The Archaeology of Rock-Art [Paperback]

This collection on rock-art explores how we can learn from it as a material record of distant times.Rock-art - prehistoric pictures - gives us lively and captivating images of animals and people painted and carved in caves and on open rock surfaces. It is all too easy to guess at the meanings the images carry. This pioneering set of sparkling essays instead explores how we can reliably learn from rock-art as a material record of distant times by adapting the proven methods of archaeology to the special subject of rock art.Rock-art - prehistoric pictures - gives us lively and captivating images of animals and people painted and carved in caves and on open rock surfaces. It is all too easy to guess at the meanings the images carry. This pioneering set of sparkling essays instead explores how we can reliably learn from rock-art as a material record of distant times by adapting the proven methods of archaeology to the special subject of rock art.Rock art--prehistoric pictures--gives us lively and captivating images of animals and people painted and carved in caves and on open rock surfaces. It is all too easy to guess at the meanings the images carry. This pioneering set of essays instead explores how we can reliably learn from rock art as a material record of distant times by adapting the proven methods of archaeology to the special subject of rock art.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 LalS™