This book offers an analysis of archaeological imagery based on new materialist approaches. Reassessing the representational paradigm of archaeological image analysis, it argues for the importance of ontology, redefining images as material processes or events that draw together differing aspects of the world. The book is divided into three sections: 'Emergent images', which focuses on practices of making; 'Images as process', which examines the making and role of images in prehistoric societies; and 'Unfolding images', which focuses on how images change as they are made and circulated. Featuring contributions from archaeologists, Egyptologists, anthropologists and artists, it highlights the multiple role of images in prehistoric and historic societies, while demonstrating that scholars need to recognise their dynamic and changeable character.

• Front matter
• Contents
• Figures
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Emergent images
  • The Nile in the hippopotamus: being and becoming in faience figurines of Middle Kingdom ancient Egypt
  • An archaeology of anthropomorphism: upping the ontological ante of Alfred Gell’s anthropology of art through a focus on making
  • Dirty RTI
  • Commentary on Part I
• Part II: Images as process
  • Rock art as process: Iberian Late Bronze Age ‘warrior’ stelae in-the-making
  • Images and forms before Plato: the carved stone balls of Northeast Scotland
  • Connectivity and the making of Atlantic Rock Art
  • Neolithic and Copper Age stamps in the Balkans: a material and processual account of image making
  • Commentary on Part II
• Part III: Unfolding images
  • Pattern as patina: Iron Age ‘kintsugi’ from East Yorkshire
  • The act of creation: tangible engagements in the making and ‘remaking’ of prehistoric rock art
  • ‘Guldgubbars’ changing ontology: Scandinavian Late Iron Age gold foil figures through the lens of intra-action
  • The partial and the vague as a visual mode in Bronze Age rock art
  • Parts and holes: a commentary
• Index