claviform

Larger at the tip than at the base; club-shaped.

Claviform is the reverse of stalactitic; it is composed of club-shaped parallel rods which adhere by their thin extremities. Examples, brown and black hæmatite.

Two other claviform tentacula arise from the anterior superior part of the mantle [of sea slugs of the genus Doris].

An image or symbol which is club-shaped, that is, larger at the tip than at the base.

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.

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 [...].

Shaped like a nail (“a metallic spike-shaped fastener”).

CLAVOPORA Busk, 1874. Colony small, erect, coriaceous, claviform (nail-shaped), with two well differentiated parts: [...]