claviform
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈklævɪfɔːm/
ipa: /ˈkleɪ-/
ipa: /ˈklævɪˌfɔɹm/
ipa: /-və-/
Forms: form: claviforms
Etymology: The adjective is derived from Latin clāvifōrmis (“club-shaped, claviform”), from Latin clāva (“a club”) (from Proto-Indo-European *kelh₂- (“to beat; to break”)) + -fōrmis (suffix meaning ‘having the form of’) (equivalent to -form, -iform). The English word is cognate with French claviforme.
The noun is probably derived from the adjective.
Senses: examples: text: The claviform comprises a vertical line with a bulge at one side; but unlike the buttocks on the stylized females, the bulge is usually on the middle or the upper half of the 'sign'! It has been suggested that the 'upper bulge' on a claviform instead represents breasts, but this is based on supposedly stylized statuettes from Dolni Vestonice and elsewhere, comprising a rod with two little lumps near the top, and thus on analogies with sites even further away in space and time from the claviforms.
ref: 1997, Paul G. Bahn, Jean Vertut, “What was Depicted?”, in Journey through the Ice Age, Berkeley; Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 164, column 2:
text: In the early days of research, the images were often read very literally, and this was certainly taken to extremes – the classic example, of course, is the ‘signs’ in Ice Age cave art which the first researchers assumed to represent actual objects, and gave them names accordingly – for example, ‘claviforms’ were thought to be clubs, ‘tectiforms’ were thought to be roofs or huts, and so forth [...].
ref: 2006, Paul G. Bahn, “Myths and Meanings”, in Prehistoric Rock Art: Polemics and Progress […], Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, published 2010, →ISBN, page 32:
text: There is also a faded red painting of a claviform (a thick curved line with a raised bump or point in the middle) that looks awfully similar to those found at a few other sites in northern Spain. A claviform from Altamira was dated using the uranium-series technique and is at least 35,000 years old.
ref: 2016, Genevieve von Petzinger, “Signs across the Ages: The Many Styles of the Oldest Art”, in The First Signs: Unlocking the Mysteries of the World’s Oldest Symbols, New York, N.Y.: Atria Paperback, published March 2017, →ISBN, page 140:
text: In Niaux, claviforms played a special role in that respect because we also find them very far inside the cave near the end of the galleries. [...] The same structure is visible at the Salon Noir itself. There, a claviform and a parallel bar were made on the first panel to the right, at the entrance.
ref: 2018, Jean Clottes, “European Palaeolithic Rock Art and Spatial Structures”, in Bruno David, Ian J. McNiven, editors, The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art, Oxford, Oxfordshire; New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, part II (Conceptual Approaches to Rock Art: Investigating Meaning), page 406:
topics: biology
epigraphy
geography
history
human-sciences
literature
media
natural-sciences
palaeography
paleogeography
paleography
paleontology
publishing
sciences
glosses: An image or symbol which is club-shaped, that is, larger at the tip than at the base.