BREPOLS Series
Volume 3of the IFRAO-Brepols series:
BREPOLS Series
Volume 3of the IFRAO-Brepols series:
ROCK
ART AND EPISTEMOLOGY:
courting sophistication
Edited by Robert
G. Bednarik
his
volume introduces a selection of the most innovative papers presented at two
major conferences, the 1995 International Rock Art Congress in Turin, Italy,
and the Third Congress of the Australian Rock Art Research Association in 2000,
held in Alice Springs, Australia. Both events were attended by several hundred
of the world’s rock art researchers. The book offers a fairly representative
profile of where the discipline stands at the beginning of the new millennium,
and it attempts to predict the direction that scientific rock art research is
likely to take in the immediate future. This collection of outstanding essays
comprises eighteen contributions from scholars around the world, representing
all continents except Africa. Most address epistemological, metaphysical and
major theoretical aspects of the discipline. Some present innovative and new
ways of thinking about the data presented by empirical research of recent years,
while a few authors describe specific research projects exemplifying new directions
emerging in their discipline.Having been neglected for much of the 20th century,
the field of rock art research has experienced an unprecedented rapid development
in the late part of that century. This has led to a sophistication of theoretical
approaches and a notable broadening of the research base, well illustrated by
this book. Besides archaeologists, the contributing authors include semioticians
and epistemologists. The volume is of value to anyone interested in the development
of rock art studies, from the ingenious approaches of the past to today’s
resourcefulness in working with such an intractable subject. Rock art, and palaeoart
generally, provides the study material of a discipline whose ultimate agenda
it is to determine the origins of human constructs of reality. This volume shows
how this ferociously complex subject can be rendered somewhat more accessible
without resorting to the simplistic interpretations characterising the discipline’s
past.