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Narratives and Journeys in Rock Art: A Reader PDF

703 Pages·2018·19.493 MB·English
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Why publish a Reader? Today, it is relatively easy and convenient to switch on your Nash Narratives and Journeys computer and download a paper. However, as many scholars have experienced, historic and references are difficult to access. Moreover, some are now lost and are merely references in later papers. This can be frustrating. In this book we provide a series of papers from Mazel (eds) all over the world that extend as far back as the 1970s when rock art research was in in Rock Art: a Reader its infancy. The papers presented in the Reader reflect the development in the various approaches that have influenced advancing scholarly research. N George Nash is an Associate Professor at Geosciences Centre of Coimbra University (u. a ID73-FCT), Polytechnic Institute of Tomar (IPT), Portugal. Dr Nash is a specialist in open- r edited by r air rock art and contemporary street art and has recently undertaken fieldwork and a research in Andean Chile, the Negev Desert in southern Israel, central Portugal and Wales. t i George Nash and Aron Mazel v Narratives and Journeys in Rock Art: a Reader Aron Mazel is a Reader in Heritage Studies at Newcastle University, United Kingdom. Dr e Mazel has done extensive recording of rock art in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg (South s Africa) and Northumberland (United Kingdom). a n d J o u r n e y s i n R o c k A r t : a R e a d e r Archaeopress Archaeology www.archaeopress.com Nash cover.indd 1 22/10/2018 10:28:30 Narratives and Journeys in Rock Art: a Reader edited by George Nash and Aron Mazel Archaeopress Publishing Ltd Summertown Pavilion 18-24 Middle Way Summertown Oxford OX2 7LG www.archaeopress.com ISBN 9781 78491 560 5 ISBN 978 1 78491 561 2 (e-Pdf) © Archaeopress and authors 2018 Cover illustrations: Front: Sorcerer’s Rock, uKhahlamba-Drakensberg, South Africa Back: Har Michia, The Central Negev, southern Israel All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners. Printed in England by Oxuniprint, Oxford This book is available direct from Archaeopress or from our website www.archaeopress.com Contents Introduction ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������v George Nash and Aron Mazel 1� Seeing and Construing: The Making and ‘Meaning’ of a Southern African Rock Art Motif ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������1 J.D. Lewis-Williams 2� An Introduction to the Problems of Southern African Rock Art Regions: The Rock Art of Bongani Mountain Lodge and its Environs ��������������������������������������������������������27 Jamie Hampson, William Challis, Geoffrey Blundell and Conraad De Rosner 3� Fluvial erosion of inscriptions and petroglyphs at Siega Verde, Spain �������������������56 Robert G. Bednarik 4� The Location of Prehistoric Rock Art in North-East England: An Experimental Approach to Field Survey ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������70 Richard Bradley, Tess Durden and Nigel Spencer 5� Beyond Art and Between the Caves: Thinking About Context in the Interpretive Process ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������75 Margaret W. Conkey 6� Transculturation, Rock Art and Cross-Cultural Contact ������������������������������������������96 Thomas Heyd 7� The Cultural Context of Hunter-Gatherer Rock Art ���������������������������������������������110 Robert Layton 8� Who Thought Rock Art Was About Archaeology? The Role of Prehistory in Algeria’s Terror ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������129 Jeremy Keenan 9� The power of a place in understanding southern San rock engravings ����������������148 Janette Deacon 10�Acoustic elements of (pre)historic rock art landscapes at the Fourth Nile Cataract �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������158 Cornelia Kleinitz 11� Unsettled times: shaded polychromes and the making of hunter-gatherer history in the southeastern mountains of southern Africa ����������������������������������������������������174 Aron D. Mazel 12� Engraved in Place And Time: A Review of Variability in the Rock Art of the Northern Cape and Karoo ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������205 David Morris 13� Rock art and the material culture of Siberian and Central Asian shamanism ����225 Ekaterina Devlet 14� Chronological Trends in Negev Rock Art: The Har Michia Petroglyphs as a Test Case ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������238 Davida Eisenberg-Degen and Steven A. Rosen 15� Making sense of obscure pictures from our own history: exotic images from Callan Park, Australia �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������262 John Clegg 16� Religious Spatial Behaviour: Why Space is Important to Religion �����������������������273 Matthew Kelleher 17� Bedrock notions and isochrestic choice: evidence for localised stylistic patterning in the engravings of the Sydney region ���������������������������������������������������298 Jo McDonald 18� Rainbow Colour and Power among the Waanyi of Northwest Queensland ����������322 Paul S. C. Taçon 19� Caves as Landscapes ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������340 Jean Clottes 20� Landscape representations on boulders and menhirs in the Valcamonica- Valtellina area (Alps, Italy) �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������357 Angelo Fossati 21� Roaring Rocks: An Audio-Visual Perspective on Hunter-Gatherer Engravings in Northern Sweden and Scandinavia����������������������������������������������������������������������������375 Joakim Goldhahn 22� Rock Art and Archaeological Excavationin Campo Lameiro, Galicia: A new chronological proposal for the Atlantic rock art �������������������������������������������������������408 Manuel Santos Estévez and Yolanda Seoane Veiga 23� The Shore Connection: Cognitive landscape and communication with rock carvings in northernmost Europe ������������������������������������������������������������������������������421 Knut Helskog 24� Rock art as visual representation – or how to travel to Sweden without Christopher Tilley �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������443 Liliana Janik 25� A discovery of possible Upper Palaeolithic Parietal art in Cathole Cave, Gower Peninsula, South Wales �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������459 George Nash, Peter van Calsteren, Louise Thomas and Michael J. Simms 26� Images as Messages in Society: Prolegomena to the Study of Scandinavian Petroglyphs and Semiotics �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������469 Jarl Nordbladh 27� Approaches to Passage Tomb Art��������������������������������������������������������������������������484 Muiris O’Sullivan 28� Ritual Landscapes: Toward a Reinterpretation of Stone Age Rock Art in Trøndelag, Norway �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������501 Kalle Sognnes 29� Excavation of a rock art site at Hunterheugh Crag, Northumberland �����������������523 Clive Waddington with Benjamin Johnson and Aron Mazel 30� From natural settings to spiritual places in the Algonkian sacred landscape: an archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic analysis of Canadian Shield rock- art sites �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������549 Daniel Arsenault 31� In Small Cupules Forgotten: Rock Markings, Archaeology, and Ethnography in The Deep South �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������577 Johannes H. N. Loubser 32� Shamanism, Natural Modeling and the Rock Art Hunter-Gatherers �����������������������603 David S. Whitley 33� Tsagiglalal, She Who Watches: Rock Art as an Interpretable Phenomenon ��������636 James D. Keyser 34� Rocks in the landscape: managing the Inka agricultural cycle ����������������������������645 Frank Meddens 35� On-Site and post-site analysis of pictographs within the San Pedro Viejo de Pichasca rock shelter, Limarí Valley, North-Central Chile ����������������������������������������673 Francisca Moya, Felipe Armstrong, Mara Basile, George Nash, Andrés Troncoso and Francisco Vergara Introduction George Nash and Aron Mazel ‘Africa’s rock art is the common heritage of all Africans, but it is more than that. It is the common heritage of humanity’ (Nelson Mandela, in TARA 2010: 2) In fact, Nelson Mandela’s comment applies to rock art worldwide. It is a global treasure, which we need to cherish; we need to remind ourselves, and others, about the need to do this constantly. We must continue to record it, research it, write about it, talk about it, celebrate it, and safeguard it. For, once examples of this ancient part of global humanity are destroyed or fade away, they are lost forever! We don’t know when rock art was first recognised as ancient. This could go back hundreds, if not thousands of years. In some societies people have believed for a long time – maybe thousands of years – that the rock art was made in ancient times without attributing an age to it. In other instances, however, there is a recorded process of ‘discovery’. In Northumberland, in the UK, for example, close on 200 years ago, in the early 1800s, rock carvings were first recognised as being ancient. The antiquarian, George Tate (1865:3), described the process as follows: ‘J.C. Langlands discovered some worn and defaced figures incised on a rude sandstone block, near to the great camp on Old Bewick Hill in north Northumberland. Though strange and old-world looking, these figures then presented an isolated fact, and he hesitated to connect them with by-past ages; for they might have been the recent work of an ingenious shepherd, while resting on a hill; but on finding, some years afterwards, another incised stone of a similar character on the same hill, he then formed the opinion, that these sculptures were very ancient. To him belongs the honour of the first discovery of these archaic sculptures...’ No matter how or when rock art came to be recognised and accepted as representing a tangible creative manifestation of ancient people, we do know that it is found on all the continents, except Antarctica, and in great profusion. An astonishing number of individual images – painted, engraved or carved–have been made, and in a few regions rock art continues to be produced (Figure 1). The number of images that have been created is likely to number in the tens of millions and perhaps even more, especially, if we consider that countries and regions such as Australia and southern Africa respectively each have a minimum of 100,000 rock art places, and that many new examples of rock art are being located and recorded annually (Agnew et al. 2015). Figure 1. Image of Dogon painting photographed at Songo, in Mali, in 2001. vi George Nash and Aron Mazel Figure 2. Photo and tracing of a piece of engraved ochre from M1-4 at Blombos Cave, South Africa (from Henshilwood et al. 2009) While new rock art is still being found and recorded, it needs to be appreciated that many specimens of rock art have been obliterated through ongoing erosional processes, which are currently being accelerated through the vagaries of climate change. Furthermore, there is increasing human impact on rock art through, for example, intensified agricultural and industrial activities, and even nature conservation activities, such as the burning of vegetation in protected areas to encourage new plant growth, which has a deleterious impact on rock art. The loss of imagery and continuing threats highlights the urgency to record and study this fragile resource. A resource, which according to Jean Clottes (1997: 3), a contributor to this Reader, is the ‘only cultural manifestation of humankind…continued without interruption for several tens of thousands of years until the present day.’ While we may never know exactly when our ancestors first created images on rock, we now appreciate that it was an extraordinarily long time ago. Recently published dates suggest that Neanderthals in Spain might have started making parietal rock art as far back as 70 000 years ago (Hoffmann et al. 2018), although there has been a call for caution regarding these dates (Pearce and Bonneau 2018).Though the veracity of the new Spanish dates needs to be confirmed, we can be certain about the long record of human image making: Blombos Cave, at the southern tip of Africa, has yielded decorated pieces of ochre between 75 000 and 100 000 years old (Figure 2, Henshilwood et al. 2009). Although we might not know the circumstances which led to initial creation of images on rock, it remains an ever present and tangible reminder that humans have, for an extensive period of time, had a strong desire to express themselves on rock, either by applying paint or another material to the rock or by cutting into it in some way. We are fortunate that some, perhaps much, of what was created has survived. But plenty has also been lost, and continues to be

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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.