ABSTRACT
Art historians are concerned with charting the changing circumstances of art production, and the question of art's changeability is usually confined to discussions of context and influence, though some art historians are beginning to grapple with the processes involved in making art. One of the striking things about the archaeology of art is that the sensational and affective character of artworks still strike art historians millennia after their completion. Most archaeological and anthropological analyses overlook the shifting character of art, and tend to focus on the static image, at the expense of the changing image. This differs slightly from art historical approaches. While some images of composite beings are known from the Palaeolithic, Neolithic and pre-dynastic Egypt, naturalistic images of animals are much more common. Images of composite beings proliferate with the arrival of civilisation in Egypt, Mesopotamia and western Iran.
