A millennia ago, Native Americans entered the dark recesses of a cave in eastern Missouri and painted an astonishing array of human, animal, and supernatural creatures on its walls. Known as Picture Cave, it was a hallowed site for sacred rituals and rites of passage, for explaining the multi-layered cosmos, for vision quests, for communing with spirits in the "other world," and for burying the dead. The number, variety, and complexity of images make Picture Cave one of the most significant prehistoric sites in North America, similar in importance to Cahokia and Chaco Canyon. Indeed, scholars will be able to use it to reconstruct much of the Native American symbolism of the early Western Mississippian world. The Picture Cave Interdisciplinary Project brought together specialists in American Indian art and iconography, two artists, Osage Indian elders, a museum curator, a folklorist, and an internationally renowned cave archaeologist to produce the first complete documentation of the pictographs on the cave walls and the first interpretations of their meanings and significance. This extensively illustrated volume presents the Project's findings, including an introduction to Picture Cave and prehistoric cave art and technical analyses of pigments, radiocarbon dating, spatial order, and archaeological remains. Interpretations of the cave's imagery, from individual motifs to complex panels; the responses of contemporary artists; and interviews with Osage elders (descendants of the people who made the art), describing what Picture Cave means to them today, are also included. A visual glossary of all the images in Picture Cave as well as panoramic views complete this pathfinding volume.

On a school field trip to the famous Lascaux Cave in southern France, a young girl encounters a primitive man who had created the remarkable paintings on the cave's walls. Includes a section with information on early homo sapiens.

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.

An underwater cave containing Paleolithic paintings and engravings of animals, complex geomatric signs, stenciled human hands and innumerable finger tracing.

This text, written by the three discoverers, provides a stirring account of the discovery of Chauvet Cave and the oldest known paintings in the world.

Patty Jo Watson's prolific career began in the early 1950s as an energetic graduate student at the University of Chicago and culminated with her induction into the National Academy of Sciences and subsequent retirement from Washington University in 2003. During that time her groundbreaking research impacted multiple fields within the discipline of archaeology, but her astonishing research into the underground caves of the eastern United States recognizes her as one of the world's leading experts on cave archaeology. In honor of Dr. Watson and her monumental achievements in the field, twenty-two established scholars present in this volume new and insightful research into prehistoric and historic use of southeastern dark zones. Cave Archaeology of the Eastern Woodlands, edited by David H. Dye, explores how prehistoric and historic peoples utilized caves as a means to further their economic growth and represent cultural values within their societies. The essays range in topics from early gypsum mining to rare American Indian cave art, from historic saltpeter extraction to current archaeobotanical and paleofecal research. Dye and the contributors contend that studies of deep zone caves reveal multiple insights into the values, beliefs, and cultural lifeways of ancient and historic peoples. In addition to presenting new research in the field, contributors also place particular emphasis on Dr. Watson's influential cave research and how it has molded their own work. The essays convey a sense of wonder at the unique and sometimes harrowing world of caves, and readers will get a sense of why Native Americans regarded the Underworld or Beneathworld as a supernatural realm to be tread upon with great respect and caution. This volume of uniformly excellent essays will no doubt be a lantern that sheds light onto the importance of studying and understanding the all too secret world of underground caves. David H. Dye is professor of archaeology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Memphis and a former student of Patty Jo Watson's. He is author of Cycles of Violence: An Archaeology of Peace and War in Native Eastern North American, coeditor, with Richard J. Chacon, of The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians, and, with Cheryl Anne Cox, of Towns and Temples Along the Mississippi.

A compact edition of Hockney and Gayford's brilliantly original book, with updated material and brand-new pieces of art Informed and energized by a lifetime of painting, drawing, and making images with cameras, David Hockney, in collaboration with art critic Martin Gayford, explores how and why pictures have been made across the millennia. Juxtaposing a rich variety of images--a still from a Disney cartoon with a Japanese woodblock print by Hiroshige, a scene from an Eisenstein film with a Velazquez paint-ing--the authors cross the normal boundaries between high culture and popular entertainment, and argue that film, photography, paint-ing, and drawing are deeply interconnected. Featuring a revised final chapter with some of Hockney's latest works, this new, compact edition of A History of Pictures remains a significant contribution to the discussion of how artists represent reality.