Shepherds who write : pastoral graffiti in the uplands of Europe from prehistory to the modern age / edited by Marta Bazzanella and Giovanni Kezich ; with a preface by Michael J. Rowlands.

Oxford : BAR Publishing, 2020.

1 online resource (xx, 232 pages) : illustrations (black and white, and colour), maps (colour).

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In a number of significant sites of the vast ancient pasturelands of the Old World, generations of wandering shepherds have left their testimony in the form of graffiti drafted on the rocks over a period of hundreds of years from ancient to modern times. The phenomenon is a conspicuous one, and has considerable significance for two reasons. On the one hand, the study of such pastoral graffiti may convey fresh ethnoarchaeological information as to the circumstances of the pastoral activities and the pastoral economy of the past. On the other hand, these signs, which can be often fully alphabetic as well as drawing upon ancient symbolic repertoires, can be of some aid in the interpretation of rock art as a whole genre of human expression, and projected back, in their significance and their modes of appearance, the earliest times of prehistory.

BAR Publishing.

Books / Online

English

December 04, 2023

Includes bibliographical references.

Specialized.