Description
Book Synopsis Dating back to at least 50,000 years ago, rock art is one of the oldest forms of human symbolic expression. Geographically, it spans all the continents on Earth. Scenes are common in some rock art, and recent work suggests that there are some hints of expression that looks like some of the conventions of western scenic art. In this unique volume examining the nature of scenes in rock art, researchers examine what defines a scene, what are the necessary elements of a scene, and what can the evolutionary history tell us about storytelling, sequential memory, and cognitive evolution among ancient and living cultures?
Trade Review “The volume’s strength is in the breadth and diversity of the contributions that illustrate the numerous approaches being taken to this analytical and interpretive problem. It will be useful for all rock art researchers concerned with interpretation, but also with documentation. Without some understanding of the potential existence of scenes, even the question of tabulating motifs becomes problematic: are the various motifs on a panel individual symbols or are they some combination of a single, symbolic representation? The answer will almost certainly vary from case to case but the many studies in this monograph can provide ideas for how best to resolve this problem.” • Antiquity
“[this is] the first coherent and comparative collection of papers to address the subject of scenes in rock art and is therefore an important addition to our understanding of not just early artmaking but also of images that illustrate a long history of humans interacting and performing in coherent groups.” • Australian Archaeology
“Any reader interested in the question “what makes a scene in rock art?” will find a wonderful array of answers in this book, most of them built from sophisticated theoretical frameworks and applied to worldwide case studies via the use of well-devised and relevant methods.
” • Danae Fiore, Universidad de Buenos Aires
Table of Contents List of Illustrations
Preface
Meg Conkey
Introduction: Behind the Scenes—Did Scenes in Rock Art Create New Ways of Seeing the World?
Iain Davidson and April Nowell
Chapter 1. Scenes and non-Scenes in Rock Art
Iain Davidson
Chapter 2. The Possible Significance of Depicted Scenes for Cognitive Development.
Livio Dobrez
Chapter 3. Event Depiction in Rock Art: Landscape-Embedded Plan-View Narratives, Decontextualized Profile “scenes,” and their Hybrid Instances
Patricia Dobrez
Chapter 4. Defining “scenes” in Rock Art Research: Visual Conventions and Beyond
Madeleine Kelly and Bruno David
Chapter 5. Putting Southern African Rock Paintings in Context: The View from the Mirabib Rockshelter, Western Namibia
Grant S. McCall, Theodore P. Marks, Jordan Wilson, Andrew G. Schroll, and James G. Enloe
Chapter 6. Scenic Narratives of Humans and Animals in Namibian rock art – A Methodological Restart with Data Mining
Tilman Lenssen-Erz, Eymard Fäder, Oliver Vogels and Brigitte Mathiak
Chapter 7. Between scene and association: Toward a Better Understanding of Scenes in the Rock Art of Iran
Ebrahim Karimi
Chapter 8. Music and Dancing Scenes in the Rock Art of Central India
Meenakshi Dubey-Pathak and Jean Clottes
Chapter 9. Hunting and havoc: Narrative Scenes in the Black Desert Rock Art of Jebel Qurma, Jordan
Nathalie Østerled Brusgaard and Keshia A. N. Akkermans
Chapter 10. Making a scene: An analysis of rock art panels from the Northwest Kimberley and Central Desert, Australia.
June Ross
Chapter 11. Scene but not heard: Seeing scenes in a northern Australian Aboriginal site
Madeleine Kelly, Bruno David and Josephine Flood
Chapter 12. A Comparison of “scenes” in Parietal and Non-Parietal Upper Paleolithic Imagery: Formal Differences and Ontological Implications
Elisabeth Culley
Chapter 13. Scene Makers: Finger Fluters in Rouffignac Cave (France)
Leslie Van Gelder and April Nowell
Chapter 14. Maps in Prehistoric Art
Pilar Utrilla, Carlos Mazo, Rafael Domingo and Manuel Bea
Chapter 15. Scenes in the Paleolithic and Levantine Art of Eastern Spain
Valentín Villaverde
Chapter 16. New Insights into the Analysis of Levantine Rock Art Scenes Informed by Observations on Western Arnhem Land Rock Art.
Inés Domingo
Chapter 17. Rules of Ordering and Grouping in the pitoti, the Later Prehistoric Rock-Engravings of Valcamonica (BS), Italy: from Solitary Figures through Clusters, Graphic Groups, and Scenes to Narrative
Craig Alexander, Alberto Marretta, Thomas Huet, Christopher Chippindale
Chapter 18. Finding Order out of Chaos: A Statistical Analysis of Nine Mile Canyon Rock Art
Jerry D. Spangler and Iain Davidson
Chapter 19. Interpreting Scenes in the Rock Art of the Canadian Maritimes
Bryn Tapper and Oscar Moro Abadía
Chapter 20. The “Black Series” in the Hunting Scenes of Cueva de las Manos, Río Pinturas, Patagonia, Argentina.
Carlos A. Aschero and Patricia Schneier
Epilogue: Is There More to Scenes than Meets the eye?
Iain Davidson and April Nowell
