An exploration of Indonesian megaliths based on scientific documents and field visits, this work highlights misunderstood—and sometimes threatened by destruction—aspects of Indonesian cultural heritage and offers a unique perspective on megalithic monuments abandoned for several centuries in the archipelago.
Bringing together the latest research on megalithic monuments throughout the world, 150 researchers offer 72 articles, providing a region-by region account in their specialist areas, and a summary of the current state of knowledge. Highlighting salient themes, the book is vital to anyone interested in the phenomenon of megalithic monumentality.
Tumuli and megaliths mark the landscape of Eurasia and are rich in data, mystery, and legends. Books about them are often monographic or have a local range. This collection of essays highlights and brings together 74 authors from 16 countries, from Portugal to Japan and Indonesia. They offer a diversity of regional backgrounds, theoretical perspectives, and scientific approaches relevant to anyone working in history, archaeology, anthropology, and heritage. Densely illustrated and written in a way that is understandable to anyone, it is easily accessible to students, professors, researchers, and cultural or heritage managers. It will also attract anyone interested in past cultures, early religions, and ancient architecture. Its content makes it a mandatory book for the central and specialized libraries of any university, I&D centre, museum or visiting centre about this and other related issues.
One of the most prolific and influential artists of the 20th century, Jean Dubuffet has featured in a multitude of exhibitions and catalogues. Yet he remains one of the most misunderstood-and least interrogated-postwar French artists. Celebrating Art Brut (the art of ostensible outsiders) while posing as an outsider himself, Dubuffet mingled with many great artists, writers, and theorists, developing an elaborate and nuanced stream of conceptual resources to reconfigure painting and reframe postwar anticultural discourses. This book reexamines Dubuffet's art through the lens of these portraits (a veritable who's who of the Parisian art and intellectual scene) in tandem with his writings and the art and writings of his Surrealist sitters. Investigating Dubuffet's painting as bricolage, this book reveals his reliance upon an anticulture culture and the appropriation of motifs from Surrealism to the South Pacific to explore the themes of multivalence, performativity, and multifaceted identity in his portraits.
“The Indonesian island of Sumatra is part of a chain of islands making up Sunda and the Malay Archipelago. Sumatra is one of the largest islands in the world, housing unique and globally important tropical rainforests, a diverse array of rare plants and magnificent animals, and a population of 60 million who speak a range of Austronesian languages. As beautifully exemplified in this volume, Sumatra is a place which preserves a distinct and long-term human history, studies of which began in earnest with Eugene Dubois’s explorations in the 1880s to find our ancestral ‘missing link’. Archaeological investigation of megaliths and historic empires carry on to this day. A range of topics are explored here, including palaeontological study of fossil mammals and their environments, the routes that Homo erectus took during their wanderings across Indonesia, and the growth and development of societies and empires in more recent periods. This exemplary volume presents a revised view of the history of palaeontological and archaeological research as well as new ground-breaking field research, laying the foundation for future research on the biological and cultural evolution of one of the most majestic islands of the world.” — Professor Michael Petraglia, Director of the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Griffith University
Reassesses major axial alignment at many megalithic ritual and funerary monuments (Neolithic to Bronze Age) in Britain and Ireland, not in terms of abstract astronomical concerns, but as an expression of repeated seasonal propitiation involving community, agrarian economy and ancestry in an attempt to mitigate variable environmental conditions.
This volume explores the response of the living when dealing with the death of a child. Papers focus on juvenile burial practices in Europe and the Near East during recent prehistory and protohistory. The interpretation of normative, atypical or deviant is interrogated based on the context of the burials and the intentionality of the practice.
Proceedings of the 22nd meeting of the ‘Archéologie et Gobelets’ Association which took place in Geneva, Switzerland in January 2021. The book is structured in three parts: Archaeological Material, Funerary Archaeology and Anthropology, and Reconstructing Bell Beaker Society.
The state of Meghalaya, formed on 21 January 1972, is a state of fascinating socio-cultural significance. Its heritage can be traced from the prehistoric times of Stone Age up to the present. Though comprising mainly of the matrilineal Khasi, Garo, and Jaintia tribes – the state also houses many other lesser known communities such as the Hajong,Sakachep, Biate, Koch, Dalu, Margnar and the Nepali. All these communities find voice in this volume. This book looks at the state of Meghalaya exhaustively from the perspective of heritage documentation and maintenance. The 38 chapters written by anthropologists and independent researchers, present the rich traditions found in the region. This volume will be of great help to academicians, researchers, students, and laymen interested in a comprehensive study of the region. Please note: This title is co-published with Manohar Publishers, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in South Asia.
When Western explorers first encountered dolmens in the Levant, they thought they had discovered the origins of a megalithic phenomenon that spread as far as the Atlantic coast. Although European dolmens are now considered an unrelated tradition, many researchers continue to approach dolmens in the Levant as part of a trans-regional phenomenon that spanned the Taurus mountains to the Arabian peninsula. By tightly defining the term 'dolmen' itself, this book brings these mysterious monuments into sharper focus. Drawing on historical, archaeological and geological sources, it is shown that dolmens in the Levant mostly concentrate in the eastern escarpment of the Jordan Rift Valley, and in the Galilean hills. They cluster near proto-urban settlements of the Early Bronze I period (3700–3000 BCE) in particular geological zones suitable for the extraction of megalithic slabs. Rather than approaching dolmens as a regional phenomenon, this book considers dolmens as part of a local burial tradition whose tomb forms varied depending on geological constraints. Dolmens in the Levant is essential for anyone interested in the rise of civilisations in the ancient Middle East, and particularly those who have wondered at the origins of these enigmatic burial monuments that dominate the landscape.
