From brooches to bookends and beyond, you can create just about anything with the right rock and a bit of imagination. Step-by-step instructions and over 250 full-color illustrations make this the perfect gift for crafters of all ages.

This book explores a suite of spatially close San (Bushmen) rock painting sites in the Maclear District of South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. As a suite, the sites are remarkable because, despite their proximity to each other, they share patterns of similarity and simultaneous difference.

Rock art is one of the most visible and geographically widespread of cultural expressions, and it spans much of the period of our species' existence. Rock art also provides rare and often unique insights into the minds and visually creative capacities of our ancestors and how selected rock outcrops with distinctive images were used to construct symbolic landscapes and shape worldviews. Equally important, rock art is often central to the expression of and engagement with spiritual entities and forces, and in all these dimensions it signals the diversity of cultural practices, across place and through time. Over the past 150 years, archaeologists have studied ancient arts on rock surfaces, both out in the open and within caves and rock shelters, and social anthropologists have revealed how people today use art in their daily lives. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art showcases examples of such research from around the world and across a broad range of cultural contexts, giving a sense of the art's regional variability, its antiquity, and how it is meaningful to people in the recent past and today - including how we have ourselves tended to make sense of the art of others, replete with our own preconceptions. It reviews past, present, and emerging theoretical approaches to rock art investigation and presents new, cutting-edge methods of rock art analysis for the student and professional researcher alike.

Im Zuge der Etablierung europèaischer Kunstakademien bildeten sich Aufnahmezeremonien aus, die von den zukèunftigen Mitgliedern ein Probestèuck zum Beweis ihrer Fèahigkeiten forderten. Erstmalig wird in diesem Band ein vergleichender Blick auf die Aufnahmeprozeduren der wichtigsten europèaischen Akademien und auf diese faszinierenden, zumeist kleinformatigen Werke geworfen, die eine eigene Gattung der Bildhauerei darstellen. An keinen konkreten Verwendungszweck gebunden und unbeeinflusst durch Auftraggeberwèunsche, ermèoglichten sie ihren Schèopfern nicht nur eine selbstbewusste Zurschaustellung ihrer Fèahigkeiten, sondern luden auch zur Gattungsreflektion ein. Die virtuosen Schaustèucke fèuhren damit vor Augen, was die Bildhauer der Zeit als Aufgaben und Ziele ihrer Kunst ansahen.

Tunnels and Underground Cities: Engineering and Innovation meet Archaeology, Architecture and Art contains the contributions presented at the World Tunnel Congress 2019 (Naples, Italy, 3-9 May 2019). The use of underground space is continuing to grow, due to global urbanization, public demand for efficient transportation, and energy saving, production and distribution. The growing need for space at ground level, along with its continuous value increase and the challenges of energy saving and achieving sustainable development objectives, demand greater and better use of the underground space to ensure that it supports sustainable, resilient and more liveable cities. This vision was the source of inspiration for the design of the logos of both the International (ITA) and Italian (SIG) Tunnelling Association. By placing key infrastructures underground – the black circle in the logos – it will be possible to preserve and enhance the quality of the space at ground level – the green line. In order to consider and value underground space usage together with human and social needs, engineers, architects, and artists will have to learn to collaborate and develop an interdisciplinary design approach that addresses functionality, safety, aesthetics and quality of life, and adaptability to future and varied functions. The 700 contributions cover a wide range of topics, from more traditional subjects connected to technical challenges of design and construction of underground works, with emphasis on innovation in tunneling engineering, to less conventional and archetypically Italian themes such as archaeology, architecture, and art. The book has the following main themes: Archaeology, Architecture and Art in underground construction; Environment sustainability in underground construction; Geological and geotechnical knowledge and requirements for project implementation; Ground improvement in underground constructions; Innovation in underground engineering, materials and equipment; Long and deep tunnels; Public communication and awareness; Risk management, contracts and financial aspects; Safety in underground construction; Strategic use of underground space for resilient cities; Urban tunnels. Tunnels and Underground Cities: Engineering and Innovation meet Archaeology, Architecture and Art is a valuable reference text for tunneling specialists, owners, engineers, architects and others involved in underground planning, design and building around the world, and for academics who are interested in underground constructions and geotechnics.

The alleged 'death' of painting has shaped the recent course of art, but the model of the human mind upon which it rests is no longer considered accurate. Cognitive science has shown that the mind is not a blank slate but content-rich, and as such humans bear an array of innate expectations of reality and non-reality, which apply to painting as well as other human behaviours such as religion or music. This creative thesis takes in a series of case studies tracing the prehistory of painting in light of these cognitive propensities, from the beginnings of human culture, to Bushman rock art and the experiences of painters today, to uncover a perennial function for painting which cannot die: the ubiquitous sensation of an 'otherworld' beyond the canvas or rock face. This approach to painting demands its rehabilitation as a humanising self-expression in a world increasingly estranged from art, abandoning artistic ideology in favour of an image-based communion with human nature.

Pictures, painted and carved in caves and on open rock surfaces, are amongst our loveliest relics from prehistory. This pioneering set of sparkling essays goes beyond guesses as to what the pictures mean, instead exploring how we can reliably learn from rock-art as a material record of distant times: in short, rock-art as archaeology. Sometimes contact-period records offer some direct insight about indigenous meaning, so we can learn in that informed way. More often, we have no direct record, and instead have to use formal methods to learn from the evidence of the pictures themselves. The book's eighteen papers range wide in space and time, from the Palaeolithic of Europe to nineteenth-century Australia. Using varied approaches within the consistent framework of informed and proven methods, they make key advances in using the striking and reticent evidence of rock-art to archaeological benefit.

Rock paintings by the San Bushmen are scattered over all of southern Africa; it is estimated that some 15,000 rock art sites are known and possibly as many await discovery. While providing information about the history of these fascinating paintings—considered one of the greatest cultural treasures of humankind—this account also offers insight into their possible interpretations by taking the magnificent Linton panel in the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town as a starting point. Filled with beautiful illustrations, this record sheds light on San rock art in general and makes sense of the baffling complexity and strangeness of the art form.