Scholar and artist John Clegg made a pioneering contribution to the study of rock art. He was the first in the Australian academy to teach rock art research as a dedicated subject (Sydney University 1965-2000), supervising the first graduate students with such specialty, subsequently supporting their careers. He is honoured here for much more than his novelty and the contributions in this monograph pay homage to the late John Kay Clegg’s diverse influence. Rock art researchers from around the globe traverses topics such as aesthetics, the application of statistical analyses, frontier conflict and layered symbolic meanings, the deliberate use of optical illusion, and the contemporary significance of ancient and street art. They cover rock art assemblages from Columbia, South Africa, Europe and across Clegg’s beloved Australia. They interrogate descriptive and analytic concepts such as repainting, memorialisation and graffiti, as well as questioning the ethical impactions of research practices touching rock art as a part of its study. The tributes in this book are necessarily as individual as the man they honour, and John Clegg was certainly an individual. The longevity of ideas and perspectives Clegg brought to the pursuit of rock art research is demonstrated in this collection of works. Clegg’s continued relevance is testament to the value and magnitude of his contribution. He is a deserving subject for a Festschrift.

This critical examination of the first cycle of urbanization, collapse and reurbanization in the 4th-2nd millennium BCE Levant is now reissued with a new preface reflecting on developments in research since its first publication. The core of the study is a detailed analysis of settlement fluctuations and material culture development in the Hula Valley, at the crossroads between modern Israel, Syria and Lebanon. Focusing on field data and a close reading of the material text, the book emphasizes the variety exhibited in patterns of cultural and social change when small, densely settled regions are carefully scrutinized. Using the concepts of time-space edges and shifting loci of power, the study suggests new scenarios to explain changes in the regional archaeological record, and considers the implications these have for existing reconstructions of social evolution in the larger region. The Levant is shown to be composed of a fluid mosaic of polities that moved along multiple, if often parallel, paths towards and away from complexity. This book is for anyone studying the archaeology of early state formation in the Near East, particularly in areas of secondary urbanization - Palestine, Syria and Anatolia. With its detailed consideration of settlement patterns and ceramic production, it is also indispensable for the study of the early history of the two major sites in the area, Tel Dan and Tel Hazor, being the first attempt to integrate the results of excavations at these sites with the information obtained in archaeological surveys of the valley which sustained them.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the megalithic necropolis of Petit- Chasseur in Sion (Valais, Switzerland), an international conference was organised from the 27th to the 29th of October 2011 in Sion. This book constitutes the conference proceedings. The necropolis of Petit-Chasseur still remains a key reference for the understanding of the Final Neolithic period, not only in the Alpine countries, but also throughout Europe. The scientific meeting therefore focused on the end of the Neolithic period in Valais and in the adjacent regions, on the Bell Beaker phenomenon in general, on the funerary rites of this period, and on the anthropology of megalithic societies. The conference was attended by nearly two hundred people, students, junior and senior scholars from many countries including Austria, Belgium, Spain, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Morocco, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. The present publication includes twenty-five papers referring to the periods represented at the Petit-Chasseur necropolis, namely the end of the Neolithic, the Bell Beaker period and the beginning of the Early Bronze Age. In addition to a preface, a first group of papers - eight in total - deal directly with the Petit Chasseur Site in Sion and the end of the Neolithic in the Alps. A second group of articles constitute the section titled "The Final Neolithic and the Bell Beaker Culture in Europe and beyond". This section is composed of fifteen articles presenting the results of archaeological, anthropological, botanical, and zooarchaeological analyses of Europe and Northern Africa. The conclusion drawn from the analysis is invariably the same. It is only possible to back our explicative constructions if we establish a serious dialogue with the field of cultural anthropology and if we construct a real science of the human facts, which is far from being achieved currently. The third part of this publication, which consists of two papers and is titled "Societies and Megaliths", offers a discussion on megalith building societies that reflects on and develops this conclusion. All papers in English; abstracts for each paper in English and French.

Prehistory covers the period of some 4 million years before the start of written history, when our earliest ancestors, the Australopithecines, existed in Africa. But this is relatively recent compared to whole history of the earth of some 4.5 billion years. A key aspect of prehistory is that it provides a sense of scale, throwing recent ways of life into perspective. Humans and their ancestors lived in many different ways and the cultural variety we see now is just a tiny fraction of that which has existed over millions of years. Humans are part of the broader evolution of landscapes and communities of plants and animals, but Homo sapiens is also the only species to have made a real impact on planetary systems. To understand such an impact, we need a grasp of our longest term development and ways of life. In this new edition of his Very Short Introduction, Chris Gosden invites us to think seriously about who we are by considering who we have been. As he explains, many new discoveries have been made in archaeology over the last ten years, and a new framework for prehistory is emerging. A greater understanding of Chinese and central Asian prehistory has thrown Eurasian prehistory in quite a different light, with flows of the influence of culture over large areas now evident. This has eaten away at the traditional view of human progress around the invention of agriculture, the development of cities and (much later) the industrial revolution, and given us new geographies to think about. Chris Gosden explores the new landscape of our prehistory, and considers the way the different geographical locations weave together. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

While "corridor houses" such as the House of the Tiles at Lerna have provoked widespread discussion about the origins of social stratification in Greece, few settlements of the Early Bronze Age (ca. 3100 to 2000 B.C.) have been thoroughly excavated. This important study integrates the presentation and analysis of the archaeological evidence from a single settlement that flourished on Tsoungiza Hill in the Nemea Valley from the Final Neolithic until the end of the Early Helladic period. The first section details the stratigraphy, architecture, deposits, and ceramics of each of the five major periods represented. The second section contains specialist reports on all aspects of material culture including figurines and ornaments, textiles and crafts, metal analyses, chipped and ground stone, and faunal and palaeobotanical remains.

This beautifully written book explores the Iron Age bog bodies of northern Europe as cultural artefacts, objects of fascination to archaeologists and antiquaries, but also to artists, poets, philosophers and psychologists. Sanders describes the wide range of responses which the bodies have produced from such diverse figures as Sigmund Freud, Seumus Heaney, William Carols Willams and Margaret Attwood. She is particularly strong on Scandinavian material, and with his miraculously preserved face Tollund man, has cast a long shadow in Danish art and culture. The violent sacrificial deaths of the bodies have obviously fired the imagination as has Tacitus' suggestion of punishment for infidelity, but Karin Sanders contends that it is the unique status of the bodies both as human beings and archaeological artefacts, somehow transformed by their remarkable preservation that has guaranteed such a profound and multifaceted response.

Why publish a Reader? Today, it is relatively easy and convenient to switch on your computer and download an academic paper. However, as many scholars have experienced, historic references are difficult to access. Moreover, some are now lost and are merely references in later papers. This can be frustrating. This book provides a series of papers from all over the world that extend as far back as the 1970s when rock art research was in its infancy. The papers presented in the Reader reflect the development in the various approaches that have influenced advancing scholarly research.

The central issues discussed in this new collected work in the highly successful ancient textiles series are the relationships between fiber resources and availability on the one hand and the ways those resources were exploited to produce textiles on the other. Technological and economic practices - for example, the strategies by which raw materials were acquired and prepared - in the production of textiles play a major role in the papers collected here. Contributions investigate the beginnings of wool use in western Asia and southeastern Europe. The importance of wool in considerations of early textiles is due to at least two factors. First, both wild as well as some domesticated sheep are characterized by a hairy rather than a woolly coat. This raises the question of when and where woolly sheep emerged, a question that has not up to now been resolvable by genetic or other biological analyses. Second, wool as a fiber has played a major role both economically and socially in both western Asian and European societies from as early as the 3rd millennium BCE in Mesopotamia, and it continues to do so, in different ways, up to the modern day. Despite the importance of wool as a fiber resource contributors demonstrate clearly that its development and use can only be properly addressed in the context of a consideration of other fibers, both plant and animal. Only within a framework that takes into account historically and regionally variable strategies of procurement, processing, and the products of different types of fibers is it possible to gain real insights into the changing roles played by fibers and textiles in the lives of people in different places and times in the past. With relatively rare, albeit sometimes spectacular exceptions, archaeological contexts offer only poor conditions of preservation for textiles. As a result, archaeologists are dependent on indirect or proxy indicators such as textile tools (e.g., loom weights, spindle whorls) and the analysis of faunal remains to explore a range of such proxies and methods by which they may be analyzed and evaluated in order to contribute to an understanding of fiber and textile production and use in the past.

The Neolithic in Britain was a period of fundamental change: human communities were transformed, collectively owning domesticated plants and animals, and inhabiting a richer world of material things: timber houses and halls, pottery vessels, polished flint and stone axes, and massive monuments of earth and stone. Equally important was the development of a suite of new social practices, with an emphasis on descent, continuity and inheritance. These innovations set in train social processes that culminated with the construction of Stonehenge, the most remarkable surviving structure from prehistoric Europe. Neolithic Britain provides an up-to-date, concise introduction to the period of British prehistory from c. 4000-2200 BCE. Written on the basis of a new appreciation of the chronology of the period, the result reflects both on the way that archaeologists write narratives of the Neolithic, and how Neolithic people constructed histories of their own. Incorporating new insights from the extraordinary pace of archaeological discoveries in recent years, a world emerges which is unfamiliar, complex and challenging, and yet played a decisive role in forging the landscape of contemporary Britain. Important recent developments have resulted in a dual realisation: firstly, highly focused research into individual site chronologies can indicate precise and particular time narratives; and secondly, this new awareness of time implies original insights about the fabric of Neolithic society, embracing matters of inheritance, kinship and social ties, and the 'descent' of cultural practices. Moreover, our understanding of Neolithic society has been radically affected by individual discoveries and investigative projects, whether in the Stonehenge area, on mainland Orkney, or in less well-known localities across the British Isles. The new perspective provided in this volume stems from a greater awareness of the ways in which unfolding events and transformations in societies depend upon the changing relations between individuals and groups, mediated by objects and architecture. This concise panorama into Neolithic Britain offers new conclusions and an academically-stimulating but accessible overview. It covers key material and social developments, and reflects on the nature of cultural practices, tradition, genealogy, and society across nearly two millennia.

This book provides a full up to date account of the evidence relating to the Middle Stone Age in Nigeria and the other countries of West Africa. It relies upon the author’s own fieldwork and extensive personal knowledge of the region and its archaeology. It is abundantly illustrated with maps, photographs, and drawings. The emphasis is on stratigraphy, chronology, site situation, and artefact characteristics, with such general background information about the countries concerned as is required. A summary account is also provided of the current situation in relation to this topic (covering climate, archaeology, and human evolution) in the African continent as a whole, so that a judgement can made as to how the West African evidence fits in with the rest. In general accounts of the African palaeolithic record up to now, West Africa tends to be neglected, so this book goes a long way to fill a gap in the available literature.

The Iron Age copper smelting site situated near the Cypriot village Agia Varvara is of particular importance among the ancient copper processing places in the Near East because it has revealed spatial as well as technological aspects of copper production in a hitherto rarely-seen depth of detail. Agia Varvara-Almyras: an Iron Age Copper Smelting Site in Cyprus presents the results of a comprehensive post-excavation analysis of the stratigraphy (part I), also of the geology, metallurgical materials (furnaces, tuyeres), finds (pottery, furnace lining, stone tools), as well as a synthesis of the copper smelting technology at Agia Varvara-Almyras (part II). The excavation analysis not only focuses on pyrotechnical information from individual furnaces, but also provides a detailed study of the spatial organisation as well as of the living conditions on the smelting site. An elaborate reconstruction of the features in a 3D model allows the visualisation of formerly-dispersed loci of copper production. Based on this virtual rebuilding of the hillock named Almyras, it becomes clear that archaeometallurgy must be unchained, and the idea of an 'operational chain' must be replaced by a more multidimensional research strategy labelled as an 'operational web'. The present volume aims to stimulate future excavations which pay attention to the reasons behind the exploitation of the riches of the island, as well as to the needs of the markets where the final product was very likely to have been appreciated as a strategic commodity, by power players operating on the island as well as by ordinary people in need of a repair to an everyday commodity which had broken.

This volume presents a new systematic approach to the archaeological recording and documentation of rock art developed to analyse the spatial and temporal structure of complex rock art panels. Focusing on the ceiling art at Nawarla Gabarnmang, one of the richest rock art sites in Arnhem Land the approach utilised DStretch-enhanced photographs to record 1391 motifs from 42 separate art panels across the ceiling. Harris Matrices were then built to show the sequence of superimpositions for each art panel. Using common attributes, including features identified by Morellian Method (a Fine Art method not previously employed in archaeological rock art studies), contemporaneous motifs within panels were then aggregated into individual layers. The art layers of the various panels were then inter-related using the relative and absolute chronological evidence to produce a full relative sequence for the site as a whole. This provided a story of the art that began some 13,000 years ago and concluded around 60 years ago, with a major change identified in the art some 450 years ago. The method was shown to be invaluable to the resolution of many difficult issues associated with the identification of motifs, their superimpositions and the development of art sequences.

Before Sir Arthur Evans, the principal object of Greek prehistoric archaeology was the reconstruction of history in relation to myth. European travellers to Greece viewed its picturesque ruins as the gateway to mythical times, while Heinrich Schliemann, at the end of the nineteenth century, allegedly uncovered at Troy and Mycenae the legendary cities of the Homeric epics. It was Evans who, in his controversial excavations at Knossos, steered Aegean archaeology away from Homer towards the broader Mediterranean world. Yet in so doing he is thought to have done his own inventing, recreating the Cretan Labyrinth via the Bronze Age myth of the Minotaur. Nanno Marinatos challenges the entrenched idea that Evans was nothing more than a flamboyant researcher who turned speculation into history. She argues that Evans was an excellent archaeologist, one who used scientific observation and classification. Evans's combination of anthropology, comparative religion and analysis of cultic artefacts enabled him to develop a bold new method which Sir James Frazer called 'mental anthropology'. It was this approach that led him to propose remarkable ideas about Minoan religion, theories that are now being vindicated as startling new evidence comes to light. Examining the frescoes from Akrotiri, on Santorini, that are gradually being restored, the author suggests that Evans's hypothesis of one unified goddess of nature is the best explanation of what they signify. Evans was in 1901 ahead of his time in viewing comparable Minoan scenes as a blend of ritual action and mythic imagination. Nanno Marinatos is a leading authority on Minoan religion. In this latest book she combines history, archaeology and myth to bold and original effect, offering a wholly new appraisal of Evans and the significance of his work. Sir Arthur Evans and Minoan Crete will be essential reading for all students of Minoan civilization, as well as an irresistible companion for travellers to Crete.

The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia is a landmark study in the origins of metallurgy. The project aimed to trace the invention and innovation of metallurgy in the Balkans. It combined targeted excavations and surveys with extensive scientific analyses at two Neolithic-Chalcolithic copper production and consumption sites, Belovode and Plocnik, in Serbia. At Belovode, the project revealed chronologically and contextually secure evidence for copper smelting in the 49th century BC. This confirms the earlier interpretation of c. 7000-year-old metallurgy at the site, making it the earliest record of fully developed metallurgical activity in the world. However, far from being a rare and elite practice, metallurgy at both Belovode and Plocnik is demonstrated to have been a common and communal craft activity. This monograph reviews the pre-existing scholarship on early metallurgy in the Balkans. It subsequently presents detailed results from the excavations, surveys and scientific analyses conducted at Belovode and Plocnik. These are followed by new and up-to-date regional syntheses by leading specialists on the Neolithic-Chalcolithic material culture, technologies, settlement and subsistence practices in the Central Balkans. Finally, the monograph places the project results in the context of major debates surrounding early metallurgy in Eurasia before proposing a new agenda for global early metallurgy studies.

In this book, Dr Vyron Antoniadis presents a contextual study of the Near Eastern imports which reached Crete during the Early Iron Age and were deposited in the Knossian tombs. Cyprus, Phoenicia, North Syria and Egypt are the places of origin of these imports. Knossian workshops produced close or freer imitations of these objects. The present study reveals the ways in which imported commodities were used to create or enhance social identity in the Knossian context. The author explores the reasons that made Knossians deposit imported objects in their graves as well as investigates whether specific groups could control not only the access to these objects but also the production of their imitations. Dr Antoniadis argues that the extensive use of locally produced imitations alongside authentic imports in burial rituals and contexts indicates that Knossians treated both imports and imitations as items of the same symbolic and economic value.

Though scholarship on intoxicants in regions like Asia, Africa, Mesoamerica, and South America is plentiful, Native Intoxicants of North America represents the first foray into a study of prehistoric intoxicants throughout North America specifically. In this study, Sean Rafferty fills significant gaps in existing research with a focus on native cultures of North America and holistic coverage of intoxicants by type. Importantly, Rafferty anchors his investigation in an easily overlooked question: why did early humans use intoxicants in the first place? Rafferty begins by discussing the origins of intoxicants and their role in rituals, medicine, and recreation. Subsequent chapters turn to specific intoxicants-hallucinogens, stimulants, alcohol, and tobacco-making ample use of illustrations across disciplines, weaving a tapestry of culture, ritual, medicine, botany, artifact, and history. All the while, Rafferty explores the societal significance of narcotics, stimulants, and hallucinogens on prehistoric North American cultures. While Native Intoxicants of North America focuses specifically on Native cultures, the author's analysis provides the foundation for a valuable broader discussion: that in a world where few human behaviors are universal, experiencing altered states of consciousness is one that transcends culture and time.

Flint Procurement and Exploitation Strategies in the Late Lower Paleolithic Levant examines twelve lithic assemblages from Qesem Cave. Potential flint sources were located, petrographic thin sections of archaeological and geologic samples were studied, and a geochemical analysis was performed. The results show that flint from local Turonian sources was often brought to the cave, forming most of the identified flint. Flint from non-Turonian geologic origins was also used in noteworthy proportions, in specific typotechnological categories. The availability of desired flints around the cave, highly suitable for the production of the commonly-used blades, as well as for the production of other tools, probably played a role in the decision to settle there. The notable proportions of non-Turonian flint types, a pattern that repeats itself through time, demonstrate consistency in accessing sources containing non-local flint, implying the existence of knowledge transmission mechanisms concerning the distribution of sources and the suitability of specific flint types for the production of specific blanks/tools.

This book deals with the question how communities across Europe during the later 3rd millennium BC adopt and transform the Bell Beaker phenomenon differently. By looking at these processes of change from the perspective of settlements and settlement material culture, an interpretation is given to the development of this phenomenon that is alternative to the currently prevailing migration models. Instead, the author uses social theories on the spread of innovations, the development and functioning of communication networks and the social technologies involved in the production of material culture in his arguments. For the first time, settlements from various regions of Europe are studied at the same level and compared using modern research methods such as aoristic frequency distributions, the Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates and network analyses. Temporal and spatial variability in the regional processes that lead to the adoption (and rejection!) of Bell Beaker innovations are described in detail. The regional variability in communication between settlements, and the exchange of ideas and objects and mobility of people are combined with sociological network theories on the spread and adoption of novel ideas. Regional differences in the production of pottery are reviewed by both quantitative and qualitative methods. Finally, a Bell Beaker network is described in which various processes of innovation adoption and subsequent re-invention, developing communication networks and different forms of mobility take part.

On his death, Arthur Boucot (1924-2017) left an unfinished manuscript in which he surveyed the skeletal, behavioural, and cultural changes that have characterized Homo from its first recognition in the Late Pliocene to the present. The subjects he treated were as varied as the preparation of food for infants, the length of intestines, hafting, plastering, use of flint and metals, the domestication of grains and animals, and the prevalence of parasitic diseases. His text repeatedly notes the difficulties imposed by the enormous gaps in both fossil and archaeological records. Boucot deduced a continuity in basic human behaviours from the Oldowan and Acheulian into modern forms, and made a point of including Neandertals and Denisovans. But he also pointed out that morphological changes in successive species of Homo do not coincide in time with major changes in lithic technologies. Boucot concluded that a quantum evolutionary gap separates hominins from the great apes: that members of our line were sapient and had been using language long before they became sapiens. In his text he also indicates his concern for changes to the environment wrought by human activities. The results of this late-life effort, edited after his death, provide a heavily referenced sourcebook for future workers in diverse fields.

South Yorkshire and the North Midlands have long been ignored or marginalized in narratives of British Prehistory. In Remembered Places, Forgotten Pasts, largely unpublished data is used for the first time in a work of synthesis to reconstruct the prehistory of the earliest communities across the River Don drainage basin. The author uses a relational approach to account for the complex and sophisticated interaction between people and materiality. Monuments and material culture are considered together, in relation to the diverse landscapes across which they were deposited in the distant past. The memory of significant places along lines of movement are central to the approach taken, combined with the changing character of the land which supported people. Virtually absent in recent narratives, the forgotten prehistoric pasts of the region are now able to be approached on a systematic basis. The author concludes that a region that was the centre of dynamic interaction between mobile groups in its earliest phase gave way to a pastoral lifestyle facilitated by extensive wetlands. These wetlands were connected by waterways and gorges. Thus connected, the wetlands were located to either side of its drier, centrally defining feature, the Magnesian Limestone ridge.

The reconstruction of the technical systems of ceramic production and of its 'chaine operatoire' is a means of exploring certain social structures in time and space. For many years, methodological procedures based on multidisciplinarity have made it possible to analyse both materials and methods of fabrication for this purpose. Session IV-3 organised at the 18th Congress of the UISPP in 2018 aimed to highlight the contribution of technological approaches to ceramics, both in archaeology and in ethnology, to the analysis of pre- and protohistoric societies. The case studies focus on the Neolithic and the European Bronze Age, but also on the megalithism of our era in Senegal.

Between the 3rd and 2nd Millennia BC: Exploring Cultural Diversity and Change in Late Prehistoric Communities is a collection of studies on the cultural reconfigurations that occurred in western Europe between the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. It brings together seven texts focusing on the evidence from the West of the Iberian Peninsula, and one on the South of England. The texts have their origin in a landmark meeting held at the University of Coimbra in November 2018, where scholars explored the grand narratives explaining the differences between what are traditionally considered Chalcolithic (or Late Neolithic) and Bronze Age communities. The contributions look at key aspects of these grand narratives through regional perspectives, asking the following questions: is there clear data to support the idea of an intensification of social complexity towards the emergence of the Bronze Age chiefdoms? What is the role of monumental architecture within this process? How do we best discuss the different levels of architectural visibility during this period? How can we interpret collective and individual burials in relation to the emergence of individual/territorial powers? In answering these questions, the papers explore regional diversity and argue that regional specificities resist a general interpretation of the historical process at stake. In light of this resistance, the book emphasizes that cultural singularities only become visible through contextual, medium, or low-scale approaches. The recognition of singularities challenges grand narratives, but also carries the potential to expand our understanding of the changes that occurred during this key moment of Late Prehistory. The book thus offers readers the opportunity to think about the diversity of archaeological evidence in combination with an exploration of the available range of approaches and narratives. The critical intertwining of multiple points of view is necessary, because it gets us closer to how elusive the cultural differences of prehistoric communities can be. This elusive dimension is precisely what can force us to constantly rethink what we see and what questions we ask.

Aegean prehistory has developed over the 20th century into a distinctive and vibrant area of archaeological research. The past few decades, in particular, have seen a dramatic reorientation and expansion of goals and methods as well as a flood of new fieldwork in the Agean. Keeping abreast of these new developments has become a daunting task. Aegean Prehistory: A Review contains detailed syntheses of research, originally published in the American Journal of Archaeology and newly updated here. The volume conveys the diversity and richness of current approaches to the discipline of Aegean prehistory whilst also marshalling an enormous amount of information pertaining to field projects, museum studies, analyses of materials and texts, and supporting theories of interpretation. An introduction by Tracey Cullen places the review articles in historical perspective, tracing the evolution of Aegean prehistory from the 19th century to the present. The author also considers the current status of the discipline--its relationships with classical archaeology and anthropology, and the manner in which it is shaped by various sociopolitical forces. Aegean Prehistory: A Review is a powerful research tool for the exploration of Aegean themes. With its expansive and detailed coverage, the book constitutes essential reading for professionals and students of Aegean prehistory. It will also be of great interest to all who wish to learn more about intellectual trends and current discoveries in this part of the Mediterranean. Perhaps most important, Aegean Prehistory: A Review provides a solid foundation upon which Aegean archaeology can build as it continues to thrive in the coming years.        

A Painted Ridge is a book about the San (Bushmen) practice of rock painting. In it, David Witelson explores a suite of spatially close San rock painting sites in the Maclear District of South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. As a suite, the sites are remarkable because, despite their proximity to each other, they share patterns of similarity and simultaneous difference. They are a microcosm that reflects, in a broad sense, a trend found at other painted sites in South Africa. Rather than attempting to explain these patterns chiefly in terms of chronological breaks or cultural discontinuities, this book seeks to understand patterns of similarity and difference primarily in terms of the performative nature of San image-making. In doing so, the bygone and almost unrecorded practice of San rock art is considered relative to ethnographically well-documented and observed forms of San expressive culture. The approach in the book draws on concepts and terminology from the discipline of performance studies to characterise the San practice of image-making as well as to coordinate otherwise disparate ideas about that practice. It is a study that aims to explicate the nuances of what David Lewis-Williams called the ‘production and consumption’ of San rock art.