AP® Art History review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/art-history/units/1)
Unit 1
About 4% of examGlobal Prehistory, 30,000–500 BCE
Unit 1 covers the oldest art in the course, made between about 30,000 and 500 BCE in Africa, Europe, Asia, the Americas and the Pacific. Its 11 works, from painted stones in a Namibian cave to Stonehenge, were made by people who left no writing, so you'll learn how archaeologists work out what they might have meant. It's a small slice of the exam (about 4%), but the looking skills you build here carry through the whole course.
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Flashcards (31)Practice questions (41)Art History must-know sheetFree-response questions on this unit
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Big ideas
- Prehistoric art comes from people who left no written records
- Art changed as people moved from hunting and gathering to farming and settled villages
- Makers shaped bone, stone, clay and jade with real skill and care
- What we know comes from archaeology, and interpretations change with new finds
Full unit reviews
Longer videos that cover the whole unit. Good for a first pass or a final review.
Topics
Prehistoric art grew out of everyday life and belief. You'll see how the Apollo 11 stones (among the oldest known paintings in Africa), the Ambum stone from Papua New Guinea and a ceramic figurine from Tlatilco in central Mexico reflect the communities that made them, from mobile hunter-gatherers to settled farming villages.
Key terms
- Paleolithic
- Neolithic
- hunter-gatherer
- settled (sedentary) society
- figurine
- archaeological context
A few quick questions on this topic, with the answers explained.
Prehistoric makers worked with what they had, including bone, rock, clay, stone and jade, and shaped it with real skill. You'll compare a carved camelid bone from Mexico, rock paintings in the Sahara, painted pottery from Susa, a sandstone stele from Arabia, a jade cong from China and an incised Lapita pottery fragment from the Pacific.
Key terms
- pigment
- terra cotta
- incised decoration
- stele
- jade cong
- stylization
A few quick questions on this topic, with the answers explained.
No one wrote down why the Lascaux paintings or Stonehenge were made, so scholars build theories from the evidence. You'll weigh ideas such as hunting magic and ritual for Lascaux, and a ceremonial site lined up with the summer and winter solstices for Stonehenge, and see why interpretations shift as new evidence turns up.
Key terms
- interpretation
- twisted perspective
- megalith
- henge
- post-and-lintel
- solstice
A few quick questions on this topic, with the answers explained.