in the same fashion I had seen on larger rocks. There is also a pecked one, with rows of pecks, something I had never seen. Small tools on the left side of those.

More miniature ones

The miniature ones

Here are some better pictures of the miniature ones. Putting them on my finger gives an idea of their small scale and craftsmanship. The poses are varied, a bird in flight, resting or a head. The material is varied. As well as the spots where they were found.

By the handful

Cleaning around the trees next to the house and following the gopher mounds, I rediscovered stone tools and stone birds that I had noticed two years ago. At that time, because the material is the same, I had thought that these were possibly older than what I had found so far. There is a lot. It looks like every stone has been used for some purpose. These are surface find plus what was found with a little bit of digging. The shapes are replicated there and a few feet over and a few feet over. One of the telltale signs that these are " unusual" are the shapes of the " rocks with necks" as I had called them at the beginning of this discovery. That shape is too symetrical at the end of the neck to be nature made. Of great interest and something that blows my mind are the miniature birds. At first sight they look like little chips. If you look closely, you find the repeated shape of birds carved very very small. I had seen those a couple of times over the years but always kind of dismissed them thinking :" it can't be". Well.... There are faces also on what seems rough tools or stones which look that they have been pounded. I am overwhelmed, to much to study, to look at, to comprehend in some way.

The miniaturist of the wild wild West

What a challenge! I am going to attempt to convey what I see in the work of the Miniaturist. Here I am singling out one person. It could be several. It could be an " art style". I don't know. But I am naming one for the sake of the story. What led me to look at those stones so closely? I can't remember the exact time nor how it happened. It became like a game. Some people love to do Sudoku or crosswords or other games. I have loved to find the little faces. I have loved to find the way a fossil, a hole or a crest was use to create a profile. Coupled with that love and interest, was the frustration of looking at something that " does not make sense" and of sharing that with very few people. His/her style is creative. Using certain peculiarities of the stones and to extract tiny faces, " embriquees les unes dans les autres". Like a chain of faces unfolding. A story unfolding? or a story that was meant to be told? When I talk about a miniaturist, his work or play is very small.I am talking about 1, 2/12 of an inch.

Abstract bird shapes

This abstract bird shape came by at least 5 times.

101 stone birds