The archaeology of rock-art
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The archaeology of rock-art
Cambridge University Press, 1998
- : pbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Pictures, painted and carved in caves and on open rock surfaces, are amongst our loveliest relics from prehistory. This pioneering set of sparkling essays goes beyond guesses as to what the pictures mean, instead exploring how we can reliably learn from rock-art as a material record of distant times: in short, rock-art as archaeology. Sometimes contact-period records offer some direct insight about indigenous meaning, so we can learn in that informed way. More often, we have no direct record, and instead have to use formal methods to learn from the evidence of the pictures themselves. The book's eighteen papers range wide in space and time, from the Palaeolithic of Europe to nineteenth-century Australia. Using varied approaches within the consistent framework of informed and proven methods, they make key advances in using the striking and reticent evidence of rock-art to archaeological benefit.
Table of Contents
- 1. An archaeology of rock-art through informed methods and informal methods Paul Tacon and Christopher Chippindale
- 2. Finding rain in the desert: landscape, gender and far western North American rock-art David S. Whitley
- 3. Towards a mindscape of landscape: rock-art as expression of world-understanding Sven Ouzman
- 4. Icon and narrative in transition: contact-period rock-art at Writing-on-Stone, southern Alberta, Canada Michael A. Klassen
- 5. Rain in Bushman belief, politics and history: the rock-art of rain-making in the south-eastern mountains, southern Africa Thomas A. Dowson
- 6. The many ways of dating Arnhem Land rock-art, north Australia Jean Clottes
- 7. The 'Three Cs': fresh avenues towards European Palaeolithic art Richard Bradley
- 8. Daggers drawn: depictions of Bronze Age weapons in Atlantic Europe Kalle Sognnes
- 9. Symbols in a changing world: rock-art and the transition from hunting to farming in mid Norway Meredith Wilson
- 10. Pacific rock-art and cultural genesis: a multivariate exploration Ralph Hartley
- 11. Spatial behaviour and learning in the prehistoric environment of the Colorado River drainage (south-eastern Utah), western North America Anne Vasser
- 12. The tale of the chameleon and the platypus: limited and likely choices in making pictures Benjamin Smith
- 13. Pictographic evidence of peyotism in the Lowe Pecos, Texas Archaic Carolyn E. Boyd
- 14. Modelling change in the contact art of the south-eastern San, southern Africa Pieter Jolly
- 15. Ethnography and method in southern African rock-art research Anne Solomon
- 16. Changing art in a changing society: the hunters' rock-art of western Norway Eva M. Walderhaug
- 17. Central Asian petroglyphs: between Indo-Iranian and shamanistic interpretations Henri-Paul Francfort
- 18. Shelter rock-art in the Sydney Basin (Australia) - a space-time continuum: exploring different influences on diachronic change Jo McDonald
- 19. Making sense of obscure pictures from our own history: exotic images from Callan Park, Australia John Clegg.
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