Description
Book SynopsisIdeas and Images argues that the development of symbols and signs informing scripts, mainly the idea of coding thoughts through symbols and images, has always been uniquely historical.' Rock art abuts and occupies long periods of time, from the Mesolithic, Neolithic-Chalcolithic, and Iron Age, to the medieval and colonial, in which the translation of indigenous thoughts was perfected through numerous mnemonic practices, some of them evidently to record in a surprisingly sophisticated historical oeuvre. These are ordered and direct representations of the ontological, philosophical, thought-object world of prehistoric or pre- or non-scripted communities. Such representations are better understood as so many graphic archives, and their temporality is broadly sequential, authentic, unique and historically contextualized since they record exceptional and everyday events, but also sometimes emotionally or humorously charged stories. The genre called rock art' is a successful and
