Description
Book SynopsisProfessor Rodrigo de Balbín has played a major role in advancing our knowledge of Palaeolithic art, and the occasion of his retirement provides an excellent opportunity to assess the value of prehistoric art studies as a factor in the study of the culture of those human groups which produced this imagery. The diverse papers in this volume, published in Professor de Balbín’s honour, cover a wide variety of the decorated caves which traditionally defined Palaeolithic art, as well as the open-air art of the period, a subject in which he has done pioneering work at Siega Verde and elsewhere. The result is a new and more realistic assessment of the social and symbolic framework of human groups from 40,000 BP onwards.
Table of ContentsPrehistoric Art as Prehistoric Culture (Primitiva Bueno-Ramírez and Paul Bahn); ‘Science’ versus Archaeology: Palaeolithic Rock Art at the beginning of the 21st century (José-Javier Alcolea-González and César González-Sainz); Raman spectroscopy of prehistoric pictorial materials (Antonio Hernanz); Prehistoric rock art and non-invasive analysis. Rouffignac as a case study (Patrick Paillet); Reasoning processes in prehistoric art interpretation (Sophie A. de Beaune); Are hand stencils in European cave art older than we think? An evaluation of the existing data and their potential implications (Paul Pettitt, Pablo Arias, Marcos García-Diez, Dirk Hoffmann, Alfredo Maximiano Castillejo, Roberto Ontañon-Peredo, Alistair Pike and João Zilhão); Regional ontologies in the Early Upper Palaeolithic: the place of mammoth and cave lion in the ‘belief world’ (Glaubenswelt) of the Swabian Aurignacian (Shumon T. Hussain and Harald Floss); Aurignacian art in the caves and rock-shelters of Aquitaine (France) (Brigitte and Gilles Delluc); Fuente del Trucho, Huesca (Spain): Reading interaction in Palaeolithic art (Pilar Utrilla and Manuel Bea); Open-air Ice Age art: the history and reluctant acceptance of an unexpected phenomenon (Paul G. Bahn); Decorated sites and habitat: social appropriation of territories (Denis Vialou); Deep caves, ritual and graphic expression: a critical review of the archaeological evidence on hypogean human activity during the Upper Palaeolithic/Magdalenian (Pablo Arias); Magdalenian settlement-subsistence systems in Cantabrian Spain: contributions from El Mirón Cave (Lawrence G. Straus, Manuel González Morales, Ana B. Marín-Arroyo and Lisa M. Fontes); The Upper Palaeolithic rock art of Portugal in its Iberian context (André Tomás Santos, Maria de Jesus Sanches and Joana Castro Teixeira); Old panels and new readings. La Pileta and pre-Solutrean graphics in Southern Iberia (Miguel Cortés Sánchez, María D. Simón Vallejo, Rubén Parrilla Giráldez, and Lydia Calle Román); Palaeolithic art in the Iberian Mediterranean region. Characteristics and territorial variation (Valentín Villaverde); Small seeds for big debates: Past and present contributions to Palaeoart studies from North-eastern Iberia (José María Fullola, Ines Domingo, Didac Román, María Pilar García-Argüelles, Marcos García-Díez and Jorge Nadal); Throwing light on the hidden corners. New data on Palaeolithic art from NW Iberia (Ramón Fábregas Valcarce, Arturo de Lombera-Hermida, Ramón Viñas Vallverdú, Xose Pedro Rodríguez-Álvarez, and Sofia Soares Figueiredo)
