Synopses & Reviews
Rock art — prehistoric pictures — gives us lively and captivating images of animals and people painted and carved in caves and on open rock surfaces. It is all too easy to guess at the meanings the images carry. This pioneering set of essays instead explores how we can reliably learn from rock art as a material record of distant times by adapting the proven methods of archaeology to the special subject of rock art.
About the Author
Christopher Chippindale is Reader in Archaeology and a curator for British collections at the Cambridge University Museum of Archeology and Anthropology.
Paul S. C. Taçon FAHA FSA is an Australian Research Council Australian Laureate Fellow, chair in Rock Art Research, and professor of anthropology and archaeology in the School of Humanities, Griffith University, Queensland. He also directs Griffith University's Place, Evolution and Rock Art Heritage Unit. He is coeditor of The Archaeology of Rock, edited the special issue on maritime rock art of The Great Circle (the journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History), and has published over 230 academic and popular papers on prehistoric art, body art, material culture, color, cultural evolution, identity, and contemporary Indigenous issues. He was awarded the Rhys Jones Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Australian Archaeology by the Australian Archaeological Association in 2016.