The Iconographic Approach: Reading Past Visual Representations

The book offers a coherent and comprehensive approach to past visual representations, usually know as Rock Art. The crafted Iconographic approach takes into consideration all pictorial elements featured by past image-makers as well as all the implications of their specific locations. The discussion starts with the profound implications of homo sapiens sapiens cognitive revolution manifest through the emergence of spoken languages, mortuary practices, personal adornment, and representation. Contrary to the initial gradualist perspective, the Ancient Sulawezi images dated to >50,000 years ago show narrative concerns to have presided over the making of the earliest recorded rock images so far. Five case studies from Africa (Sahara and Southern Africa) and Asia (Xinjiang province, China) are used the showcase the theoretical and methodological strength of the Iconographic approach that is replicable with falsifiable results. Beside aesthetic considerations, the book advocates the need for a comprehensive analysis of each elaborate past visual representation composition before formulating generic explanations of past Image-making traditions.