chalk

    Chalk Object Grimes Graves
    by csm_photosculpture
    on Sketchfab

rock in its own image

Kropotkin, like Marx, thinks that capitalism would be succeeded by a transitional period—certainly, without a State—in which the implantation of a decommodified economy guided by the needs of people through free confederation, would assure a “good life” to everyone and would develop even more productivity, to the point of reaching abundance, that stage where humans would dedicate themselves fundamentally to “the high pleasures of wisdom and of artistic creation”:

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/a-history-of-abundance/2015/09/05

chalk

grimes graves

chalk stream

http://www.fishpal.com/England/ChalkStreams/Map.asp?dom=Pal

Chalk streams are streams that flow through chalk hills towards the sea. They are typically wide, shallow, and due to the filtering effect of the chalk they are alkaline and clear. There are 210 chalk streams in the world, and 160 of those are in England.^[1] Chalk streams are popular with fly fishermen who fish for trout on these rivers.
Chalk geology is porous, and rain falling onto chalk hills percolate directly into the ground, where the chalk acts as an aquifer. The water filters through the chalk, re-emerging lower down the slope in springs. The chalk acts as a temporary reservoir by regulating the amount of water supplied to the springs. This is why many chalk streams in the UK have stable flow regimes that vary only slightly over time. The temperature of the emerging surface water is fairly stable and rarely deviates from 10°C (50°F). On cold winter mornings, it can look as though steam is rising above the relatively warm river.
Chalk is a soluble geology in rainwater because rain is naturally slightly acidic. The products of chalk weathering are dissolved in rainwater and are transported in stream flow. Chalk streams transport little suspended material (unlike most rivers), but are uniquely mineral-rich. The surface water of chalk streams is commonly described as 'gin clear'. The channel bed consists of angular flint gravel derived from the natural flint deposits found embedded within the chalk geology that is characteristically free from fine sediment deposits.
The unique characteristics of chalk stream ecology are due to stable temperature and flow regimes combined with highly transparent water and lack of sand grade sediment particles.
The chalk streams have been intensively managed for many generations

wikipedia

blythe house

assemblage at the BM

Jones 1990
Goddess (registration no. 1959,0712B.96) and phallus (1959,0712B.97) from Grime's Graves
These two objects were found by A. L. Armstrong during his excavations at Grime's Graves in the late 1930s. The first to be discovered was the goddess, upright on a pedestal of flat chalk slabs near an original platform of closely packed blocks of mined flint, the apex of which pointed to the figure. On this were several antler picks and at its base a small, well-made chalk cup. Nearby were the chalk phallus and three natural flint nodules, arranged, according to Armstrong, 'in the form of a phallus'. The lack of any close parallels from other Neolithic sites has led some to doubt the authenticity of these pieces.
Indeed, it was rumoured at the time of discovery that they had been planted in order to fool Armstrong. It is unlikely that their status will finally be settled until similar objects are found elsewhere, or someone writes their memoirs.

During the inter-war years a number of individuals, particularly Leslie Armstrong, continued to try to find evidence for a Palaeolithic date, even after publication of the 1933 paper written by Clark and Piggott which conclusively demonstrated the Neolithic date of flint mining.
Armstrong's work at Grimes Graves reached its climax when he excavated Pit 15 between 1937 and 1939. This shaft was relatively shallow - the 'floorstone' was encountered at a depth of 6m - and nine galleries radiated out from the base of the shaft.
The excavation of this flint mine was one of the most controversial at Grimes Graves, particularly because of the discovery of the famous chalk 'goddess'. This carved figurine appeared to offer belated support for a Palaeolithic origin for flint mining, a view that attracted few supporters by the 1930s. However, although this figurine echoed the style of Palaeolithic carvings, it was greeted with scepticism - as were the Palaeolithic-style etchings found in 1921 - as the weight of evidence argued overwhelmingly for a Neolithic date.
Recently, the authenticity of the figurine has been questioned again, and there are strong grounds for believing that it was made during Armstrong's excavations by persons unknown, probably to deceive Armstrong. Armstrong held firmly to his belief in Palaeolithic mining - but this proved to be his last excavation at Grimes Graves.

rock n roll high school

apotropaic pattern

The Kolam threshold design

 

Malakulan sand drawing

True Lover's Knot

scanning the folkton drums

"Work' rather than 'labour', our ancestors' archaic occupation, which produced these objects, had concealing them from human eyes as its extravagant goal. The paradox appears to us alone. Turned towards the dead, intended for the dead, these creations were meant to be restored to them: sent back to the invisible, they were in this sense, literally, 'sacrificed'. But, in actualising that sacrifice, they were permeated with the power to which one sacrificed, the power of life and death. And even when it was displayed, the sacred work was not meant to be sampled by the eyes of the living, as is now accepted in our modern museumized culture. When they found their way into the world of the visible, these man-made artefacts continued to intercede with the invisible powers, to transpose their virtues to the living. That was their sacred logic.

Kristeva / The Severed Head/ Capital Visions / pp9-10

allagmatic

 The Greek word allagma can mean change or vicissitude, but it can also mean that which can be given or taken in exchange.

 allagmatic - theory of operations  chaine operatoire
operation - a conversion of a structure into another structure

“The true principle of individuation can neither be sought in what exists before the individuation occurs, nor in what remains after the individuation is accomplished; it is the system of energy that is individuating insofar as it realizes in the individual this internal resonance of the matter taking form and a mediation between orders of magnitude. The principle of individuation is the single way in which the internal resonance of this matter is established taking this form. The principle of individuation is an operation. With the result that a being is itself, different from all the others; it is neither its matter nor its form, but it is the operation by which its matter took form in a certain system of internal resonance. The principle of individuation of brick is not the clay, nor the mold: this heap of clay and this mold will leave other bricks than this one, each one having its own haecceity, but it is the operation by which the clay, at a given time, in an energy system which included the finest details of the mold as the smallest components of this wet dirt took form, under such pressure, thus left again, thus diffused, thus self-actualized: a moment ago when the energy was thoroughly transmitted in all directions from each molecule to all the others, from the clay to the walls and the walls to the clay: the principle of individuation is the operation that carries out an energy exchange between the matter and the form, until the unity leads to a state of equilibrium. One could say that the principle of individuation is the common allagmatic operation of the matter and form through the actualization of potential energy. This energy is energy of a system; it can produce effects in all the points of the system in an equal way, it is available and is communicated. This operation rests on the singularity or the singularities of the concrete here and now; it envelops them and amplifies them” L’individu et sa genese physico-biologique,  simondon

 

...explicitly to the manual creation of a material culture that is extracorporal. Gesture paralleled speech as a form of expression of mind and language. This notion of ges­ ture is closely linked to a key theoretical and methodological concept, that of the chaine operatoire, or "operational sequence." Leroi-Gourhan makes it clear that apart from humans the behavior of many animals is characterized by such deeply embedded operational sequences. But only with humans do we see these opera­tional sequences take material form and become more-or-Iess permanent constit­uents of the human environment.

For Leroi-Gourhan such operational sequences constitute the building blocks of technology, indeed of culture. They are culturally or ethnically conditioned and highly structured but through repetition and conditioning at a young age become more-or-Iess subconscious. Whether these operational sequences structure the fab­rication of stone tools, the manufacture of personal ornaments, or the creation of painted and engraved underground sanctuaries, they are the focus of analysis. For archaeologists they represent an accessible entry to social organization and cos­mology. But these operational sequences often remain unverbalized and unrecog­nized by those who practice them. That is why Leroi-Gourhan can claim to have recognized basic binary oppositions in the organization/structure of painted caves while explicitly stating that the meaning of specific images remains unknown and probably unknowable.

Because operational sequences are culturally/ethnically derived, they are the fundamental basis for what ethnologists, archaeologists, and art historians recognize as "style":

The technical life of the hunter, and later of the farmer and the artisan, involves a large number of sequences that correspond to the many actions needed for their material survival. These sequences are empir­ ical, borrowed from a collective tradition that one generation passes down to the next. Their principal trait, for all the unity of their broad out­ lines and their extension over vast polyethnic territories, is their strongly marked local and individual character. (infra: 253)

...

It rendered possible the externalization of memory and hence mythological narrative.

Figurative behavior cannot be dissociated from language: It forms part of the same human aptitude, that of reflecting reality in verbal or gestural symbols or in material form as figures.Just as the emergence of language is connected with that of hand tools, figurative representation cannot be separated from the common source from which all making and all rep­ resentation spring. Therefore we should not be surprised to discover a close parallelism in paleontological development and, in particular, to note a swift and profound change in materials at the moment Homo sa­

piens emerges from the last Palaeoanthropian stage. (infra: 363)

The whole of our evolution has been oriented toward placing outside ourselves what in the rest of the animal world is achieved inside by spe­ cies adaptation. The most striking material fact is certainly the "freeing" of tools, but the fundamental fact is really the freeing of the word and our unique ability to transfer our memory to a social organism outside our­ selves. (infra: 235)

 Leroi-Gourhan// Gesture & Speech

cursus

 a concrete singular historical phenomenon, but also

a model of function generalised which can be

a principle of assembly which allows to define and establish new sets

a figure of political technology

diagram of a mechanism of power in its ideal form

it functions as a paradigm, an example which defines the set to which it belongs and constitutes

juridical enquiry

an historical concrete phenomenon which functions as a paradigm - making the context intelligible

metonymical context

difference between metaphor and paradigm

...

Whereas syntagmatic analysis studies the 'surface structure' of a text, paradigmatic analysis seeks to identify the various paradigms (or pre-existing sets of signifiers) which underlie the manifest content of texts.

• Paradigmatic transformations
  • substitution;
  • transposition;
• Syntagmatic transformations
  • addition;
  • deletion. 
  
  
  
   "The Saviour's Transfiguration", an early-15th century icon from the Tretyakov Gallery, attributed to :Theophanes the Greek.
  

stonehenge hedgehog

Most records in archives are grouped together by origin and provenance rather than by subject.

WB // Commentaries on Poems by Brecht

The War Primer is written in 'lapidary' style. The word comes from the Latin lapis, 'stone', and describes the style which was developed for Roman inscriptions. Its most important characteristic was brevity. This was conditioned, first, by the effort required to chisel the words in stone; second, by the realization that for one who speaks to a succession of generations it is seemly to be brief.
If stone - the natural condition of lapidary style - is no longer the material of these poems, what has taken its place? What justifies their inscription style? One of them hints at an answer. It reads:

On the wall was chalked;
They want war.
The man who wrote it
Has already fallen.

The first line of this poem could be placed at the head of each of the War Primer poems. These inscriptions are not, like those of the Romans, intended for stone but, like those of underground fighters, for fences.

schady-chalk

pegwell

the famous chalk mark

images

measuring system

the famous chalk mark

The houses ran into one another; doors and windows were hardly to be distinguished in the shadows of the night. Only one well acquainted here could have found a given house. Auban felt his way with his cane rather than walked.

No artist has ever attempted to paint this picture, Auban thought, and yet he would need to put only one color on his palette: a dirty gray.

THE ANARCHISTS.
A PICTURE OF CIVILIZATION AT THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

BY
JOHN HENRY MACKAY