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This volume accompanies an exhibition of the same name at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, February 4-September 30, 2005. Far more than merely a catalogue of the exhibition, it offers for a wide readership an introduction to the art of late prehistory (around 4000 BC) in Iran and Iraq, by bringing together a range of expressive visual tools-seals, sealings, and painted pottery. The focus is on a time before written expressions of belief, mythology, identity, or administrative documentation, but also a time of ripened recourse to other visual strategies of communication that set the stage for writing as we conceive it. A series of 11 imaginative interpretative essays explores the evidence and the methods we can use to approach an understanding of the role of visual imagery (of signs and symbols) in late prehistory, and to ask questions of this material as a means of approaching possible social meanings. The book is lavishly illustrated, and includes catalogue entries for every object included in the exhibition.
Margaret Cool Root is Professor of Near Eastern and Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Michigan.
Acknowledgments
Part I: Introduction
1. This Fertile Land Margaret Cool Root
Part II: Iran in the System of Things
2. An Overview of Place and Space Lori Khatchadourian and Margaret Cool Root
3. Seals and Sealings: Archaeological Perspectives Lori Khatchadourian
Part III: Signs and Symbols
4. The Chevron-Filled Cross and Early Communicative Systems Jane Rempel
5. Systems of Symbolic Expression Margaret Cool Root
6. Shamans, Seals, and Magic Andrew Wilburn
7. Modes of Religious Experience in Late Prehistory Karen Johnson
8. Fertility: Of Snakes, Displayed Females, Scorpions, Tortoises, Frogs Margaret Cool Root
Part IV: Historiography, Archaeology, and the Art Market
9. Problems in Interpreting Late Prehistory Margaret Cool Root
10. Archaeology and Collecting: Law, Ethics, Politics Hima Mallampati
11. Tepe Giyan Lives. Herzfeld's Harvest - Jane For Adams's Buttons Margaret Cool Root
Part V: Apparatus
Appendix on Materials Analysis Kathleen Davis and Suzanne Davis
Catalogue of Artifacts, Didactics, and Images in the Exhibition Margaret Cool Root
Concordance: Artifacts (by Collection) to Catalogue Numbers Margaret Cool Root
Woks Cited
Selected Index of Signs, Sumbols, and Their Associations