Founded in the first century BCE near a set of natural springs in an otherwise dry northeastern corner of the Valley of Mexico, the ancient metropolis of Teotihuacan was on a symbolic level a city of elements. With a multiethnic population of perhaps one hundred thousand, at its peak in 400 CE, it was the cultural, political, economic, and religious center of ancient Mesoamerica. A devastating fire in the city center led to a rapid decline after the middle of the sixth century, but Teotihuacan was never completely abandoned or forgotten; the Aztecs revered the city and its monuments, giving many of them the names we still use today. Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire examines new discoveries from the three main pyramids at the site-the Sun Pyramid, the Moon Pyramid, and, at the center of the Ciudadela complex, the Feathered Serpent Pyramid-which have fundamentally changed our understanding of the city's history. With illustrations of the major objects from Mexico City's Museo Nacional de Antropologia and from the museums and storage facilities of the Zona de Monumentos Arqueologicos de Teotihuacan, along with selected works from US and European collections, the catalogue examines these cultural artifacts to understand the roles that offerings of objects and programs of monumental sculpture and murals throughout the city played in the lives of Teotihuacan's citizens. Published in association with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Exhibition dates: de Young, San Francisco, September 30, 2017-February 11, 2018 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), March-June 2018

Presented to Stan Beckensall on his 90th birthday, this diverse and stimulating collection of papers celebrates his crucial contribution to rock art studies, and also looks to the future. It should be of value to students of prehistoric Britain and Ireland, and anyone with an interest in rock art, for many decades to come. Stan has done a phenomenal amount of work over recent decades, on an entirely amateur basis, discovering, recording and interpreting Atlantic rock art ('cup-and-ring marks') in his home county of Northumberland and elsewhere. Much of this work was done in the 1970s and 1980s when the subject, now increasingly regarded as mainstream within Neolithic studies, was largely shunned by professional archaeologists. Anyone with an interest in rock art is greatly indebted to Stan, not only for his work and his wisdom, so graciously shared, but also, as the contributors to this volume make clear, for the inspiration he has provided, and continues to provide, for work undertaken by others.

The book seeks to develop from a minimum of presupposition a framework within which the arts may be viewed and explained. The fundamental natures of poetry, painting and music are separately addressed allowing key distinctions to be made between these three art forms. More generally, the relationship of the arts to both religion and science is explored; and the development of the arts from the earliest times considered, along with whether there was (or will be) a best time to be an artist. A compatible way of categorising both traditional and modern art is proposed; and similarly for the sciences. This enables direct comparisons both within the arts and between the arts and the sciences, leading to a view on the origin of modernism. The case is made for traditional modernism (which combines the accessibility of tradition with the relevance of modernism) and the role it might play considered. The work concludes with a discussion of what threatens the arts; where they now are; and where they might be going.

Signalling and Performance: Ancient Rock Art in Britain and Ireland presents a state of the art survey of the ancient rock art of Britain and Ireland, bringing together new discoveries and new interpretations. Ancient rock art offers unique insights into the mindsets of its makers and the landscapes in which they lived. The making of rock art was not just an aesthetic practice, but an activity informed by deep social and cultural meanings held by its makers - meanings that they were compelled to express on rocks in Britain and Ireland, through mostly abstract images, for thousands of years. For a long time, ancient rock art remained a topic on the fringes of Archaeology. Since the 1960s, however, there has been sustained recording and research into ancient rock art. Increased publicity has evoked growing interest in British and Irish rock art, with professional and amateur archaeologists and the public, with the latter being responsible for many discoveries. In 2007, Aron Mazel, George Nash and Clive Waddington published the first edited volume focusing on ancient British rock art, entitled Art as Metaphor. Since then, there have been a number of publications covering this topic. Building on the increased interest in rock art, this lavishly illustrated volume constructed of thirteen thought-provoking chapters and an Introduction will do much to further enhance of understanding of this fascinating and meaningful resource. It will further establish ancient British and Irish rock art as a significant archaeological assemblage worthy of attention and additional study.

Cave art is a subject of perennial interest among archaeologists. Until recently it was assumed that it was largely restricted to southern France and northern Iberia, although in recent years new discoveries have demonstrated that it originally had a much wider distribution. The discovery in 2003 of the UK's first examples of cave art, in two caves at Creswell Crags on the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border, was the most surprising illustration of this. The discoverers (the editors of the book) brought together in 2004 a number of Palaeolithic archaeologists and rock art specialists from across the world to study the Creswell art and debate its significance, and its similarities and contrasts with contemporary Late Pleistocene ('Ice Age') art on the Continent. This comprehensively illustrated book presents the Creswell art itself, the archaeology of the caves and the region, and the wider context of the Upper Palaeolithic era in Britain, as well as a number of up-to-date studies of Palaeolithic cave art in Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy which serve to contextualize the British examples.

The German ethnologist and explorer Theodor Koch-Grunberg (1872-1924) discusses the origin and significance of rock art in South America in this study, originally published in 1907. In the first part of the book Koch-Grunberg traces the earliest mention of Brazilian rock art to an eighteenth-century German explorer and gives a wide-ranging account of rock paintings found in South America, engaging critically with the interpretations proposed by some of his fellow scholars. In the second part of the work, the author reproduces (either as drawings or photographs) 29 rock paintings that he himself discovered during one of his expeditions to the Yapura River and the Rio Negro (Venezuela) in 1903-1905. He comments on the characteristics and significance of each of the paintings and assesses their impact within the larger ethnological context of the indigenous tribes of that area.

It has often been claimed that "monsters"--supernatural creatures with bodies composed from multiple species--play a significant part in the thought and imagery of all people from all times. "The Origins of Monsters" advances an alternative view. Composite figurations are intriguingly rare and isolated in the art of the prehistoric era. Instead it was with the rise of cities, elites, and cosmopolitan trade networks that "monsters" became widespread features of visual production in the ancient world. Showing how these fantastic images originated and how they were transmitted, David Wengrow identifies patterns in the records of human image-making and embarks on a search for connections between mind and culture.

Wengrow asks: Can cognitive science explain the potency of such images? Does evolutionary psychology hold a key to understanding the transmission of symbols? How is our making and perception of images influenced by institutions and technologies? Wengrow considers the work of art in the first age of mechanical reproduction, which he locates in the Middle East, where urban life began. Comparing the development and spread of fantastic imagery across a range of prehistoric and ancient societies, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and China, he explores how the visual imagination has been shaped by a complex mixture of historical and universal factors.

Examining the reasons behind the dissemination of monstrous imagery in ancient states and empires, "The Origins of Monsters" sheds light on the relationship between culture and cognition.

This excavation of a Late Bronze Age town on the island of Mochlos in northeastern Crete includes the House of the Metal Merchant (with two large bronze hoards) and 13 other structures. Each building is described with its stratigraphy, architecture, small finds, ecofactual materials, function, and room use. This is a two volume set. Volume 1 contains the text and Volume 2 contains the Concordance, Tables, Figures, and Plates.