wolverine – Ananya Eriyat

For this assignment, I decided to remake the wolverine pendant from the Magdalenian period( c. 17,000 – c. 12,000 BP). This Wolverine Pendant is a bone pendant decorated with an engraved drawing of a wolverine from the cave of Les Eyzies, Dordogne, France.
At first, I was hesitant about my choice, but as I learned more about the pendant’s history and how it came from a time when the earliest artworks known to mankind were created, I was compelled to create it.

I was planning on changing the wolverine engraving to a reindeer because the Magdalenian epoch was dominated by reindeer hunters, but after learning about how the wolverine population was declining, I felt inclined to draw the wolverine and perhaps spread some information about it through my post so that it could be preserved.
The pendant is approximately 12,500 years old and dates from the late Magdalenian era. It’s composed of a carved bone that’s roughly 1.5 mm thick and smoothed on both sides.

On the left is thee pendant with the Wolverine engraving and the right is the wolverine animal

The pendant is approximately 12,500 years old and dates from the late Magdalenian era. It’s composed of a carved bone that’s roughly 1.5 mm thick and smoothed on both sides.

The engraving struck me because it was so simplistic, yet it depicted a wolverine with a characteristic bear-like face, pointed snout, tiny ears, substantial torso, and hairy paws. The delicate internal shading highlights the fur’s distinctive markings.
A spear or dart might be represented by the diagonal line across the animal’s shoulder. The pendant is broken, and the missing piece may have shown a different figure.

When Richard Hollis writes in his book “Graphic design” about how “Visual communication in widest sense has a long history. When the early man hunted for food and spotted the imprint of the animal in the mud, he was looking at a graphic sign” This inspired me to recreate the wolverine pendant.

This was the outcome of the pendant that I worked on. I made it out of cardboard and paper. I crumpled some paper, painted it a light grey tone, and glued it on the cardboard; I then used several colours of grey to create the bone impression. I tried to produce the same engraving on cardboard with a paper cutter before I designed the shape of the engraving, and I was surprised at how challenging it was! This piqued my curiosity in knowing more about prehistoric art and the techniques employed to create it.

Furthermore, I painted some cardboard using black paint to create a stable backdrop so the artifact could stand out. At first, I was going to leave the background plain black but I felt it was a little too empty, so I drew some cave paintings from the Magdalenian period to enhance the experience and make it seem like the viewer is literally in a cave.
These are the images I used for reference in my drawings:

To conclude with my final outcome of the historical artifact assignment. I spent 2 hours on research time and finding my reference material and I took apporximately 2 days to make the artifact, get my entire setup in place and photograph it. I would give myself an 8.5/10 since I feel I could have invested a little more time in creating a more interesting background and conducting a little more research.