This unique guide provides an artistic and archaeological journey deep into human history, exploring the petroglyphic and pictographic forms of rock art produced by the earliest humans to contemporary peoples around the world. Summarizes the diversity of views on ancient rock art from leading international scholars Includes new discoveries and research, illustrated with over 160 images (including 30 color plates) from major rock art sites around the world Examines key work of noted authorities (e.g. Lewis-Williams, Conkey, Whitley and Clottes), and outlines new directions for rock art research Is broadly international in scope, identifying rock art from North and South America, Australia, the Pacific, Africa, India, Siberia and Europe Represents new approaches in the archaeological study of rock art, exploring issues that include gender, shamanism, landscape, identity, indigeneity, heritage and tourism, as well as technological and methodological advances in rock art analyses

First published in 2005, this brief introduction to methods of studying rock art has become the standard text for courses on this topic. It was also selected as a Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Book in 2005. Internationally-known rock art researcher David Whitley takes the reader through the various processes needed to document, interpret, and preserve this fragile category of artifact. Using examples from around the globe, he offers a comprehensive guide to rock art studies of value to archaeologists and art historians, their students, and rock art aficionados. The second edition of this classic work has additional material on mapping sites, ethnographic analogy, neuropsychological models, and Native American consultation.

Rock art has long been considered an archaeological artifact reflecting activities from the past, yet it is also a phenomenon with present-day meaning and relevance to both indigenous and non-indigenous communities. Relating to Rock Art in the Contemporary World challenges traditional ways of thinking about this highly recognizable form of visual heritage and provides insight into its contemporary significance. One of the most visually striking forms of material culture embedded in landscapes, rock art is ascribed different meanings by diverse groups of people including indigenous peoples, governments, tourism offices, and the general public, all of whom relate to images and sites in unique ways. In this volume, leading scholars from around the globe shift the discourse from a primarily archaeological basis to one that examines the myriad ways that symbolism, meaning, and significance in rock art are being renegotiated in various geographical and cultural settings, from Australia to the British Isles. They also consider how people manage the complex meanings, emotions, and cultural and political practices tied to rock art sites and how these factors impact processes relating to identity construction and reaffirmation today. Richly illustrated and geographically diverse, Relating to Rock Art in the Contemporary World connects archaeology, anthropology, and heritage studies. The book will appeal to students and scholars of archaeology, anthropology, heritage, heritage management, identity studies, art history, indigenous studies, and visual theory, as well as professionals and amateurs who have vested or avocational interests in rock art. Contributors: Agustín Acevedo, Manuel Bea, Jutinach Bowonsachoti, Gemma Boyle, John J. Bradley, Noelene Cole, Inés Domingo, Kurt E. Dongoske, Davida Eisenberg-Degen, Dánae Fiore, Ursula K. Frederick, Kelley Hays-Gilpin, Catherine Namono, George H. Nash, John Norder, Marianna Ocampo, Joshua Schmidt, Duangpond Singhaseni, Benjamin W. Smith, Atthasit Sukkham, Noel Hidalgo Tan, Watinee Tanompolkrang, Luke Taylor, Dagmara Zawadzka

A key to the interpretation of rock art of the American Southwest, providing descriptions and illustrations of rock art symbols, along with their ascribed meanings, and including general and specific information on rock art sites.

Visual Culture, Heritage and Identity: Using Rock Art to Reconnect Past and Present sets out a fresh perspective on rock art by considering how ancient images function in the present. In recent decades, archaeological approaches to rock paintings and engravings have significantly advanced our understanding of rock art in regional and global terms. On the other hand, however, little research has been done on contemporary uses of rock art. How does ancient rock art heritage influence contemporary cultural phenomena? And how do past images function in the present, especially in contemporary art and other media? In the past, archaeologists usually concentrated more on reconstructing the semantic and social contexts of the ancient images. This volume, on the other hand, focuses on how this ancient heritage is recognised and reified in the modern world, and how this art stimulates contemporary processes of cultural identity-making. The authors, who are based all over the world, off er attractive and compelling case studies situated in diverse cultural and geographical contexts.

A companion to The Archaeology of Rock-Art (Cambridge 1998), this new collection edited by Christopher Chippindale and George Nash addresses the most important component around the rock-art panel - its landscape. The Figured Landscapes of Rock-Art draws together the work of many well-known scholars from key regions of the world for rock-art and for rock-art research. It provides a unique, broad and varied insight into the arrangement, location, and structure of rock-art and its place within the landscapes of ancient worlds as ancient people experienced them. Packed with illustrations, as befits a book about images, The Figured Landscapes of Rock-Art offers a visual as well as a literary key to the understanding of this most lovely and alluring of archaeological traces.

The purpose of Seeing and Knowing is to demonstrate the depth and wide geographical impact of David Lewis-Williams’ contribution to rock art research by emphasizing theory and methodology drawn from ethnography. Contributors explore what it means to understand and learn from rock art, and a contrast is drawn between those sites where it is possible to provide a modern, ethnographic context, and those sites where it is not. This is the definitive guide to the interplay between ethnography and rock art interpretation, and is an ideal resource for students and researchers alike.

While there has always been a large public interest in ancient pictures painted or carved on stone, the archaeological study of rock art is in its infancy. But intensive amounts of research has revolutionized this field in the past decade. New methods of dating and analysis help to pinpoint the makers of these beautiful images, new interpretive models help us understand this art in relation to culture. Identification, conservation and management of rock art sites have become major issues in historical preservation worldwide. And the number of archaeologically attested sites has mushroomed. In this handbook, the leading researchers in the rock art area provide cogent, state-of-the-art summaries of the technical, interpretive, and regional advances in rock art research. The book offers a comprehensive, basic reference of current information on key topics over six continents for archaeologists, anthropologists, art historians, and rock art enthusiasts.

Rock art is one of the most visible and geographically widespread of cultural expressions, and it spans much of the period of our species' existence. Rock art also provides rare and often unique insights into the minds and visually creative capacities of our ancestors and how selected rock outcrops with distinctive images were used to construct symbolic landscapes and shape worldviews. Equally important, rock art is often central to the expression of and engagement with spiritual entities and forces, and in all these dimensions it signals the diversity of cultural practices, across place and through time. Over the past 150 years, archaeologists have studied ancient arts on rock surfaces, both out in the open and within caves and rock shelters, and social anthropologists have revealed how people today use art in their daily lives. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art showcases examples of such research from around the world and across a broad range of cultural contexts, giving a sense of the art's regional variability, its antiquity, and how it is meaningful to people in the recent past and today - including how we have ourselves tended to make sense of the art of others, replete with our own preconceptions. It reviews past, present, and emerging theoretical approaches to rock art investigation and presents new, cutting-edge methods of rock art analysis for the student and professional researcher alike.

Prehistoric rock art is the markings - paintings, engravings, or pecked images - left on rocks or cave walls by ancient peoples. In this book, Paul G. Bahn provides a richly illustrated overview of prehistoric rock art and cave art from around the world. Summarizing the recent advances in our understanding of this extraordinary visual record, he discusses new discoveries, new approaches to recording and interpretation, and current problems in conservation. Bahn focuses in particular on current issues in the interpretation of rock art, notably the "shamanic" interpretation that has been influential in recent years and that he refutes. This book is based on the Rhind Lectures that the author delivered for the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 2006.