Art (Pre)History: Ritual, Narrative and Visual Culture in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe

Abstract

Can we reconstruct how prehistoric people perceived things (their "ways of seeing" or visual culture)? This challenge is made more difficult by the traditional disciplinary assumptions built into prehistoric art studies, for instance focusing narrowly upon a single body of art in isolation. This paper proposes an alternative approach, using comparative study to reveal broad regional changes in visual culture. Although prehistoric art specialists rarely work comparatively, art historians are familiar with describing continent-wide general developments in visual culture and placing them in social context (for instance, the traditional broad-brush history from Classical to medieval to Renaissance systems of representation). This paper does the same for Neolithic (6000-2500 BC) vs. Bronze Age (2500-800 BC) and Iron Age (800 BC-Classical) rock and cave art from sites across Europe, uncovering broad patterns of change. The principal pattern is a shift from a Neolithic iconic art which uses heavily encoded imagery, often schematic geometric motifs, to a Bronze/Iron Age narrative art, which increasingly involves imagery of identifiable people, animals and objects. Moreover, there is also an increasing tendency for motifs to be associated in scenes rather than purely accumulative, and with contextual changes in how art is used-a movement from hidden places to more open or accessible places. Underlying all these changes is a shift in how rock and cave art was used, from citations reproducing ritual knowledge to composed arrays telling narratives of personhood.

The impacts of visual Art Therapy for elderly with Neurocognitive disorder: a systematic review

“…According to the PEDro Scale score, three articles were classified into low-quality essays 1,3,13 , five articles had a reasonable methodological quality index 2,5,9-11 , and six articles had high-quality numbers methodological quality index 4,[6][7][8]12,14 . There was a mean score of 5.78, with a standard deviation of ±3.30, considering a maximum score of 10 among the works included.…”

“…In cognitive analysis instruments, five studies applied the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MOCA) Scale 4,5,6,8,10 . Another five studies applied the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) [1][2][3]7,13 .…”

“…The most used interventions were drawing [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] , painting 1-3,5-14 , image cutting [1][2][3] , and constructing sculptures or ceramics 6,8,12 .…”

“…When we mention art as a whole, we bring and imagine works that portray a historical, classical, and critical perspective, but that was not always the case. Previously, art served as a way of recording what was around, the first glances and perceptions of the peoples to inhabit the earth, and the records that were found in caves, especially in the region of Europe around 16,000 BC, where primitive people shared their stories through drawings made with natural pigments, such as tree bark, fruits, and animal remains -called Prehistoric Art, also known as Rock Art 4,5 .…”

Chris Gosden (2018): 'Prehistory. A Very Short Introduction'. (2nd Edition). Oxford, Oxford University Press. (132 págs. + 10 Figs). ISBN: 978-0-19-880351-5. (17, 5 x 11 cm).

“…El arte prehistórico precisa de una verdadera ontología de las imágenes, considerar la materialidad de las mismas -en su realización y despliegue -y valorar el carácter dinámico y cambiante de las imágenes (Danielsson y Jones en prensa). Además el arte debe ser comprendido como parte integrada de una amplia cultura material y en el caso del arte de la Prehistoria final (Neolítico a Edad del Hierro) se debe reconocer el cambio que supone respecto al arte Paleolítico, al derivar hacia una nueva manera de contar y considerar a los individuos (Robb 2020). Esa perspectiva del arte desde un ángulo de cultura visual esta por construir.…”