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Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles > Pre-history
Paul G. Bahn provides a richly illustrated overview of prehistoric
rock art and cave art from around the world. Summarizing the recent
advances in our understanding of this extraordinary visual record,
he discusses new discoveries, new approaches to recording and
interpretation, and current problems in conservation. Bahn focuses
in particular on current issues in the interpretation of rock art,
notably the 'shamanic' interpretation that has been influential in
recent years and that he refutes. This book is based on the Rhind
Lectures that the author delivered for the Society of Antiquaries
of Scotland in 2006.
A companion to The Archaeology of Rock-Art (Cambridge, 1998), this new collection addresses the most important component of the rock-art panel: its landscape. The book draws together the work of many well-known scholars from key regions of the world known for rock-art and rock-art research. It provides insight into the location and structure of rock-art and its role within the landscapes of ancient worlds.
L'arte rupestre nella penisola e nelle isole italiane presents the
proceedings of IFRAO 2018 - Session 2H: Rock Art in the Italian
Peninsula and Islands: Issues about the Relation between Engraved
and Painted Rocks, Symbols, Mountain Areas and Paths. The various
papers present a remarkable synthesis of current knowledge on
inscriptions, engraved and painted, on the rock walls of the
Italian peninsular. In recent years an increasing amount of data
has been collected, characterized by a regional and peculiar
iconography with some common elements: anthropomorphic figures,
weapons, daggers, halberds and other several symbols, all stylised.
A peculiarity of this research is the site's locations within small
shelters, inappropriate for habitation or in places suitable for
supervising mountain and territory roads; this research
demonstrates similarities to that carried out in the Western
Mediterranean Sea. A new subject of relates to the possible
interpretations of some engravings as solar and stellar symbols
related to the measuring of time and to economic, daily and
seasonal factors.
In the Argentine Northwest, northeast of Catamarca, there are a set
of shelters and caves located in the rainforest with rock art with
virtually no background. Little is known about the occupants of
these spaces and their past practices. In order to learn more about
these, this book addresses the study and systematic analysis of the
plastic-thematic-compositional repertoire of the rock art sites of
'Los Algarrobales' and their spatial and temporal distribution. In
this way, it is possible to approach the understanding of the
modalities of appropriation of the people of the inhabited area,
the relationship that they would have maintained with the
environment, as well as the distinction of various events and uses
of different places and, in this way, contribute to the knowledge
of the historical, social and cultural development of the area.
Throughout the reading, we start to glimpse the archaeological
landscapes related to rock art for this sector of the southern
Andean area.
With the exception of the Grand Canyon itself, none of the great
gorges of the American Southwest is more uniquely beautiful than
Canyon de Chelly, with its sheer red cliffs and innumerable
prehistoric Indian dwellings. Of all the important centers of
prehistoric Anasazi culture, only this magnificent canyon shows an
unbroken record of settlement for more than 1,000 years. In this
liberally illustrated book, rock art authority Campbell Grant
examines four aspects of the spectacular canyon: its physical
characteristics, its history of human habitation, its explorers and
archaeologists, and its countless rock paintings and petroglyphs.
Grant surveys 96 sites in the two main canyons and offers an
interpretation of the rock art found there.
This volume deals with knives and harvesting equipment in Central
Europe from their first appearance until the first century of the
Common Era. Knives have accompanied human beings since the
Paleolithic and became useful tools, weapons, and status symbols
over the course of the millennia. An epoch-transcending overview of
all common types of knives is provided here for the first
time.Harvesting equipment appeared with the new economy of the
Neolithic period-first made of silex, then bronze, and finally
sickles and scythes of iron. Cutting devices also include scissors,
an innovative type of tool that revolutionized textile craft. Each
type is described in detail, supplemented with information on
dating and propagation as well as further literature.
The many hundreds of books and thousands of academic papers on the
topic of Pleistocene (Ice Age) art are limited in their approach
because they deal only with the early art of southwestern Europe.
This is the first book to offer a comprehensive synthesis of the
known Pleistocene palaeoart of six continents, a phenomenon that is
in fact more numerous and older in other continents. It
contemplates the origins of art in a balanced manner, based on
reality rather than fantasies about cultural primacy. Its key
findings challenge most previous perceptions in this field and
literally re-write the discipline. Despite the eclectic format and
its high academic standards, the book addresses the non-specialist
as well as the specialist reader. It presents a panorama of the
rich history of palaeoart, stretching back more than twenty times
as long in time as the cave art of France and Spain. This abundance
of evidence is harnessed in presenting a new hypothesis of how
early humans began to form and express constructs of reality and
thus created the ideational world in which they existed. It
explains how art-producing behaviour began and the origins of how
humans relate to the world consciously.
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