Analysis of the subjective and metaphorical value of weapons and tools in rock art and their contexts in prehistoric, protohistoric and traditional contexts throughout the world.
Weapons and tools are frequently found depicted in rock art in many parts of the globe and different periods and in varying social contexts. This collection of papers by leading rock art specialists examines the subjective and metaphorical value of weapons and tools in art, the actions that created them, and their contexts. It also takes into account that such representations incorporate and transmit some kind of understanding about the world and the relationship between objects and humans. Contributors analyse objects and weapons as status symbols, as evidences of cultural contacts, as ideological devices, etc. Divided into regional sections which, for once, do not focus on Scandinavia, chapters deal with the representations of weapons and certain kinds of tools (such as axes and sickles) in different prehistoric, protohistoric and traditional community contexts all over the world. Attention focuses on rock art, but also looks at stelae and statue-menhirs, as well as other kinds of &;container&; or vehicle for this kind of depiction.
The major concern is to discuss the possible meanings of these embodied signs in different areas and periods, since meanings are permeable both to time and space. Papers either centre their attention in broader approaches based on a specific area, region or people, or focus on particular case studies.
List of contributors
1. Introduction: depiction of weapons and tools in rock art as ambivalent
symbols in time and space
Ana M. S. Bettencourt, Manuel Santos-Estévez, Hugo Aluai Sampaio
Part
1. The Iconographic Approach
2. The picturing of weapons, tools and other objects at Australian stencilled
and painted rock art sites
Patricia Dobrez
3. Weapons, tools, and objects: material culture systems in Africa rock art
Augustin F. C. Holl / Gao Chang
4. The representations of weapons in the rock art of Tunisia
Jaâfar Ben Nasr
5. Weaponry in Levantine Rock Art: a general view from the Maestrazgo region
(Spain)
Manuel Bea and Inés Domingo
6. The image of tools and the metaphor for life: a case study in Kosovo
Shemsi Krasniqi
7. Warriors and weapons - engraved motifs in the Early Bronze Age rock art in
Sweden
Ulf Bertilsson
Part
2. The Contextual Approach
8. Megaliths and weapons representations. A view of the birth of Iberian
warrior images
Rosa Barroso-Bermejo, Primitiva Bueno-Ramírez and Rodrigo de Balbín-Behrmann
9. The parade of weapons. Ritual landscape in Late Prehistory in the
Northwest Iberian Peninsula
Manuel Santos-Estévez
10. West Iberian Bronze Age halberds in rock art sites: several ontological
considerations
Ana M. S. Bettencourt
Part
3. The Ethnographic and Historical Approach
11. Ritual and symbolic significance of weapons in western North American
rock art
David S. Whitley
12. Weapons and rock art engravings, a case study of Recuay filiation in the
Queneto site, Viru valley, Peru
Daniel Seuart Castillo Benítez and María Susana Barrau
13. Painted for war: rock art depictions of archers with arrow headdresses in
the Eastern Cape, South Africa
Brent Sinclair-Thomson
14. Horsemens weaponry in rock art of Jebel Rat (High Atlas, Morocco). Signs
of a social elite
Alessandra Bravin
15. Ancient rites as evidenced in the representation of weapons and tools in
a rock art tradition in northern Greece
Stella Pilavaki
Ana M. S. Bettencourt is Assistant Professor of Archaeology (with Habilitation) at Departamento de História, Instituto de Ciências Socias da Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal, where she teaches the Archaeology degree and masters. She has also given several lectures in other Portuguese and Spanish universities and has been advisor of several Ph.D. and master's theses and dissertations of Portuguese and foreign students. Her main research interests are: burial contexts and practices; rock art; metallurgy and mining of the Iberian Peninsula Prehistory, under which she has published numerous books, book chapters and articles in international journals and developed, as responsible researcher, several projects with international funding. Currently she is Head of the History Department and Director of the Master in Archaeology. Manuel-Santos-Estévez obtained his PhD in History in 2004 at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Galicia. His main research is oriented to rock art, sculpture, and landscape archaeology. From 1995 he was a post-doctoral researcher in the Landscape Archaeology Laboratory (USC) and of Institute of Galician Studies Padre Sarmiento (CSIC) and, since 2009, hired researcher at Institute of History (CCHS-CSIC). Since 2014 he is a post-doctoral researcher of Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, at Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal. He directed 50 archaeological projects, including at Campo Lameiro Archaeological Park, in Galicia, Spain. He also participates in several projects related to rock art. He published a number of papers in international reviews as Trabajos de Prehistoria, World Archaeology, Journal of Indo-European Studies or Journal of Archaeological Science. Hugo Aluai Sampaio has a Ph.D. in Settlement and Landscape Archaeology at Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal. Its research is dedicated to the Northwestern Bronze Age, focusing on issues related to metallurgy and deposition of metallic objects, funerary practices and contexts, settlement and rock art. He also developed projects in the area of Archaeology and Tourism. He has published in books, book chapters, as well as in several international journals. He is an invited Assistant at Universidade do Minho, Braga, and Instituto Polictécnico do Cávado e do Ave, Portugal, when he teaches curricular units about Archaeological Heritage and Prehistory.
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