A CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE

The earliest rock art - in the Americas as elsewhere - is geometric or abstract. Until Early Rock Art in the American West, however, no book-length study has been devoted to the deep antiquity and amazing range of geometrics and the fascinating questions that arise from their ubiquity and variety. Why did they precede representational marks? What is known about their origins and functions? Why and how did humans begin to make marks, and what does this practice tell us about the early human mind?

With some two hundred striking color images and discussions of chronology, dating, sites, and styles, this pioneering investigation of abstract geometrics on stone (as well as bone, ivory, and shell) explores its wide-ranging subject from the perspectives of ethology, evolutionary biology, cognitive archaeology, and the psychology of artmaking. The authors' unique approach instills a greater respect for a largely unknown and underappreciated form of paleoart, suggesting that before humans became Homo symbolicus or even Homo religiosus, they were mark-makers - Homo aestheticus.

About the Author

Ekkehart Malotki is professor emeritus of languages at Northern Arizona University. He is the author of The Rock Art of Arizona: Art for Life's Sake and Stone Chisel and Yucca Brush: Colorado Plateau Rock Art. Ellen Dissanayake is an independent scholar, author, and lecturer. She is the author of Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began; Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why; and What Is Art For?

Reviews

"Here, finally, is a book that presents the remarkable first paleoart of North America comprehensively and in all its glory. Malotki's marvelous ability to capture rock art photographically has been noted before as being without equal, and this book is no exception. . . . But what makes this volume so precious is the most propitious combination of Malotki's encyclopedic knowledge of the Southwest's rock art with Dissanayake's sophisticated understanding of the nature of art-like production."

-- Robert Bednarik * Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture *

"Drawing on the insights of ethology, cognitive archaeology, evolutionary biology, and the psychology of art and art-making, the authors succeed in building a brilliant, substantive case for the antiquity of the early geometric enigmas that span the American West, and for the psychology behind their creation. . . . Essential. All readers."

* Choice *

"In this fascinating volume, linguist Ekkehart Malotki and scholar Ellen Dissanayake parse images created up to 15,000 years ago by Palaeoamericans from Arizona to Idaho, speculating about their origins and functions. Alongside Malotki's stunning photographs of some 200 examples, the authors recontextualize the relics as products of ritualistic activity ('artification') rather than symbolic artworks."

* Nature *



Book Information
ISBN 9780295743615
Author Ekkehart Malotki
Format Paperback
Page Count 312
Imprint University of Washington Press
Publisher University of Washington Press
Weight(grams) 1134g