Even though painted caves -the first sign of interior design -occur in remote underground chambers difficult to reach, it is interesting that they have been control by the same impulses as the stained glass windows of Chambers Cathedral. Both make their appeal to the supernatural rather than the natural.
It is interesting that their subject is realistic, but they’re intended function is to lift out thoughts to higher reality.
Other images found in Old Age paintings are realistic reflection and fascination on the human’s bodies and artistic expression in abstraction and geometric forms.
We can notice symmetry probably first observed by humans in their own bodies. They create a V shape and later applied in another direction where the V becomes an X. The early humans also connect shapes with another shape -rhythm and patterns were introduced. The paintings and the patterns of Old Age were a foundation for the more artistic accomplishments that would follow.
New Stone Age began around c.8000 BC where still cave paintings were produced but they were not hidden deep inside in caves any more. Also subject matter changed as hunters began to settle down in one place and raise animal and grow crops. The realism of Old Stone Age was replaced by symbolism of New Stone Age. Came new designed pieces as richly decorated pottery and baskets with abstract ornaments .The new stability led to the growth of villages of build dwelling not as by now -found, human choose for themselves new more stable life.
The one sample of New Stone Age village is the Catal Huyuk a settlement occupied in Anatolia (today Turkey) c.6500 to c. 5700 BC. Wood and mud bricks were the building blocks of the town. They all share the same construction but the interiors suggest that fourth of them were shrines and the rest were houses. Interior wood framing divided the wall surfaces horizontally and vertically into panels and visually emphasized with red paint. Red also emphasizes doorways, niches and platforms. Interiors were decorated in numerous ways: various shades of red, patterns and images of hands and feet and one even had patterns of stars circles, another pictures of birds. Those colored paints were apply with brushes on white, cream, or pale pink backgrounds.
Restoration of Catal Huyuk
paintings and other art that was uncovered inside the houses.
|  showing the dense house lauyout. |
Wall paintings discovered in the 1960s
 |
As well as wall paintings and wall reliefs, many objects of daily life were uncovered. Some were decorative such as exceptional flint 'daggers' with decorative bone handles (right) and clay or stone figurines (left), depicting human figures and animals. Other utilitarian objects include obsidian, flint, pottery, worked bone and clay balls. Another distinguishing feature of Çatalhöyük was the nature of the houses: they had no doors to the outside and were clearly entered through ladders from the roof, and the inhabitants buried their dead under the floors of their platforms.
|  |
Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Professor Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new research at Çatalhöyük. After the first seasons of surface survey, the excavations in the North and South Areas began in 1995 and have continued up to the present day. During the first phase of excavation to 1999 teams based in Cambridge, Berkeley and Thessaloniki joined Turkish colleagues to excavate individual buildings. The primary aim was to study the depositional processes in houses. For example, Buildings 1 and 5 were excavated on the North part of the site, and Building 5 has now been put on display. The Berkeley team excavated the BACH Building 3 also in the North Area. Since 1999 work has focused on publication, and on a new and more expansive approach to the excavations so that the overall organization of the site can be studied. The team is now based in Stanford, Berkeley and London, and we have been joined by teams from Poznan University in Poland, and from Istanbul and Selcuk Universities. The main excavation areas are the TP and South and Istanbul areas in the south part of the mound, and the 4040 Area in the north. Throughout, there has been excavation also on the Clacolithic West Mound, and to the north of the East Mound in the KOPAL Area. All this work is documented on their web site. Finds from the recent excavations
Clay figurine
Bone hook
| 
Neolithic pot
|
Obsidian point
|
Stone and shell bead
copy from http://www.catalhoyuk.com/history.html |
The second sample of New Stone Age village and ever changing interior design of the human nest is Skara Brae on Orkney Island off the northern coast of Schotland. It is fist example of multiply housing.Now, they are ruffles but then probably were covered with whalebones cover with animal skin and turf. The central focus in the large main rectangular room is a hearth edged with stone and opening in roof directly above it. It allowed to smoke to escape and delight to enter to windowless space.
In that particular village has been discover first found furniture -a cabinet like ,predecessor of the dresser but made of stone. Carefully build with symmetry, probably was the place for pottery and other decoration. It is sample of clear attention to aesthetics as well function.
In addition to pottery many other atrifacts made of ivory, bones and stone were found Some are on display in museums .Even in one house was a dish containing red pigment and carved stone ball in another. We may know very little about prehistoric human but we can still admire their work. We can notice that simple fact that there is likeness between prehistoric time and later years in design. Specially symmetry -a design principle what had powerful effect in Greece ,Rome and today .This samples of first interiors a specially Skara Brae shows us how really old this timeless principle is.
A comparable, though smaller, site exists at Rinyo on Rousay.
There is also a site currently under excavation at Links of Noltland on Westray that appears to have similarities to Skara Brae.
