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Symbols by Nature: animal frequencies in the Upper Palaeolithic of western Europe and the nature of symbolic representation
Author(s) -
Davidson Iain
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
archaeology in oceania
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1834-4453
pISSN - 0728-4896
DOI - 10.1002/j.1834-4453.1999.tb00442.x
Subject(s) - representation (politics) , the symbolic , meaning (existential) , perspective (graphical) , documentation , ethnography , section (typography) , archaeology , history , symbol (formal) , epistemology , linguistics , art , computer science , visual arts , philosophy , law , psychology , programming language , politics , political science , psychoanalysis , operating system
It is well understood that rock art involves symbols, and that the meaning of symbols is not straightforward. In this paper, I show that symbolic values in the iconic depictions in the Upper Palaeolithic of Europe vary across regions. I then show that for one site symbolic values within a constant iconic tradition vary across time. In the final section of the paper, I show that it is easy to be seduced from a modern perspective into a belief that symbolic values have stayed the same over long periods of time. This is counter to what we know from the mutable nature of symbols both from the ethnographic documentation and from the archaeological examples in this paper.