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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?
List 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
About the author
Iain Davidson was appointed at the University of New England in 1974 and was awarded a Personal Chair in 1997. He was appointed Emeritus in 2008 and took up the Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University for 2008–9. Iain has worked on Spanish Upper Palaeolithic (including Palaeolithic Art), archaeology and ethnography of Northwest Queensland, Australian rock art, archaeology and heritage, colonization of Sahul, language origins, and cognitive evolution.
April Nowell is a Palaeolithic archaeologist and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Victoria. She specializes in the origins of art, language, and other symbolic behavior, in the emergence of the modern mind and in the growth and development of Neandertal and early modern human children.
Summary
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?
