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A stone sculpture is an object made of stone which has been shaped, usually by carving, or assembled to form a visually interesting three-dimensional shape. Stone is more durable than most alternative materials, making it especially important in architectural sculpture on the outside of buildings.
Sculpture in stone survives far better than works of art in perishable materials, and often represents the majority of the surviving works (other than pottery) from ancient cultures, though conversely traditions of sculpture in wood may have vanished almost entirely. In addition, most ancient sculpture was brightly painted, and this has been lost.
Stone carving is an activity where pieces of rough natural stone are shaped by the controlled removal of stone. Owing to the permanence of the material, stone work has survived which was created during our prehistory or past time.
The Midas Monument, a Phrygian rock-cut tomb dedicated to Midas (700 BCE).. Ancient monuments of rock-cut architecture are widespread in several regions of world. A small number of Neolithic tombs in Europe, such as the c. 3,000 B.C. Dwarfie Stane on the Orkney island of Hoy, were cut directly from the rock, rather than constructed from stone blocks.
A sculpture that only includes the head, perhaps with the neck, is more strictly called a "head", but this distinction is not always observed. Display often involves an integral or separate display stand. The Adiyogi Shiva statue located in India representative of Hindu God Shiva is the world's largest bust sculpture and is 112 feet (34 m) tall.
A statue is a free-standing sculpture in which the realistic, full-length figures of persons or animals are carved or cast in a durable material such as wood, metal or stone. Typical statues are life-sized or close to life-size.
In archeology and art history the appearance, and sometimes disappearance, of monumental sculpture (using the size criterion) in a culture, is regarded as of great significance, though tracing the emergence is often complicated by the presumed existence of sculpture in wood and other perishable materials of which no record remains; [7] the totem pole is an example of a tradition of monumental ...
The history of sculpture in the United States begins in the 1600s "with the modest efforts of craftsmen who adorned gravestones, Bible boxes, and various utilitarian objects with simple low-relief decorations."