A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1469 entries
ochre
Ochre is earth colored by iron oxide, ranging from pale yellow through orange to deep red and brown depending on the iron mineral and whether it has been heated. It is dug from the ground, ground, and used directly. It is the oldest pigment there is and the most widely used substance in the history of human decoration, appearing on every inhabited continent.
Etymology
The word came into English through French and Latin from Greek, where it meant pale yellow. Yellow ochre turns red when heated to a few hundred degrees, and that transformation was known and used a very long time ago, which means the color range under one name is not laziness but a description of a material that changes with treatment.
Notes
Engraved pieces of ochre from Blombos Cave in South Africa are around 75,000 years old and carry deliberate crosshatched patterns, and ochre processing kits from the same cave, with abalone shells used as containers, are around 100,000 years old. It has been used as body paint, sunscreen, insect repellent, hide preservative, and adhesive as well as pigment, and it is still dug and used by Aboriginal Australian artists from specific traditional sources.