Not Just Good to See: Global Perspectives on Scenes in Rock Art

There is considerable temporal and geographic variation in the conventions involved in the choice, rendering and layout of subjects in rock art. Just as the emergence of naturalism through the application of perspective is said to have created new ways of representing and seeing the world in the European Renaissance so too changes in the ways images of animals were represented with regard to other animals, humans and non-figurative signs likely testify to changes in the ways prehistoric people experienced the world around them. The purpose of this session is to invite scholars with an interest in the variation of fauna in rock art to explore how we can use comparative studies of rock art to identify key differences in the ways in which people engaged with their natural and cultural landscapes.