Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
11
result(s) for
"Wengrow, D"
Sort by:
The origins of monsters : image and cognition in the first age of mechanical reproduction
\"It has often been claimed that \"monsters\"--supernatural creatures with bodies composed from multiple species--play a significant part in the thought and imagery of all people from all times. The Origins of Monsters advances an alternative view. Composite figurations are intriguingly rare and isolated in the art of the prehistoric era. Instead it was with the rise of cities, elites, and cosmopolitan trade networks that \"monsters\" became widespread features of visual production in the ancient world. Showing how these fantastic images originated and how they were transmitted, David Wengrow identifies patterns in the records of human image-making and embarks on a search for connections between mind and culture.Wengrow asks: Can cognitive science explain the potency of such images? Does evolutionary psychology hold a key to understanding the transmission of symbols? How is our making and perception of images influenced by institutions and technologies? Wengrow considers the work of art in the first age of mechanical reproduction, which he locates in the Middle East, where urban life began. Comparing the development and spread of fantastic imagery across a range of prehistoric and ancient societies, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and China, he explores how the visual imagination has been shaped by a complex mixture of historical and universal factors.Examining the reasons behind the dissemination of monstrous imagery in ancient states and empires, The Origins of Monsters sheds light on the relationship between culture and cognition\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Cultures of Commodity Branding
Commodity branding did not emerge with contemporary global capitalism. In fact, the authors of this volume show that the cultural history of branding stretches back to the beginnings of urban life in the ancient Near East and Egypt, and can be found in various permutations in places as diverse as the Bronze Age Mediterranean and Early Modern Europe. What the contributions in this volume also vividly document, both in past social contexts and recent ones as diverse as the kingdoms of Cameroon, Socialist Hungary or online eBay auctions, is the need to understand branded commodities as part of a broader continuum with techniques of gift-giving, ritual, and sacrifice. Bringing together the work of cultural anthropologists and archaeologists, this volume obliges specialists in marketing and economics to reassess the relationship between branding and capitalism, as well as adding an important new concept to the work of economic anthropologists and archaeologists.
eBook
What makes civilization? : the ancient near East and the future of the West
In 'What Makes Civilization?', archaeologist David Wengrow provides a vivid account of the 'birth of civilization' in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia (today's Iraq). These two regions, where many foundations of modern life were laid, are usually treated in isolation. Now, they are brought together within a unified history.
Book
What makes civilization? : the ancient near East and the future of the West
A vivid new account of the 'birth of civilization' in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia where many of the foundations of modern life were laid
eBook
What Makes Civilization?
A vivid new account of the 'birth of civilization' in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia where many of the foundations of modern life were laid.
eBook
Rethinking ‘Cattle Cults’ in Early Egypt: Towards a Prehistoric Perspective on the Narmer Palette
The Narmer Palette occupies a key position in our understanding of the transition from Predynastic to Dynastic culture in Egypt. Previous interpretations have focused largely upon correspondences between its decorative content and later conventions of élite display. Here, the decoration of the palette is instead related to its form and functional attributes and their derivation from the Neolithic cultures of the Nile Valley, which are contrasted with those of southwest Asia and Europe. It is argued that the widespread adoption of a pastoral lifestyle during the fifth millennium BC was associated with new modes of bodily display and ritual, into which cattle and other animals were incorporated. These constituted an archive of cultural forms and practices which the makers of the Narmer Palette, and other Protodynastic monuments, drew from and transformed. Taking cattle as a focus, the article begins with a consideration of interpretative problems relating to animal art and ritual in archaeology, and stresses the value of perspectives derived from the anthropology of pastoral societies.
Journal Article
The evolution of simplicity: Aesthetic labour and social change in the Neolithic Near East
Conventional accounts of early state formation have taken the explanation of innovation and complexity as their central problem. In consequence, those areas of social life which became markedly more simple during the formation of 'complex' societies-such as daily consumption-have received little attention. This paper seeks to problematize the evolution of social simplicity by introducing a concept of aesthetic labour into the analysis of social change. Aesthetic labour describes the whole complex of techniques, forms of knowledge and material objects through which a society invests the concepts it lives by with sensuous and psychological force. Taking the development of pottery production in the late prehistoric Near East as a focus, and following anthropological discussions of the development of élite culture, I aim to show how the transition from simple to complex society involved the dislocation of aesthetic labour from everyday practices, and its transposition to a restricted, and politically empowered, sector of society.
Journal Article
‘The changing face of clay’: continuity and change in the transition from village to urban life in the Near East
In the Near East, the inherent dualism of clay as both symbol and instrument was a feature of its use from the inception of farming villages to the formation of cities, and the extensive record of its ‘changing face’ allows us to trace the continuous history of development between them.
Journal Article
The Intellectual Adventure of Henri Frankfort: A Missing Chapter in the History of Archaeological Thought
From the late 1920s to the early 1950s, Henri Frankfort's research into the prehistoric and dynastic cultures of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia was at the forefront of archaeological scholarship. In recent accounts of the development of archaeological thought, however, he appears a curiously neglected figure in relation to his contemporary. V. Gordon Childe. This study provides an outline of Frankfort's intellectual development and a review of his major works, highlighting their innovative qualities. It concludes by comparing and contrasting the approaches of Frankfort and Childe to the archaeology of early civilizations in terms of their philosophical underpinnings and goals.
Journal Article