The Nature of Paleolithic ArtThe cave paintings and other preserved remnants of Paleolithic peoples shed light on a world little known to us, one so deeply embedded in time that information about it seems unrecoverable. While art historians have wrestled with these images and objects, very few scientists have weighed in on Paleolithic art as artifacts of a complex, living society. R. Dale Guthrie is one of the first to do so, and his monumental volume The Nature of Paleolithic Art is a landmark study that will change the shape of our understanding of these marvelous images. With a natural historian's keen eye for observation, and as one who has spent a lifetime using bones and other excavated materials to piece together past human behavior and environments, Guthrie demonstrates that Paleolithic art is a mode of expression we can comprehend to a remarkable degree and that the perspective of natural history is integral to that comprehension. He employs a mix of ethology, evolutionary biology, and human universals to access these distant cultures and their art and artifacts. Guthrie uses innovative forensic techniques to reveal new information; estimating, for example, the ages and sexes of some of the artists, he establishes that Paleolithic art was not just the creation of male shamans. With more than 3,000 images, The Nature of Paleolithic Art offers the most comprehensive representation of Paleolithic art ever published and a radical (and controversial) new way of interpreting it. The variety and content of these images—most of which have never been available or easily accessible to nonspecialists or even researchers—will astonish you. This wonderfully written work of natural history, of observation and evidence, tells the great story of our deepest past. |
Contents
The Art of Hunting Large Mammals | 10 |
and with each other Does this suggest an in years ago? Art in virtually all cultures reflects | 401 |
FullFigured WomenIn Ivory and in Life | 435 |
Art just what is it anyway? Can we look at Paleo Appendix 1 Paleolithic Handprint Analysis | 461 |
vote great quantities of time and resources to | 471 |
497 | |
Common terms and phrases
Abri adaptive adult Altamira Angles-sur-l'Anglin animals antlers archaeological Arudy atlatls aurochs band behavior bison body bonding bones boys bull Bushman carnivores carved cave walls Chauvet chimps Combarelles complex copulation creative cultures d'Azil drawings engraved erotic evidence evolution evolutionary example female figurines Font de Gaume fossil Gabillou genetic Gönnersdorf groups Guthrie hand handprints heritability Holocene hominids horses human hunter-gatherers hunters hunting ibex imagine individual large mammals large-mammal Lascaux late Paleolithic late Pleistocene Laugerie-Basse Le Portel legs leolithic lifeway Limeuil lions lithic art living males mammoth Mas d'Azil mate meat natural Niaux Paleo Paleolithic art Paleolithic artists Paleolithic images patterns play portrayed predators prehistoric preserved primate red deer reindeer reproductive rhinos rock art sample savanna sexual social spear species Steppe stone stripes supernatural testosterone tion tracks tribal Trois Frères visual vulvae weapons width wild women woolly rhinos young
Popular passages
Page 488 - How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.
References to this book
Toward a Theology of Scientific Endeavour: The Descent of Science Christopher B. Kaiser Limited preview - 2007 |