Recent Books on the Study of Rock Art
Rock art, also called petroglyphs and pictographs or rock painting, has been the impetus for a number of really great, really beautiful books. Here's a great sample of the latest.
One of humanity's first artistic endeavors was painting or pecking or gouging into native rock. These books address the various kinds of rock art found around the world and throughout time.
The Archaeology of Rock Art is a collection of articles on differing aspects of rock art, examining the global nature of rock art and the earliest expressions of what might be called the spiritual or artistic nature of Homo sapiens.
Deep caves are universal symbols of fear and mystery; ancient artistic renderings recovered from such locations are innately fascinating, as Robert Boszhardt shows us in this new book on deep cave art in southwestern Wisconsin.
The book Gottschall Rockshelter describes excavations by Robert Salzer and others at prehistoric cave site in Wisconsin, its wall seemingly illustrated with present-day Native American mythological tales.
Rock Art of the Lower Pecos is a very interesting book on several levels: on the mechanics of reproducing rock art images, on the artistry of Archaic people of the the Lower Pecos River, and on the possible meanings of the images from three to four thousand years ago.
