Download or read book What Is Paleolithic Art written by Jean Clottes and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-04-25 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The noted archaeologist explores the varieties of prehistoric cave art across the world and offers surprising insights into its purpose and meaning. What drew our Stone Age ancestors into caves to paint in charcoal and red hematite, to watch the likenesses of lions, bison, horses, and aurochs as they flickered by firelight? Was it a creative impulse, a spiritual dawn, a shamanistic conception of the world? In this book, Jean Clottes, one of the most renowned figures in the study of cave paintings, pursues an answer to the “why” of Paleolithic art. Discussing sites and surveys across the world, Clottes offers personal reflections on how we have viewed these paintings in the past, what we learn from looking at them across geographies, and what these paintings may have meant—and what function they may have served—for their artists. Steeped in Clottes’s shamanistic theories of cave painting, What Is Paleolithic Art? travels from well-known Ice Age sites like Chauvet, Altamira, and Lascaux to visits with contemporary aboriginal artists, evoking a continuum between the cave paintings of our prehistoric past and the living rock art of today. Clottes’s work lifts us from the darkness of our Paleolithic origins to reveal surprising insights into how we think, why we create, why we believe, and who we are

Download or read book The Nature of Paleolithic Art written by R. Dale Guthrie and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description

Download or read book The Rock Painters written by Gonzalo Martínez de Antoñana and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Interpretation of prehistoric cave art in Europe written by Difrine Madara and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 11 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2019 in the subject Archaeology, grade: A, Kenyatta University, language: English, abstract: This essay offers a critical analysis of various explanations that have been suggested for the meaning of European Paleolithic rock art. Rock or cave art has been recorded in Europe, Americas, Africa, Australia and Asia. In Europe, some of the recorded forms of rock art date back some 36000 years ago. However, archaeological findings show that it is until 18000 years ago that the European rock art flourished. This period is linked to the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (22000-19000 years ago) as climatic conditions began to improve i.e. the most critical point of the Ice Age. Nonetheless, Upper Paleolithic rock art disappeared during the transition period between Paleolithic-Mesolithic (12000 years) as Ice Age environmental conditions faded. After over a century of research on cave art, there still exists no consensus on the meanings of these prehistoric arts. Currently, the widely accepted view on interpretation of the Upper Paleolithic art is that most cave images are manifestations of Shamanic rituals mediated through visionary experience of altered states of consciousness. However, the question on how and why art come it being in Upper Paleolithic during the Ice Age remains largely unanswered. Berghaus argued that there is no single answer to the question but rather several layers of answers highlighting the issues and relationships between art and rituals as well as behavioral, social and cognitive issues within the human evolutionary environment.

Download or read book New Perspectives on Prehistoric Art written by Günter Berghaus and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2004-04-30 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the discovery of Franco-Caribbean cave art in the nineteenth century, standard interpretations of these works usually revolved around hunting, magic, and fertility cults. Orthodox positions such as these have weighed heavily on later generations of art historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists, even those whose views dissented from those of their predecessors. In the last few decades, however, new approaches to cave art, often based on discoveries made in Africa, Asia, Australia, North America, and the Arctic region, have produced new insights into possible meanings and functions of prehistoric paintings and sculptures. This new collection of essays explores these insights, gathering the observations of eight experts from a variety of disciplines, and examining some of the social and spiritual functions of a variety of artistic genres ranging from 40,000 B.C. to 5,000 B.C. These insights, which derive from evolutionary biology, feminist scholarship, ritual studies, and new modes of anthropology, argue collectively that prehistoric art was a culture-specific form of communication that should be interpreted in the social context of early hunger-gatherer societies and should not be measured with the criteria and paradigms of modern art. Essential reading for anyone interested in prehistoric art or its cultural implications, this volume represents a bold step forward in the research and analysis of the very first artists.

Download or read book The Dawn of Belief written by D. Bruce Dickson and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 1992-07 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hunter-gatherers of the Upper Paleolithic period of the late Pleistocene epoch in western Europe left a legacy of cave paintings and material remains that have long fascinated modern man. This book draws on theories derived from cultural anthropology and cognitive archaeology to propose a reconstruction of the religious life of those people based on the patterning and provenience of their artifacts. Based on the premises that all members of Homo sapiens sapiens share basically similar psychological processes and capabilities and that human culture is patterned, the author uses ethnographic analogy, inference from material patterns, and formal analysis to find in prehistoric imagery clues to the cosmology that lay behind them. The resulting book is an intriguing speculation on the nature of paleolithic religion, offering scholars a valuable synthesis of anthropological, archaeological, and sociological research, and general readers an accessible account of how our forebears may have regarded the unknown. "A well-written and intellectually rigorous introduction. If you are curious about prehistory, you will enjoy it." —Wilson Library Bulletin "Most interesting to those scholars interested in seeking materialist foundations or ecological explanations for religious practices." —American Antiquity "A well-written and concise account of what has recently been achieved by the investigations of spiritual life of the Earth's most ancient human communities." —Archiv Orientalni (Czechoslovakia)

Download or read book The Need for Art and Ceremony During the Upper Paleolithic written by T. J. Maher and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Upper Paleolithic of the Central Russian Plain written by Olga Soffer and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Upper Paleolithic of the Central Russian Plain examines the hunter-gatherer adaptations on the Upper Paleolithic central Russian Plain. The book offers both a culture history for the area and an explanation for the changes in human adaptation. It presents what has been found at 29 major Upper Paleolithic sites occupied over a period of some 14,000 years. The book presents details of the archaeological inventories and assemblages found at the 29 sites, together with the geography and geology of the study area. It then uses environmental data to model environmental conditions and resource distribution during the various periods of human occupation, as well as to predict optimal strategies for exploiting available resources. Subsequent chapters present the relative and chronometric dating schemes. The book also elucidates the man-land relationships, ensuing subsistence strategies, settlement types present in the archaeological record, settlement systems, and sociopolitical behavior. The text will be significant to archaeologists, paleoecologists, and anthropologists interested in hunter-gatherers and late Pleistocene adaptations.

Download or read book Paleolithic Politics written by Barry Cooper and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using his background in political theory and philosophical anthropology, Barry Cooper is the first political scientist to propose new interpretations of some of the most famous extant Paleolithic art and artifacts in Paleolithic Politics. This book is inspired by Eric Voegelin, one of the major political scientists of the last century, who developed an interest in the very early symbolism associated with the caves and rock shelters of the Upper Paleolithic, but never finished his analysis. Cooper, who has written extensively on Voegelin’s theories, takes up the enterprise of applying Voegelin’s approach to an analysis of portable and cave art. He specifically applies Voegelin’s philosophy of consciousness, his concept of the compactness and differentiation of consciousness, his argument regarding the experience and symbolizations of reality, and his notion of the primary experience of the cosmos to images previously regarded as pedestrian. Cooper demonstrates the political significance of the earliest expressions of human existence and is among the first to argue that political life began not with the Greeks, but 25,000 years before them. Archaeologists, prehistorians, and political scientists will all benefit from this original and provocative work.

Download or read book Cave Art and Climate Change written by Kieran D. O’Hara and published by Archway Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-03 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: French and Spanish Upper Paleolithic cave art was drawn forty thousand to eleven thousand years ago, and it was motivated by climate change. Kieran D. OHara, a geologist and professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky, explains why we know that to be true in this groundbreaking book. His goal isnt to explore the meaning of cave art but to show why it was done. While many scholars argue that the art depicted in these caves dont depict the animals of that period, OHara argues just the opposite putting forth the controversial theory that the cave paintings accurately reflect the climate and animals that existed alongside the artists. For far too long, cave art specialists have incorrectly concluded that cave art doesnt match up with the reality of life at the time because theyve been comparing archaeological bone remains with cave imagery of a different age. Paleolithic people survived through the most severe swings in climate this planet has experienced in the past two million years, and it was a major factor in what cave artists depicted. Examine the facts, and discover a new interpretation with Cave Art and Climate Change.

Download or read book Upper Paleolithic written by Source Wikipedia and published by University-Press.org. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 54. Chapters: Art of the Upper Paleolithic, Aurignacian, Baton de commandement, Behavioral modernity, Borean languages, Bolling oscillation, Chatelperronian, Creswellian culture, Cueva de La Pasiega, Epipaleolithic, Geissenklosterle, Gravettian, Halfan culture, Jeita Grotto, Ksar Akil, Later Stone Age, Magdalenian, Magdalenian Girl, Mal'ta-Buret' culture, Mal'ta Venus, Mousterian Pluvial, Neanderthal extinction hypotheses, Origin of the domestic dog, Paleolithic flutes, Paleolithic religion, Perigordian, Solutrean, Solutrean hypothesis, Spear-thrower, Use of animals during the Gravettian period, Venus figurines, Venus of Brassempouy, Yafteh. Excerpt: Cueva de La Pasiega, or Cave of La Pasiega, situated in the Spanish municipality of Puente Viesgo, is one of the most important monuments of Paleolithic art in Cantabria. It is included in the UNESCO schedule of Human Heritage since July 2008, under the citation "Cave of Altamira and palaeolithic cave art of Northern Spain." The Pasiega Cave is located in Monte Castillo.It is located in the heart of the uniprovincial community, in the middle of the valley of the river Pas, around the cave of Hornos de la Pena and Monte Castillo, in the same group of caves as Las Monedas, Las Chimeneas, and the cave of El Castillo. The caves of Monte Castillo form an amazingly complete series, both as regards the material culture of the Old Stone Age and from an artistic point of view. La Pasiega is basically an enormous gallery, its known extent more than 120 meters, that runs more or less parallel to the slope of the mount, opening to the surface at six different places: six small mouths, the majority obstructed, of which two can be accessed for inspection. The principal gallery is approximately 70 meters and opens to deeper secondary galleries, winding and labyrinthine, which in places broaden..

Download or read book Upper Paleolithic Art written by Ginger L. Trovik and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Location of Upper Paleolithic Cave Art as Evidence of Its Function written by Catherine Mary Grassl and published by . This book was released on 1949 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Archaeological Thought in America written by C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American archaeology today encompasses a huge range of approaches and draws eclectically on a multitude of academic disciplines. Until now, however, there has been no book seeking to separate the main strands and traditions of research and present a rounded picture of American archaeological thought in all its diversity. The seventeen essays in Archaeological Thought in America describe recent theoretical advances and present substantive interpretations of prehistoric data drawn from a variety of cultures and time-frames, including Mesoamerica, Central Asia, India and China. The contributors include many of the leading North American archaeologists of this generation.

Download or read book A Discussion of Upper Paleolithic Cave Art and Its Significance written by Donald A. Hatch and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Some Geometric Designs of Upper Paleolithic Art Explained in the Light of Survivals in Later Prehistoric Periods and Modern Primitive Cultures written by Carl Schuster and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 3 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The upper paleolithic age written by and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: