Ontologies of Rock Art is the first publication to explore a wide range of ontological approaches to rock art interpretation, constituting the basis for groundbreaking studies on Indigenous knowledges, relational metaphysics, and rock imageries. The book contributes to the growing body of research on the ontology of images by focusing on five main topics: ontology as a theoretical framework; the development of new concepts and methods for an ontological approach to rock art; the examination of the relationships between ontology, images, and Indigenous knowledges; the development of relational models for the analysis of rock images; and the impact of ontological approaches on different rock art traditions across the world. Generating new avenues of research in ontological theory, political ontology, and rock art research, this collection will be relevant to archaeologists, anthropologists, and philosophers. In the context of an increasing interest in Indigenous ontologies, the volume will also be of interest to scholars in Indigenous studies. Chapter 14 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9780429321863/ontologies-rock-art-oscar-moro-abad%C3%ADa-martin-porr?context=ubx&refId=3766b051-4754-4339-925c-2a262a505074

In rock art, humanlike images appear widely throughout the ages. The artworks discussed in this book range from paintings, engravings or scratchings on cave walls and rock shelters, images pecked into rocky surfaces or upon standing stones, and major sacred sites, in which exists the possibility of recovering the meanings intended by the artists.

Andean Ontologies is a fascinating interdisciplinary investigation of how ancient Andean people understood their world and the nature of being. Exploring pre-Hispanic ideas of time, space, and the human body, these essays highlight a range of beliefs across the region’s different cultures, emphasizing the relational aspects of identity in Andean worldviews. Studies included here show that Andeans physically interacted with their pasts through recurring ceremonies in their ritual calendar and that Andean bodies were believed to be changeable entities with the ability to interact with nonhuman and spiritual worlds. A survey of rock art describes Andeans’ changing relationships with places and things over time. Archaeological and ethnographic evidence reveals head hair was believed to be a conduit for the flow of spiritual power, and bioarchaeological remains offer evidence of Andean perceptions of age and wellness. This volume breaks new ground by bringing together an array of renowned specialists including anthropologists, bioarchaeologists, historians, linguists, ethnohistorians, and art historians to evaluate ancient Amerindian ideologies through different interpretive lenses. Many are local researchers from South American countries such as Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina, and this volume makes their work available to North American readers for the first time. Their essays are highly contextualized according to the territories and time periods studied. Instead of taking an external, outside-in approach, they prioritize internal and localized views that incorporate insights from today’s indigenous societies. This cutting-edge collection demonstrates the value of a multifaceted, holistic, inside-out approach to studying the pre-Columbian world. Contributors: Catherine J. Allen | Richard Lunniss | Matthew Sayre | Nicco La Mattina | Luis Muro | Luis Jaime Castillo | Elsa Tomasto | Giles Spence-Morrow | Edward Swenson | Mary Glowacki | Andres Laguens | Bruce Mannheim | Juan Villanueva | Andrés Troncoso

Zusammenfassung: This open access volume explores the impact of globalization on the contemporary study of deep-time art. The volume explores how early rock art research's Eurocentric biases have shifted with broadened global horizons to facilitate new conversations and discourses in new post-colonial realities. The book uses seven main themes to explore theoretical, methodological, ethical, and practical developments that are orienting the study of Pleistocene and Holocene arts in the age of globalization. Compiling studies as diverse as genetics, visualization, with the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated archaeological techniques, means that vast quantities of materials and techniques are now incorporated into the analysis of the world's visual cultures. Deep-Time Images in the Age of Globalization aims to promote critical reflection on the multitude of positive - and negative - impacts that globalization has wrought in rock art research. The volume brings new theoretical frameworks as well as engagement with indigenous knowledge and perspectives from art history. It highlights technical, methodological and interpretive developments, and showcases rock art characteristics from previously unknown (in the global north) geographic areas. This book provides comparative approaches on rock art globally and scrutinises the impacts of globalization on research, preservation, and management of deep-time art. This book will appeal to archaeologists, social scientists and art historians working in the field as well as lovers of rock art.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Digital Heritage, EuroMed 2014, held in Limassol, Cyprus, in November 2014. The 84 full and 51 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 438 submissions. They focus on the interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary research concerning cutting edge cultural heritage informatics, -physics, chemistry and engineering and the use of technology for the representation, documentation, archiving, protection, preservation and communication of Cultural Heritage knowledge.

Cognitive Archaeology is a relatively young though fast growing discipline. The intellectual heart of cognitive archaeology is archaeology, the discipline that investigates the only direct evidence of the actions and decisions of prehistoric people. Its theories and methods are an eclectic mix of psychological, neuroscientific, paleoneurological, philosophical, anthropological, ethnographic, comparative, aesthetic, and experimental theories, methods, and models, united only by their focus on cognition. The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology is a landmark publication, showcasing the theories, methods, and accomplishments of archaeologists who investigate the human mind, including its evolutionary development, its ideation (thoughts and beliefs), and its very nature-through material forms. The volume encompasses the wide spectrum of the discipline, showcasing contributions from more than 50 established and emerging scholars from Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Prominent among these are contributions that discuss the epistemological frameworks of both the evolutionary and ideational approaches and the leading theories that ground interpretations. Significantly, the majority of chapters deliver substantive contributions that analyze specific examples of material culture, from the oldest known stone tools to ceramic and rock art traditions of the recent millennium. These examples include the gamut of methods and techniques, including typology, replication studies, cha?nes operatoires, neuroarchaeology, ethnographic comparison, and the direct historical approach. In addition, the book begins with retrospective essays by several of the pioneers of cognitive archaeology, presenting a broad range of state-of-the-art investigations into cognitive abilities, tackling thorny issues like the cognitive status of Neandertals, and concluding with speculative essays about the future of an archaeology of mind, and of the mind itself.

This book introduces readers to the belief and symbolism present in the prehistoric art of the Bering Strait region. For about a century, the archaeology of this area has mainly focused on material, economic, and technological perspectives, leaving studies of prehistoric spirituality, religion, and cosmology to be under-conceptualized. This text questions the nature of materiality, and the relationship between it and spirituality. It employs an analytical and methodological approach located within the frameworks of practice theory and animist ontologies to open up thought-provoking avenues for interpretive possibility. This book also provides new knowledge about the prehistoric material culture of ancient Inuit people, and offers an assessment of contemporary archaeological theories, such as cognitive archaeology, structural archaeology, and shamanism theory, in order to examine the reliability of these theories in the studies of prehistoric art. According to the ontological trend which has constituted a powerful challenge to traditional nature/culture and body/mind dichotomies, this book reconsiders prehistoric Inuit cultures, providing an analysis of therianthropic motifs on prehistoric ivories to explore potential shamanism within ontological and cosmological structures.

Of all avian groups, birds of prey in particular have long been a prominent subject of fascination in many human societies. This book demonstrates that the art and materiality of human engagements with raptors has been significant through deep time and across the world, from earliest prehistory to Indigenous thinking in the present day. Drawing on a wide range of global case studies and a plurality of complementary perspectives, it explores the varied and fluid dynamics between humans and birds of prey as evidenced in this diverse art-historical and archaeological record. From their depictions as powerful beings in visual art and their important roles in Indigenous mythologies, to the significance of their body parts as active agents in religious rituals, the intentional deposition of their faunal remains and the display of their preserved bodies in museums, there is no doubt that birds of prey have been figures of great import for the shaping of human society and culture. However, several of the chapters in this volume are particularly concerned with looking beyond the culture–nature dichotomy and human-centred accounts to explore perspectival and other post-humanist thinking on human–raptor ontologies and epistemologies. The contributors recognize that human–raptor relationships are not driven exclusively by human intentionality, and that when these species meet they relate-to and become-with one another. This 'raptor-with-human'-focused approach allows for a productive re-framing of questions about human–raptor interstices, enables fresh thinking about established evidence and offers signposts for present and future intra-actions with birds of prey.

First, fully illustrated, presentation of a large but generally little known assemblage of petroglyphic rock art from the Western Desert of Egypt. Rock art in Dakhleh was produced for perhaps as long as 10 millennia, resulting in the formation of hundreds of sites displaying thousands of images. In some places, petroglyphs form a true melting pot of iconographic creations, elsewhere only isolated depictions appear on rock surfaces. Various rock art traditions, from prehistoric, through pharaonic, Graeco-Roman, and mediaeval, have all added to a tremendous variety of petroglyphs, their formal traits and subject matter. This book is the first ever monograph on Dakhleh Oasis rock art, providing both an introduction to the versatile topic as well as an overview of the current state of research. It is designed as a collection of essays that deal with specific aspects of the research. The reader is offered here not only old and new documentation, much of it previously unpublished, but also a great deal of innovative interpretation. All chapters, although devoted to different case studies, revolve around an all-encompassing concept of landscape of motion. It is argued here that rock art, regardless of its date of origin, was (and is) always involved in certain dynamic contexts. In Dakhleh, the majority of petroglyphs – especially during historical periods – were produced in spatial contexts of paths and routes, and thus by people on the move. It is argued here that various kinds of movement were often a significant factor contributing to the meaning and function of the images. The intention of this book is to explore and unveil such contexts, which may prove somewhat elusive if we focus our analyses exclusively on the representational aspects of rock art. Such a type of integration of rock art, landscape and motion is the major aim of this work, and has hopefully been achieved by merging perspectives and concepts derived from Egyptology, Anthropology, and other social sciences.

A new generation of archaeologists has thrown down a challenge to post-processual theory, arguing that characterizing material symbols as arbitrary overlooks the material character and significance of artifacts. This volume showcases the significant departure from previous symbolic approaches that is underway in the discipline. It brings together key scholars advancing a variety of cutting edge approaches, each emphasizing an understanding of artifacts and materials not in terms of symbols but relationally, as a set of associations that compose people’s understanding of the world. Authors draw on a diversity of intellectual sources and case studies, paving a dynamic road ahead for archaeology as a discipline and theoretical approaches to material culture.