Includes information on Africa, California, ethnography, geometric motifs, neuropsychology, origins of art, paleolithic art, religion, ritual, shamanism, symbolism, totemic rock art, trance, vandalism, weathering, etc.

While there has always been a large public interest in ancient pictures painted or carved on stone, the archaeological study of rock art is in its infancy. But intensive amounts of research has revolutionized this field in the past decade. New methods of dating and analysis help to pinpoint the makers of these beautiful images, new interpretive models help us understand this art in relation to culture. Identification, conservation and management of rock art sites have become major issues in historical preservation worldwide. And the number of archaeologically attested sites has mushroomed. In this handbook, the leading researchers in the rock art area provide cogent, state-of-the-art summaries of the technical, interpretive, and regional advances in rock art research. The book offers a comprehensive, basic reference of current information on key topics over six continents for archaeologists, anthropologists, art historians, and rock art enthusiasts.

Whitley, one of the world's leading experts on cave paintings, rewrites the understanding of shamanism and its connection with artistic creativity, myth, and religion by interweaving archaeological evidence with the latest findings of cutting-edge neuroscience.

This unique full-color field guide is essential for anyone who seeks to understand why shamans in the Far West created rock art and what they sought to depict. Whitley is on the cutting edge of dating and interpreting the images as well as describing the

The contributors to this volume discuss a series of these technical, methodological and substantive issues in the analysis of hunter-gatherer rock art. Principally emphasizing North America, the contributions provide summaries of advances in the dating of pictographs and petroglyphs, and interpretations of the art using ethnohistorical, iconographic, stratigraphic, and compartative data, with approaches informed by symbolic, semiotic, and gender studies.

David Whitley's compelling study complicates our understanding of the classic Disney canon by focusing on the way images of the natural world are mediated within popular art for children. He examines a range of Disney's feature animations, from Snow White to Finding Nemo, to show that, even as the films communicate the central ideologies of their times, they also express the ambiguities and tensions that underlie these dominant values.

Whitley, an archaeologist specializing in the study of prehistoric art and religion, interprets the symbolism of California's ancient rock art, demonstrating that these pictographs were not created simply for artistic expression, but were deliberately intended to represent a relatively few number of specific messages. Color photographs depict such things as vision questing, sexuality, the mythic past, life crises, altered states of consciousness, and more.

La population indigène de Californie avait un mode de vie proche de celui des premiers humains. Ils restèrent des chasseurs et des collecteurs jusqu'au XIXe siècle, très proches de la nature, vivant en petits groupes et dans des villages temporaires. Leurs peintures et leurs gravures sont un riche patrimoine artistique qui s'étend sur des millénaires. Ce volume rapporte les premiers témoignages ethnographiques connus et donne à voir, grâce à plus d'une centaine de photographies en couleurs les principaux sites et les peintures rupestres les plus impressionnantes. Il permet aussi d'en donner pour la première fois une interprétation et de confirmer que cet art était pratiqué par les chamanes et reflétait leurs visions du monde surnaturel.

In Spanish with Chapter Summaries in English.