Название: Early Rock Art of the American West: The Geometric EnigmaАвтор: Ekkehart Malotki, Ellen Dissanayake
Издательство: University of Washington Press
Год: 2018
ISBN: 9780295743608
Формат: epub
Страниц: 312
Размер: 262,7 mb
Язык: English
Since the 1870s, when for the first time cave paintings were discovered in Spain, humankind has become aware that skilled artists were at work centuries before pyramids were built in Egypt or temples erected in Greece and Rome. Who would have dreamed that hidden deep underground were unknown masterpieces from the prehistoric past, majestic and lifelike animals painted on cave walls by people like ourselves? It is not surprising that these relics of the Ice Age have captured the imagination of everyone who hears about their existence or sees their images in books, magazines, or films. They are the celebrities—the “rock stars”—of rock art.
This book has a deal with a very different kind of rock art—one that depicts nothing from the natural world. Rather than lying dormant for millennia and protected in sealed sanctuaries like the famed Ice Age paintings of powerful animals, most of the images what are presented here are “abstract” or “geometric” — carved, pecked, hammered, or painted on inert stone, outdoors, and then left exposed to sun, wind, and rain.