Archaeologies of Art: Time, Place, and Identity in Rock Art, Portable Art, and Body Art.

DOMINGO, I; FIORE, D.; MAY, S

Archaeologies of art. Time, place and identity.

Left Coast Press

Lugar: Walnut Creek, California; Año: 2008; p. 15 - 28

The papers in “Art and Social Identity” tackle the study of cases from a world-wide spectrum, which shed light on the construction of social identity through the production and uses of rock art and body art. Social identity can be conceived as a twofold construction: it is created through self-adscription (person/s feel integrated to a certain group and contribute -intentionally and unintentionally- to its creation, hence constructing their own identities) and through adscription by others (besides the former process, person/s get integrated to certain identities regardless of their intentions, by neighbouring groups and/or by groups distant to them in space and/or time, including the archaeologists who study their material culture products). Both processes are subject to study in this book. In this chapter we discuss the different approaches taken towards the analysis of social identity through the study of rock art, portable art and body art. It is also submitted that the archaeological analysis of past social identities is simultaneously an exercise of identity construction of “the other” in the present.