Synopsis
Professor Rodrigo de Balbín has played a major role in advancing our knowledge of Palaeolithic art, and the occasion of his retirement provides an excellent opportunity to assess the value of prehistoric art studies as a factor in the study of the culture of those human groups which produced this imagery. The diverse papers in this volume, published in Professor de Balbín’s honour, cover a wide variety of the decorated caves which traditionally defined Palaeolithic art, as well as the open-air art of the period, a subject in which he has done pioneering work at Siega Verde and elsewhere. The result is a new and more realistic assessment of the social and symbolic framework of human groups from 40,000 BP onwards.
Table of Contents
Prehistoric Art as Prehistoric Culture (Primitiva Bueno-Ramírez and Paul Bahn)
‘Science’ versus Archaeology: Palaeolithic Rock Art at the beginning of the 21st century (José-Javier Alcolea-González and César González-Sainz)
Raman spectroscopy of prehistoric pictorial materials (Antonio Hernanz)
Prehistoric rock art and non-invasive analysis. Rouffignac as a case study (Patrick Paillet)
Reasoning processes in prehistoric art interpretation (Sophie A. de Beaune)
Are hand stencils in European cave art older than we think? An evaluation of the existing data and their potential implications (Paul Pettitt, Pablo Arias, Marcos García-Diez, Dirk Hoffmann, Alfredo Maximiano Castillejo, Roberto Ontañon-Peredo, Alistair Pike and João Zilhão)
Regional ontologies in the Early Upper Palaeolithic: the place of mammoth and cave lion in the ‘belief world’ (Glaubenswelt) of the Swabian Aurignacian (Shumon T. Hussain and Harald Floss)
Aurignacian art in the caves and rock-shelters of Aquitaine (France) (Brigitte and Gilles Delluc)
Fuente del Trucho, Huesca (Spain): Reading interaction in Palaeolithic art (Pilar Utrilla and Manuel Bea)
Open-air Ice Age art: the history and reluctant acceptance of an unexpected phenomenon (Paul G. Bahn)
Decorated sites and habitat: social appropriation of territories (Denis Vialou)
Deep caves, ritual and graphic expression: a critical review of the archaeological evidence on hypogean human activity during the Upper Palaeolithic/Magdalenian (Pablo Arias)
Magdalenian settlement-subsistence systems in Cantabrian Spain: contributions from El Mirón Cave (Lawrence G. Straus, Manuel González Morales, Ana B. Marín-Arroyo and Lisa M. Fontes)
The Upper Palaeolithic rock art of Portugal in its Iberian context (André Tomás Santos, Maria de Jesus Sanches and Joana Castro Teixeira)
Old panels and new readings. La Pileta and pre-Solutrean graphics in Southern Iberia (Miguel Cortés Sánchez, María D. Simón Vallejo, Rubén Parrilla Giráldez, and Lydia Calle Román)
Palaeolithic art in the Iberian Mediterranean region. Characteristics and territorial variation (Valentín Villaverde)
Small seeds for big debates: Past and present contributions to Palaeoart studies from North-eastern Iberia (José María Fullola, Ines Domingo, Didac Román, María Pilar García-Argüelles, Marcos García-Díez and Jorge Nadal)
Throwing light on the hidden corners. New data on Palaeolithic art from NW Iberia (Ramón Fábregas Valcarce, Arturo de Lombera-Hermida, Ramón Viñas Vallverdú, Xose Pedro Rodríguez-Álvarez, and Sofia Soares Figueiredo)
About the Author
Paul Bahn has a PhD in archaeology from Cambridge University, and for decades has been an independent researcher, writing and editing a wide range of archaeological books, including several on Ice Age art. He also lectures on numerous tours to the decorated Ice Age caves.
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