Colouring the Past: The Significance of Colour in Archaeological ResearchAndrew Jones, Gavin MacGregor Colour shapes our world in profound, if sometimes subtle, ways. It helps us to classify, form opinions, and make aesthetic and emotional judgements. Colour operates in every culture as a symbol, a metaphor, and as part of an aesthetic system. Yet archaeologists have traditionally subordinated the study of colour to the form and material value of the objects they find and thereby overlook its impact on conceptual systems throughout human history.This book explores the means by which colour-based cultural understandings are formed, and how they are used to sustain or alter social relations. From colour systems in the Mesolithic, to Mesoamerican symbolism and the use of colour in Roman Pompeii, this book paints a new picture of the past. Through their close observation of monuments and material culture, authors uncover the subtle role colour has played in the construction of past social identities and the expression of ancient beliefs. Providing an original contribution to our understanding of past worlds of meaning, this book will be essential reading for archaeologists, anthropologists and historians, as well as anyone with an interest in material culture, art and aesthetics. |
Contents
Colourful | 23 |
The Problem with the Berlin and | 45 |
Quartz Pebbles and the Use of Quartz | 73 |
Copyright | |
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Other editions - View all
Colouring the Past: The Significance of Colour in Archaeological Research Andrew Jones,Gavin MacGregor No preview available - 2002 |
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic amber ancestral Anthropology Archaeology architecture artefacts associated axeheads azurite basic colour terms beads Bennachie Berlin and Kay Billown blue body bone Boriç Bradley brilliance burial pit Burl Caccia Antica cairn Cambridge University Press Casa della Caccia Castle Fraser Clava Cairns Color Categories colour and texture colour symbolism complex construction context contrast Cooney Copper Age Danube Gorges Darvill decoration deposited Durankulak Early Bronze Age ethnographic excavated Figure flanker flint gold granite grey haematite Hamangia human Ireland Isle Jones kaolinite kurgan landscape Lepenski Vir light linguistic London Lynch material culture meaning menhirs Mesolithic metaphors mineral monuments mortuary Munsell natural necklaces Neolithic Newgrange objects Oxford paint passage graves pigments pink porcellanite quartz realgar red ochre ritual rock RSCs Saunders schist Scotland significance of colour social sources stelae substances suggest surface tablinum Tilley Varna Vitruvius Vlasac white quartz pebbles yellow