Social and behavioral scientists study religion or spirituality in various ways and have defined and approached the subject from different perspectives. In cultural anthropology and archaeology the understanding of what constitutes religion involves beliefs, oral traditions, practices and rituals, as well as the related material culture including artifacts, landscapes, structural features and visual representations like rock art. Researchers work to understand religious thoughts and actions that prompted their creation distinct from those created for economic, political, or social purposes. Rock art landscapes convey knowledge about sacred and spiritual ecology from generation to generation. Contributors to this global view detail how rock art can be employed to address issues regarding past dynamic interplays of religions and spiritual elements. Studies from a number of different cultural areas and time periods explore how rock art engages the emotions, materializes thoughts and actions and reflects religious organization as it intersects with sociopolitical cultural systems.

A companion to The Archaeology of Rock-Art (Cambridge 1998), this new collection edited by Christopher Chippindale and George Nash addresses the most important component around the rock-art panel - its landscape. The Figured Landscapes of Rock-Art draws together the work of many well-known scholars from key regions of the world for rock-art and for rock-art research. It provides a unique, broad and varied insight into the arrangement, location, and structure of rock-art and its place within the landscapes of ancient worlds as ancient people experienced them. Packed with illustrations, as befits a book about images, The Figured Landscapes of Rock-Art offers a visual as well as a literary key to the understanding of this most lovely and alluring of archaeological traces.

Regional survey and excavation data of a large complex of rock art in the highland, central Andes are synthesised to produce a typology of the rock art of the region. These findings are paired with Colonial accounts and semiotic modeling to understand the role of rock art in socialising the land.

Known from the Old Testament as one of the tribes occupying the Promised Land, the Hittities were in reality a powerful neighbouring kingdom: highly advanced in political organization, administration of justice and military genius; with a literature inscribed in cuneiform writing on clay tablets; and with a rugged and individual figurative art ... Newly revised and updated, this classic account reconstructs a complete and balanced picture of Hittite civilization, using both established and more recent sources.

This book expands on an initial paper that merited the comments: "I read it with interest . . . It is almost certain that, for the authors of its drawings, the Chauvet Cave was considered to be directly related to the Pont d'Arc." -Jean Clottes, author of What is Paleolithic Art?: Cave Paintings and the Dawn of Human Creativity. "It is very nicely written and offers a great deal of food for thought . . . the implicit depiction of landscape: it is a great idea." - Anne Solomon, author of Rock Arts, Shamans, and Grand Theories. In the book “The Sacred Landscape,” the author Johan S. Ellefsen tackles a controversial topic, the meaning of Prehistoric art. The author examines one of the main compositions in the Chauvet cave and how the rock shapes still visible in the face of Pont d’Arc –found right outside the cave– may have inspired the animals painted 36,000 years ago. This book challenges the preconceived notions about Paleolithic art, which commonly held that Ice Age artists did not paint landscapes, and the representations of animals on the walls could not be conceived as mythical narratives. The author proposes that the composition known as the Lion Panel of the Chauvet cave, painted around 36,000 years ago, is the oldest known landscape painting and it is the key to understand the meaning of Paleolithic art. The book sheds light on how the Ice Age artists created a landscape painting as a composite image, which aggregated figures of animals to imitate the contours of Pont d’Arc –analogous to the paintings of ‘therianthropes,’ which were composite figures that combined parts of animals and humans in a single figure. With illustrations and photographs the book engages the reader in finding the rock formations of Pont d’Arc and their astonishing resemblance to the head of a rhinoceros, the ‘ball-feet’ of the mammoths, and the head of a bison painted in the cave. This context gives the reader an insight into the paintings of the Chauvet cave and guides the reader to identify the symbolic value of the animals depicted, as well as the underlying narrative elements tied to the landscape. The author examines how a 36,000-year-old myth could have looked like and proposes that the Lion Panel was possibly conceived as a narrative describing the creation myth of the landscape. This research sheds light on how the Paleolithic artists represented the notions of safety, conflict and sacredness, and what are the teachings of these stories that allowed them to survive for millennia. The author also explores the precursors of the Lion Panel and its successors, showing that the arrangement of paintings had a preconceived structure and an underlying narrative that allowed its transmission. The book explains the peculiar weather conditions of the Ardèche region and how the occupants of the Chauvet cave noticed these peculiarities. In the subsections “The spring inside the Chauvet cave” and “A dripping mammoth on the ceiling” the author lays the foundation to understand the symbolism of springs and rain in the art of the Chauvet cave.

Captures magical spaces - archetypal and architectural manifestations of the sacred. This title illustrates the ways in which people have used and understood their sacred landscapes throughout history and around the world, from hillside Celtic oak initiation groves to Megalithic open-air sanctuaries to Macchu Picchu and Oregon's Crater Lake.

Ritual landscapes and borders are recurring themes running through Professor Kalle Sognnes' long research career. This anthology contains 13 articles written by colleagues from his broad network in appreciation of his many contributions to the field of rock art research.