Peter S. Wells
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691143385
- eISBN:
- 9781400844777
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691143385.001.0001
- Subject:
- Archaeology, Historical Archaeology
The peoples who inhabited Europe during the two millennia before the Roman conquests had established urban centers, large-scale production of goods such as pottery and iron tools, a money economy, ...
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The peoples who inhabited Europe during the two millennia before the Roman conquests had established urban centers, large-scale production of goods such as pottery and iron tools, a money economy, and elaborate rituals and ceremonies. Yet as this book argues, the visual world of these late prehistoric communities was profoundly different from those of ancient Rome's literate civilization and today's industrialized societies. Drawing on startling new research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, the book reconstructs how the peoples of pre-Roman Europe saw the world and their place in it. It sheds new light on how they communicated their thoughts, feelings, and visual perceptions through the everyday tools they shaped, the pottery and metal ornaments they decorated, and the arrangements of objects they made in their ritual places—and how these forms and patterns in turn shaped their experience. The book offers a completely new approach to the study of Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe, and represents a major challenge to existing views about prehistoric cultures. It demonstrates why we cannot interpret the structures that Europe's pre-Roman inhabitants built in the landscape, the ways they arranged their settlements and burial sites, or the complex patterning of their art on the basis of what these things look like to us. Rather, we must view these objects and visual patterns as they were meant to be seen by the ancient peoples who fashioned them.Less
The peoples who inhabited Europe during the two millennia before the Roman conquests had established urban centers, large-scale production of goods such as pottery and iron tools, a money economy, and elaborate rituals and ceremonies. Yet as this book argues, the visual world of these late prehistoric communities was profoundly different from those of ancient Rome's literate civilization and today's industrialized societies. Drawing on startling new research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, the book reconstructs how the peoples of pre-Roman Europe saw the world and their place in it. It sheds new light on how they communicated their thoughts, feelings, and visual perceptions through the everyday tools they shaped, the pottery and metal ornaments they decorated, and the arrangements of objects they made in their ritual places—and how these forms and patterns in turn shaped their experience. The book offers a completely new approach to the study of Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe, and represents a major challenge to existing views about prehistoric cultures. It demonstrates why we cannot interpret the structures that Europe's pre-Roman inhabitants built in the landscape, the ways they arranged their settlements and burial sites, or the complex patterning of their art on the basis of what these things look like to us. Rather, we must view these objects and visual patterns as they were meant to be seen by the ancient peoples who fashioned them.
Peter S. Wells
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691143385
- eISBN:
- 9781400844777
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691143385.003.0001
- Subject:
- Archaeology, Historical Archaeology
This chapter first discusses the new style of imagery and ornament that emerged during the fifth century BC. The new style has been the source of endless controversy since the latter half of the ...
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This chapter first discusses the new style of imagery and ornament that emerged during the fifth century BC. The new style has been the source of endless controversy since the latter half of the nineteenth century. Strange creatures, part human, part beast, were crafted onto gold and bronze jewelry and cast onto the handles and lids of bronze vessels. Metalsmiths created lush new forms of decoration—incised and relief ornament based on floral motifs such as leaves and petals, with spirals, S-curves, and whirligigs decorating objects ranging from pottery to sword scabbards. This style was a radical departure from the forms of representation and decoration that preceded it. The chapter then sets out the book's purpose, namely to study a two-thousand-year period in Europe, from 2000 BC to the Roman conquests during the last century BC and the first century AD, known by the terms “Bronze Age” and “Iron Age.”Less
This chapter first discusses the new style of imagery and ornament that emerged during the fifth century BC. The new style has been the source of endless controversy since the latter half of the nineteenth century. Strange creatures, part human, part beast, were crafted onto gold and bronze jewelry and cast onto the handles and lids of bronze vessels. Metalsmiths created lush new forms of decoration—incised and relief ornament based on floral motifs such as leaves and petals, with spirals, S-curves, and whirligigs decorating objects ranging from pottery to sword scabbards. This style was a radical departure from the forms of representation and decoration that preceded it. The chapter then sets out the book's purpose, namely to study a two-thousand-year period in Europe, from 2000 BC to the Roman conquests during the last century BC and the first century AD, known by the terms “Bronze Age” and “Iron Age.”
Richard Pearson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824837129
- eISBN:
- 9780824870980
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824837129.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter studies the cultural chronology of the Central-Northern, and Southern Ryukyus, and describes some key characteristics of early prehistoric island communities. At least five types of ...
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This chapter studies the cultural chronology of the Central-Northern, and Southern Ryukyus, and describes some key characteristics of early prehistoric island communities. At least five types of interaction among these communities can be identified: exploration, migration, exchange, innovation, emulation, as well as isolation. From roughly 7000 BC to around AD 800, people of the Northern and Central Ryukyu were hunter-gatherers, subsisting on terrestrial and marine plants and animals. Similarly, in the Southern Ryukyus, a nonagricultural subsistence pattern was practiced by the first Holocene inhabitants, who lived in the islands from around 2900 BC to 2000 BC. By about AD 1050, trade throughout the Ryukyus and the adoption of cultivation transformed earlier patterns of settlement and subsistence, marking the beginning of the Gusuku Period.Less
This chapter studies the cultural chronology of the Central-Northern, and Southern Ryukyus, and describes some key characteristics of early prehistoric island communities. At least five types of interaction among these communities can be identified: exploration, migration, exchange, innovation, emulation, as well as isolation. From roughly 7000 BC to around AD 800, people of the Northern and Central Ryukyu were hunter-gatherers, subsisting on terrestrial and marine plants and animals. Similarly, in the Southern Ryukyus, a nonagricultural subsistence pattern was practiced by the first Holocene inhabitants, who lived in the islands from around 2900 BC to 2000 BC. By about AD 1050, trade throughout the Ryukyus and the adoption of cultivation transformed earlier patterns of settlement and subsistence, marking the beginning of the Gusuku Period.
