ABSTRACT

Pictures are often admired for their aesthetic merits but they are rarely treated as if they had as much to offer as the written word. They are often overlooked as objects of analysis themselves, and tend to be seen simply as adjuncts to the text. Images, however, are not passive, and have a direct impact that engages attention in ways independent of any specific text. Advertising, entertainment and propaganda have realised the extent of this power to shape ideas, but the scientific community has hitherto neglected the ways in which visual material conditions the ways in which we think.
With subjects including prehistoric artworks, excavation illustrations, artists' impressions of ancient sites and peoples and contemporary landscapes, photographs and drawings, this study explores how pictures shape our perceptions and our expectations of the past.
This volume is not concerned with the accuracy of pictures from the past or directly about the past itself, but is interested instead in why certain subjects are selected, why they are depicted the way they are, and what effects such images have on our idea of the past. This collection constitutes a ground-breaking study in historiography which radically reassesses the ways that history can be written.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

The cultural life of images

chapter 1|11 pages

Art, Landscape, And The Past

An artist's view

chapter 2|27 pages

Drawing Inferences

Visual reconstructions in theory and practice

chapter 3|13 pages

Things, and Things Like Them

chapter 4|11 pages

‘To See is to Have Seen'

Craft traditions in British field archaeology

chapter 5|35 pages

Photography and Archaeology

chapter 6|22 pages

Representation and Reality in Private Tombs of the Late Eighteenth Dynasty, Egypt

An approach to the study of the shape of meaning

chapter 7|29 pages

Some Greek Images Of Others

chapter 9|29 pages

Revolutionary Images

The iconic vocabulary for representing human antiquity

chapter 10|17 pages

The Power Of The Picture

The image of the ancient Gaul

chapter 11|19 pages

Focusing on the Past

Visual and textual images of Aboriginal Australia in museums

chapter 12|14 pages

The Painter and Prehistoric People

A ‘hypothesis on canvas' 1