Customer Reviews

World Rock Art (Conservation & Cultural Heritage)

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Vibrantly illustrated throughout with a series of full-color photographs, World Rock Art by Jean Clottes (a world authority on aboriginal and neolithic rock art) is a global tour of ancient and prehistoric rock artworks from around the world. The informed and informative text accessibly relates what modern archaeology has been ably to deduce about these various works and the peoples who created them, and warns against the destruction and deterioration of these works - some are threatened by natural forces, others by over-eager tourists and visitors. The latest title in the outstanding Getty Institute "Conservation and Cultural Heritage" series, World Rock Art is a combination of art history and archaeology, as well as a superbly presented showcase of a truly ancient art form.

The author surveys global rock art across 30 millenia. The book is valuable for this diversity of time and culture, and it is profusely illustrated. I think that Clottes misses a point in his zeal to attribute the art to the broad instincts of the common people of each era (unless, indeed, it is all the graffiti of its time!) More likely, I suggest, the art is the product of the influence of contemporary "priests" who (like those of today) sense the opportunity to gain power by organizing popular thought, concentrating it in themselves. Recognition of this process would help to explain how carefully rock art was regulated by its creators.