Visionary Animal

Visionary Animal PDF Author: Renaud Ego
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1776142330
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371

Get Book

Book Description
An illustrated collection that takes stock of current knowledge and proposes a new way of reading indigenous art For thousands of years, nomadic hunter-gatherers assigned a fundamental role to the visualization of the animals who shared their lives. Some, such as the Cape eland, the largest of antelopes, were the object of a fascinated gaze, as though the graceful markings and shapes of their bodies were the key to secret knowledge safeguarded by the animals’ unsettling silence. Renaud Ego posits that the artists sought to steal the animals’ secret through an act of rendering visible a vitality that remained hidden beneath appearances. In this process, the San themselves became the visionary animal who, possessing the gift of making pictures, would acquire far-seeing powers. Thanks to the singular effectiveness of their visual art, they could make intellectual contact with the world in order better to think and,ultimately, to act. They gained access to the full dimension of their human condition through painting scenes that functioned like visual contracts with spiritual and ancestral powers. Their art is an act that seeks to preserve the wholeness of existence through a respect for the relationships linking all beings, both real and imaginary,who partake of it. The fundamentally ecological dimension of this message confers on San art its universality and contemporary relevance.Visionary Animal is a translation of L’Animal voyant, published in France in 2015. This rich collection of essays is beautifully illustrated with the author’s photographs of rock art from across southern Africa.

Visionary Animal

Visionary Animal PDF Author: Renaud Ego
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1776142330
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371

Get Book

Book Description
An illustrated collection that takes stock of current knowledge and proposes a new way of reading indigenous art For thousands of years, nomadic hunter-gatherers assigned a fundamental role to the visualization of the animals who shared their lives. Some, such as the Cape eland, the largest of antelopes, were the object of a fascinated gaze, as though the graceful markings and shapes of their bodies were the key to secret knowledge safeguarded by the animals’ unsettling silence. Renaud Ego posits that the artists sought to steal the animals’ secret through an act of rendering visible a vitality that remained hidden beneath appearances. In this process, the San themselves became the visionary animal who, possessing the gift of making pictures, would acquire far-seeing powers. Thanks to the singular effectiveness of their visual art, they could make intellectual contact with the world in order better to think and,ultimately, to act. They gained access to the full dimension of their human condition through painting scenes that functioned like visual contracts with spiritual and ancestral powers. Their art is an act that seeks to preserve the wholeness of existence through a respect for the relationships linking all beings, both real and imaginary,who partake of it. The fundamentally ecological dimension of this message confers on San art its universality and contemporary relevance.Visionary Animal is a translation of L’Animal voyant, published in France in 2015. This rich collection of essays is beautifully illustrated with the author’s photographs of rock art from across southern Africa.

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art PDF Author: Bruno David
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 0190607351
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 1185

Get Book

Book Description
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please read the site FAQs.

Under the Mopane Tree. Holocene Settlement in Northern Namibia

Under the Mopane Tree. Holocene Settlement in Northern Namibia PDF Author: Ralf Vogelsang
Publisher: Heinrich Barth Institut
ISBN: 3927688371
Category : Antiquities, Prehistoric
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book

Book Description
The main research focus of the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 389 ACACIA (Arid Climate Adaptation and Cultural Innovation in Africa), established at the University of Cologne in 1995, was the interaction between man and arid environments in Africa (KUPER et al. 2007). An important part was played by the diachronic examination of these processes and their development during the Holocene period in Northeast and Southwest Af ri ca. A longterm aim of the interdisciplinary research projects was the comparison of the Holocene settlement history and palaeoecology and the identification of common and divergent developments in both hemispheres. The volume at hand describes some results of the project B4: “Palaeoecology and the Late Holocene Occupation of Northern Namibia”. Regional focus is the northern part of the Kunene Region, the Opuwo District (former Kaokoland), a region in the arid limits between the Namib Desert and the savanna of the interior highlands. Three different scientific fields – namely prehistoric archaeology, archaeobotany and archaeozoology – cooperated in the fieldwork and analysis to reconstruct the prehistoric cultures and environment in the research area during the Holocene time period. Unfortunately, the archaeozoological results are still missing and not included in this book.

Archives of Times Past

Archives of Times Past PDF Author: Cynthia Kros
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1776147308
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Get Book

Book Description
This volume critically examines sources of evidence and material from the archive that historically have been used to tell southern Africa’s pre-colonial story.

The South African Archaeological Bulletin

The South African Archaeological Bulletin PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Africa, Southern
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Get Book

Book Description


Nqabayo's Nomansland

Nqabayo's Nomansland PDF Author: Geoffrey Blundell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789197321204
Category : Art, San
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book

Book Description


Conceiving God: The Cognitive Origin and Evolution of Religion

Conceiving God: The Cognitive Origin and Evolution of Religion PDF Author: David Lewis-Williams
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 0500770433
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book

Book Description
A controversial exploration of the origin of religion in the neurology of the human brain. In this book the noted cognitive archaeologist David Lewis-Williams confronts a question that troubles many people in the world today: Is there a supernatural realm that intervenes in the material world of daily life and leads to the evolution of religions? Professor Lewis-Williams first describes how science developed within the cocoon of religion and then shows how the natural functioning of the human brain creates experiences that can lead to belief in a supernatural realm, beings, and interventions. Once people have these experiences, they formulate beliefs about them, and thus creeds are born. Forty thousand years ago, people were leaving traces in the archaeological record of activities that we can label religious, and Lewis-Williams discusses in detail the evidence preserved in the Volp Caves in France. He also shows that mental imagery produced by the functioning of the human brain can be detected in widely separated religious communities such as Hildegard of Bingen’s in medieval Europe or the San hunters of southern Africa.

Rock Art Studies - News of the World

Rock Art Studies - News of the World PDF Author: Natalie R. Franklin
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1782975888
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book

Book Description
This is the third in the five-yearly series of surveys of what is happening in rock art studies around the world. As always, the texts reflect something of the great differences in approach and emphasis that exist in different regions. The volume presents examples from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the New World. During the period in question, 1999 to 2004, there have been few major events, although in the field of Pleistocene art many new discoveries have been made, and a new country added to the select list of those with Ice Age cave art. Some regions such as North Africa and the former USSR have seen a tremendous amount of activity, focusing not only on recording but also on chronology, and the conservation of sites. With the global increase of tourism, the management of rock art sites that are accessible to the public is a theme of ever-growing importance.

Rock Art Studies - News of the World Volume 3

Rock Art Studies - News of the World Volume 3 PDF Author: Natalie R. Franklin
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1842173162
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book

Book Description
This is the third in the five-yearly series of surveys of what is happening in rock art studies around the world. As always, the texts reflect something of the great differences in approach and emphasis that exist in different regions. The volume presents examples from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the New World. During the period in question, 1999 to 2004, there have been few major events, although in the field of Pleistocene art many new discoveries have been made, and a new country added to the select list of those with Ice Age cave art. Some regions such as North Africa and the former USSR have seen a tremendous amount of activity, focusing not only on recording but also on chronology, and the conservation of sites. With the global increase of tourism, the management of rock art sites that are accessible to the public is a theme of ever-growing importance.

Myth and Meaning

Myth and Meaning PDF Author: J. D. Lewis-Williams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315423758
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Get Book

Book Description
J.D. Lewis-Williams, one of the leading South African archaeologists and ethnographers, excavates meaning from the complex mythological stories of the San-Bushmen to create a larger theory of how myth is used in culture. He extracts their “nuggets,” the far-reaching but often unspoken words and concepts of language and understanding that are opaque to outsiders, to establish a more nuanced theory of the role of these myths in the thought-world and social circumstances of the San. The book -draws from the unique 19th century Bleek/Lloyd archives, more recent ethnographic work, and San rock art;-includes well-known San stories such as The Broken String, Mantis Dreams, and Creation of the Eland;-extrapolates from our understanding of San mythology into a larger model of how people create meaning from myth.