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La passion dans les yeux: souvenirs
Par Andréa Ferréol. 2016
Andréa Ferréol connaît le succès dès 1973 en incarnant la plantureuse héroïne de La grande bouffe, de Marco Ferreri, dont…
elle dévoile les coulisses de tournage. Elle raconte les metteurs en scène célèbres pour qui elle tourne : Fassbinder, Comencini, Mocky, Schlöndorff, Scola, Greenaway. Omar Sharif, son grand amour, pour qui elle met de côté sa carrière en 1984.Notre dernier voyage
Par Jean-Marie Lapointe. 2023
Même si on la sait inévitable, la mort fait peur. Comment changer notre attitude face à elle ? Alors qu'il…
était confronté à la fin imminente de son père, Jean Lapointe, Jean-Marie Lapointe se sentait en paix, malgré les émotions qui affluaient. Est-ce sa démarche spirituelle influencée par le bouddhisme tibétain qui a fait la différence ? Ou son expérience des vingt dernières années auprès des jeunes en fin de vie ? L'auteur relate ce dernier voyage, avec simplicité, douceur et bienveillanceThe things i came here with: A memoir
Par Chris MacDonald. 2022
"Does it hurt?" When you're a tattoo artist, that's the most universal question. For Chris MacDonald, the answer is simple:…
hurts less than a broken heart . Those words are painted above the entrance to his shop, Under My Thumb Tattoos, as a reminder. Chris and his brothers were as wild as the wind, in their house among the fields of Alliston, Ontario, when their parents divorced. Shell-shocked, they were uprooted and brought to Toronto by their dad. Their mother's mental illness worsened in the aftermath, and she disappeared. As a teenager, Chris left home and found himself immersed in the city's underbelly, a world where drugs, skateboarding, and punk rock reigned. Between the youth shelters, suicidal thoughts, and haunted apartments, a light shined: and it was art. He eventually found himself following the path of his brother, Rob, and pursuing life as a tattooist. Then, at the height of a destructive summer, everything changed: he met Megan, the girl who would become his rock of ages. This remarkable memoir examines what tattooing means to MacDonald and traces the connection his artistic motives have to both his family and childhood. The Things I Came Here With is about how crucial our past is to understanding our future, but it's also a love letter to his daughter about the importance of expression, life's uncertainty, and beautyLiving Ruins: Native Engagements with Past Materialities in Contemporary Mesoamerica, Amazonia, and the Andes
Par Philippe Erikson, Valentina Vapnarsky. 2022
Ruins and remnants of the past are endowed with life, rather than mere relics handed down from previous generations. Living…
Ruins explores some of the ways Indigenous people relate to the material remains of human activity and provides an informed and critical stance that nuances and contests institutionalized patrimonialization discourse on vestiges of the past in present landscapes. Ten case studies from the Maya region, Amazonia, and the Andes detail and contextualize narratives, rituals, and a range of practices and attitudes toward different kinds of vestiges. The chapters engage with recently debated issues such as regimes of historicity and knowledge, cultural landscapes, conceptions of personhood and ancestrality, artifacts, and materiality. They focus on Indigenous perspectives rather than mainstream narratives such as those mediated by UNESCO, Hollywood, travel agents, and sometimes even academics. The contributions provide critical analyses alongside a multifaceted account of how people relate to the place/time nexus, expanding our understanding of different ontological conceptualizations of the past and their significance in the present. Living Ruins adds to the lively body of work on the invention of tradition, Indigenous claims on their lands and history, “retrospective ethnogenesis,” and neo-Indianism in a world where tourism, NGOs, and Western essentialism are changing Indigenous attitudes and representations. This book is significant to anyone interested in cultural heritage studies, Amerindian spirituality, and Indigenous engagement with archaeological sites in Latin America. Contributors: Cedric Becquey, Laurence Charlier Zeineddine, Marie Chosson, Pablo Cruz, Philippe Erikson, Antoinette Molinié, Fernando Santos-Granero, Emilie Stoll, Valentina Vapnarsky, Pirjo Kristiina VirtanenZodiac: A Graphic Memoir
Par Ai Weiwei. 2024
In this beautifully illustrated and deeply philosophical graphic memoir, legendary artist Ai Weiwei explores the connection between artistic expression and…
intellectual freedom through the lens of the Chinese zodiac.As a child living in exile during the Cultural Revolution, Ai Weiwei often found himself with nothing to read but government-approved comic books. Although they were restricted by the confines of political propaganda, Ai Weiwei was struck by the artists&’ ability to express their thoughts on art and humanity through graphic storytelling. Now, decades later, Ai Weiwei and Italian comic artist Gianluca Costantini present Zodiac, Ai Weiwei&’s first graphic memoir.Inspired by the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac and their associated human characteristics, Ai Weiwei masterfully interweaves ancient Chinese folklore with stories of his life, family, and career. The narrative shifts back and forth through the years—at once in the past, present, and future—mirroring memory and our relationship to time. As readers delve deeper into the beautifully illustrated pages of Zodiac, they will find not only a personal history of Ai Weiwei and an examination of the sociopolitical climate in which he makes his art, but a philosophical exploration of what it means to find oneself through art and freedom of expression.Contemplative and political, Zodiac will inspire readers to return again and again to Ai Weiwei&’s musings on the relationship between art, time, and our shared humanity.The Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic in the Eastern Fertile Crescent: Revisiting the Hilly Flanks
Par Tobias Richter, Hojjat Darabi. 2024
This volume brings together the latest results and discussions from research carried out in the eastern Fertile Crescent, the so-called…
hilly flanks, and adjacent regions, as well as providing key historical perspectives on earlier fieldwork in the region. The emergence of sedentary food producing societies in southwest Asia ca. 10,000 years ago has been a key research focus for archaeologists since the 1930s. This book provides a balance to the weight of work undertaken in the western Fertile Crescent, namely the Levant and southern Anatolia. This preference has led to a heavy emphasis on these regions in discussions about where, when and how the transition from hunting and gathering to plant cultivation and animal domestication occurred. Chapters assess the role of the eastern Fertile Crescent as a key region in the Neolithization process in southwest Asia, highlighting the key and important contributions people in this region made to the emergence of sedentary farming societies.This book is primarily aimed at academics researching the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture in southwest Asia. It will also be of interest to archaeologists working on this transition in other parts of Eurasia.Conservation of Contemporary Art: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice (Studies in Art, Heritage, Law and the Market #9)
Par Renée van de Vall, Vivian Van Saaze. 2024
This open access book investigates whether and how theoretical findings and insights in contemporary art conservation can be translated into…
the daily work practices of conservators or, vice versa, whether and how the problems and dilemmas encountered in conservation practice can inform broader research questions and projects. For several decades now, the conservation of contemporary art has been a dynamic field of research and reflection. Because of contemporary art’s variable constitution, its care and management calls for a fundamental rethinking of the overall research landscape of museums, heritage institutions, private-sector organizations and universities. At first, this research was primarily pursued by conservation professionals working in or with museums and other heritage organizations, but increasingly academic researchers and universities became involved, for instance through collaborative projects. This book is the result of such collaboration. It sets out to bridge the “gap” between theory and practice by investigating conservation practices as a form of reflection and reflection as a form of practice.Violence and Inequality: An Archaeological History (Path to Open)
Par Thomas P. Leppard, Sarah C. Murray. 2023
Violence and Inequality explores the deep-time archaeological relationship between violence and inequality, focusing on prehistoric archaeology’s contribution to the understanding of…
the human dynamics among coercive force, aggression, and the state. Detailed archaeological case studies within a strong theoretical framework built from historical studies consider the role of coercive violence in trajectories toward complexity, how levels and types of violence can be traced alongside emerging wealth disparities, and the social role of violence. The assumption that violence and its threat buttressed elite social control is now challenged from various perspectives. This volume incorporates new models of the relationship between violence and social inequalities into the archaeology of social complexity, building more complicated and nuanced understandings of how different modes of social violence can militate different types of social constitution. Contributions from a variety of methodological angles—such as the bioarchaeology of health and trauma and radiogenic isotope studies and the aesthetics of violence—use a comparative perspective, drawing on data from the Southwestern US, Bronze Age China, early dynastic Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, Roman Britain, and the Andes. Violence and Inequality offers an original and deep history of violence and inequality. Understanding the long-term intersection of violence and inequality and how they support or erode one another is of intrinsic importance, making this work significant to the study of archaeology, economic history, and collective action.Realizing Value in Mesoamerica: The Dynamics of Desire and Demand in Ancient Economies (Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies)
Par Scott R. Hutson, Charles Golden. 2023
This edited collection addresses concepts of value and its impact on economies and economic decision-making in Mesoamerica. It brings together…
various theoretical and methodological approaches to illuminate the little-studied topic of value in ancient economies.While scholars increasingly note that tangible objects found in the archaeological record could assume different values, depending on how they were used and circulated, less attention has been paid to how we might infer consensus (or lack of consensus) on how value was determined in past cultures so different from contemporary ones. These contributions show how multiple and conflicting understandings of what is important and meaningful coexist within any society even as moments of exchange create the impression of shared formulations of value. They consider divergences between shared understandings based on systems of beliefs and patterns of practice and the individual decisions of social actors. They also discuss how inequalities in social structures might inform our understanding of value, and how a multiplicity of values might encourage closer inspection of inequality in turn.The book brings together fifteen chapters focused on many parts of Mesoamerica, including Western Mexico, the Basin of Mexico, Veracruz, Oaxaca, and various parts of the Maya Lowlands, and range chronologically from the Classic period (250-900 CE) to the Spanish Conquest in the early 16th Century. It appeals to those working in archaeology, economic anthropology, economic history, and all those interested in how value can be understood in terms of contemporary cultural and political differences.Broken Bodies, Places and Objects: New Perspectives on Fragmentation in Archaeology
Par Anna Sörman, Astrid A. Noterman, Markus Fjellström. 2024
Broken Bodies, Places and Objects demonstrates the breadth of fragmentation and fragment use in prehistory and history and provides an…
up-to-date insight into current archaeological thinking around the topic.A seal broken and shared by two trade parties, dog jaws accompanying the dead in Mesolithic burials, fragments of ancient warships commodified as souvenirs, parts of an ancient dynastic throne split up between different colonial collections… Pieces of the past are everywhere around us. Fragments have a special potential precisely because of their incomplete format – as a new matter that can reference its original whole but can also live on with new, unrelated meanings. Deliberate breakage of bodies, places and objects for the use of fragments has been attested from all time periods in the past. It has now been over 20 years since John Chapman’s major publication introducing fragmentation studies, and the topic is more present than ever in archaeology. This volume offers the first European-wide review of the concept of fragmentation, collecting case studies from the Neolithic to Modernity and extending the ideas of fragmentation theory in new directions.The book is written for scholars and students in archaeology, but it is also relevant for neighbouring fields with an interest in material culture, such as anthropology, history, cultural heritage studies, museology, art and architecture.Love, Fiercely: A Gilded Age Romance
Par Jean Zimmerman. 2012
The true story of the New York society couple portrayed in the John Singer Sargent painting—an architect and an heiress…
who became passionate reformers. Contemporaries of the Astors and Vanderbilts, they grew up together along the shores of bucolic Staten Island, linked by privilege—her grandparents built the world&’s fastest clipper ship, while his family owned most of Murray Hill. Theirs was a world filled with mansions, balls, summer homes, and extended European vacations. This fascinating biography re-creates the glittering world of Edith Minturn and Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes—and reveals how their love for each other was matched by their dedication to others. Newton became a passionate preserver of New York history and published the finest collection of Manhattan maps and views in a six-volume series. Edith became the face of the age when Daniel Chester French sculpted her for Chicago&’s Columbian Exposition, a colossus intended to match the Statue of Liberty&’s grandeur. But beyond their life of prominence and prestige, Edith and Newton battled together on behalf of New York&’s poor and powerless—and through it all, sustained a strong-rooted marriage. From the splendid cottages of the Berkshires to the salons of 1890s Paris, Love, Fiercely tells the real-life story behind Mr. and Mrs. I .N. Phelps Stokes—one of the Gilded Age&’s most famous works of art. &“With an impressive amount of research behind every page, Zimmerman manages to capture the sweeping drama of the turn of the century as well as the compelling story of a couple who knew how to love, fiercely. Her superb pacing and gripping narrative will appeal to all who enjoy history, biography, and real-life romance.&” —Library JournalETHICS: Cross-disciplinary Strategies (Designing Environments)
Par Alessandra Battisti, Serena Baiani. 2024
This book outlines, within the Italian national framework, the current and potential paths oriented towards a new concept of Architectural…
Heritage, through actions referring to Innovation and Experimentation and Protection and Transformation of the Architectural Heritage. The development of the themes is articulated in two sessions dealing with the aspects related to the analysis and mapping of Architectural Heritage to face the context of the current Climate Crisis and the development of projects and experimentations oriented to the Green and Digital Transition. The evolution of the concept of Heritage, as conceived by the United Nations 2030 Agenda and in the Green Deal and New European Bauhaus, aimed at constructing an inclusive and universally recognised definition to support supranational objectives of sustainable human development, gives rise to innovative strategies, methodologies and technologies that—in a direction of mitigation, contrast and adaptation to climate change—allow for the safeguard, renewed management and a hope for valorisation of Heritage on a national scale. In this direction, the understanding of Architectural Heritage as a 'non-renewable resource' determines the need to activate design experimentation laboratories oriented towards regeneration, articulated and complex, which require, in order to respond to the challenges posed by our era, a sensitive and dialogic multidisciplinary vision of a holistic type. In fact, on the one hand, it is necessary to redefine the usability and management methods of built heritage through the adoption of digital, mobility, energy, ecological, social, green and blue infrastructures; on the other hand, it is necessary to introduce new qualitative and quantitative parameters and performance indicators, adequate to verify the validity of the implemented strategies in a perspective of adaptation to climate change, able to clarify contents, processes and tools to contrast future risks. The pursuit of these objectives refers to the innovation of training paths, professionalising procedures, administrative regulations, and public policies that involve citizens and the private partnership towards a different project qualification and empowerment of stakeholders, inhabitants, professionals, and clients. The Technological Project makes it possible to activate different interventions aimed at acting, in an integrated manner, on assets, context and communities, according to an approach that reinterprets them on a common score, as proposed by the European Next Generation programme in three priority aspects: digitalisation and innovation, environmental transition, increased resilience and social sustainability of national economies. In this scenario, the interventions aimed at outlining sustainable development actions will have to place these concepts at the centre in a harmonious vision that starts from the recognition and enhancement of the Architectural Heritage, recognising it as a fundamental asset of the territories.Infrastructures of Religion and Power: Archaeologies of Landscape, Ritual, and Semiotics
Par Edward Swenson. 2024
This book explores the central role of religion in place-making and infrastructural projects in ancient polities. It presents a trilectic…
approach to archaeological study of religious landscapes that combines Indigenous philosophies with the spatial and semiotic thinking of Lefebvre, Peirce, and proponents of assemblage theories. Case studies from ancient Angkor and the Andes reveal how rituals of place-making activated processes of territorialization and semiosis fundamental to the experience of political worlds that shaped power relations in past societies. The perspectives developed in the book permit a reconstruction of how landscapes were variably conceived, perceived, and lived in the spirit of Henri Lefebvre, and how these registers may have aligned or clashed. In the end, the examination of built environments, infrastructures, and rituals staged within specialized buildings demonstrates how archaeologists can better infer past ontologies, cosmologies, ideologies of time and place, and historically specific political struggles. The study will appeal to students and researchers interested in ritual, infrastructures, landscape, archaeological theory, political institutions, semiotics, human geography, and the civilizations of the ancient Andes and Angkor.Whose Culture?: The Promise of Museums and the Debate over Antiquities
Par James Cuno. 2009
The international controversy over who "owns" antiquities has pitted museums against archaeologists and source countries where ancient artifacts are found.…
In his book Who Owns Antiquity?, James Cuno argued that antiquities are the cultural property of humankind, not of the countries that lay exclusive claim to them. Now in Whose Culture?, Cuno assembles preeminent museum directors, curators, and scholars to explain for themselves what's at stake in this struggle--and why the museums' critics couldn't be more wrong. Source countries and archaeologists favor tough cultural property laws restricting the export of antiquities, have fought for the return of artifacts from museums worldwide, and claim the acquisition of undocumented antiquities encourages looting of archaeological sites. In Whose Culture?, leading figures from universities and museums in the United States and Britain argue that modern nation-states have at best a dubious connection with the ancient cultures they claim to represent, and that archaeology has been misused by nationalistic identity politics. They explain why exhibition is essential to responsible acquisitions, why our shared art heritage trumps nationalist agendas, why restrictive cultural property laws put antiquities at risk from unstable governments--and more. Defending the principles of art as the legacy of all humankind and museums as instruments of inquiry and tolerance, Whose Culture? brings reasoned argument to an issue that for too long has been distorted by politics and emotionalism. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Kwame Anthony Appiah, Sir John Boardman, Michael F. Brown, Derek Gillman, Neil MacGregor, John Henry Merryman, Philippe de Montebello, David I. Owen, and James C. Y. Watt.Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World
Par Michael Scott. 2014
A comprehensive narrative history of the ancient world's center, from its founding to its modern rediscoveryThe oracle and sanctuary of…
the Greek god Apollo at Delphi were known as the "omphalos"—the "center" or "navel"—of the ancient world for more than 1,000 years. Individuals, city leaders, and kings came from all over the Mediterranean and beyond to consult Delphi's oracular priestess; to set up monuments to the gods; and to take part in competitions.In this richly illustrated account, Michael Scott covers the history and nature of Delphi, from the literary and archaeological evidence surrounding the site, to its rise as a center of worship, to the constant appeal of the oracle despite her cryptic prophecies. He describes how Delphi became a contested sacred site for Greeks and Romans and a storehouse for the treasures of rival city-states and foreign kings. He also examines the eventual decline of the site and how its meaning and importance have continued to be reshaped.A unique window into the center of the ancient world, Delphi will appeal to general readers, tourists, students, and specialists.The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece
Par Claude Calame. 1999
The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece offers the first comprehensive inquiry into the deity of sexual love, a power…
that permeated daily Greek life. Avoiding Foucault's philosophical paradigm of dominance/submission, Claude Calame uses an anthropological and linguistic approach to re-create indigenous categories of erotic love. He maintains that Eros, the joyful companion of Aphrodite, was a divine figure around which poets constructed a physiology of desire that functioned in specific ways within a network of social relations. Calame begins by showing how poetry and iconography gave a rich variety of expression to the concept of Eros, then delivers a history of the deity's roles within social and political institutions, and concludes with a discussion of an Eros-centered metaphysics. Calame's treatment of archaic and classical Greek institutions reveals Eros at work in initiation rites and celebrations, educational practices, the Dionysiac theater of tragedy and comedy, and in real and imagined spatial settings. For men, Eros functioned particularly in the symposium and the gymnasium, places where men and boys interacted and where future citizens were educated. The household was the setting where girls, brides, and adult wives learned their erotic roles--as such it provides the context for understanding female rites of passage and the problematics of sexuality in conjugal relations. Through analyses of both Greek language and practices, Calame offers a fresh, subtle reading of relations between individuals as well as a quick-paced and fascinating overview of Eros in Greek society at large.The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World
Par Adrienne Mayor. 2014
The real history of the Amazons in war and loveAmazons—fierce warrior women dwelling on the fringes of the known world—were…
the mythic archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Heracles and Achilles displayed their valor in duels with Amazon queens, and the Athenians reveled in their victory over a powerful Amazon army. In historical times, Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great, and the Roman general Pompey tangled with Amazons.But just who were these bold barbarian archers on horseback who gloried in fighting, hunting, and sexual freedom? Were Amazons real? In this deeply researched, wide-ranging, and lavishly illustrated book, National Book Award finalist Adrienne Mayor presents the Amazons as they have never been seen before. This is the first comprehensive account of warrior women in myth and history across the ancient world, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Great Wall of China.Mayor tells how amazing new archaeological discoveries of battle-scarred female skeletons buried with their weapons prove that women warriors were not merely figments of the Greek imagination. Combining classical myth and art, nomad traditions, and scientific archaeology, she reveals intimate, surprising details and original insights about the lives and legends of the women known as Amazons. Provocatively arguing that a timeless search for a balance between the sexes explains the allure of the Amazons, Mayor reminds us that there were as many Amazon love stories as there were war stories. The Greeks were not the only people enchanted by Amazons—Mayor shows that warlike women of nomadic cultures inspired exciting tales in ancient Egypt, Persia, India, Central Asia, and China.Driven by a detective's curiosity, Mayor unearths long-buried evidence and sifts fact from fiction to show how flesh-and-blood women of the Eurasian steppes were mythologized as Amazons, the equals of men. The result is likely to become a classic.The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times
Par Adrienne Mayor. 2011
The fascinating story of how the fossils of dinosaurs, mammoths, and other extinct animals influenced some of the most spectacular…
creatures of classical mythologyGriffins, Centaurs, Cyclopes, and Giants—these fabulous creatures of classical mythology continue to live in the modern imagination through the vivid accounts that have come down to us from the ancient Greeks and Romans. But what if these beings were more than merely fictions? What if monstrous creatures once roamed the earth in the very places where their legends first arose? This is the arresting and original thesis that Adrienne Mayor explores in The First Fossil Hunters. Through careful research and meticulous documentation, she convincingly shows that many of the giants and monsters of myth did have a basis in fact—in the enormous bones of long-extinct species that were once abundant in the lands of the Greeks and Romans.As Mayor shows, the Greeks and Romans were well aware that a different breed of creatures once inhabited their lands. They frequently encountered the fossilized bones of these primeval beings, and they developed sophisticated concepts to explain the fossil evidence, concepts that were expressed in mythological stories. The legend of the gold-guarding griffin, for example, sprang from tales first told by Scythian gold-miners, who, passing through the Gobi Desert at the foot of the Altai Mountains, encountered the skeletons of Protoceratops and other dinosaurs that littered the ground.Like their modern counterparts, the ancient fossil hunters collected and measured impressive petrified remains and displayed them in temples and museums; they attempted to reconstruct the appearance of these prehistoric creatures and to explain their extinction. Long thought to be fantasy, the remarkably detailed and perceptive Greek and Roman accounts of giant bone finds were actually based on solid paleontological facts. By reading these neglected narratives for the first time in the light of modern scientific discoveries, Adrienne Mayor illuminates a lost world of ancient paleontology.A revolutionary approach to how we view Europe's prehistoric cultureThe peoples who inhabited Europe during the two millennia before the…
Roman conquests had established urban centers, large-scale production of goods such as pottery and iron tools, a money economy, and elaborate rituals and ceremonies. Yet as Peter Wells argues here, the visual world of these late prehistoric communities was profoundly different from those of ancient Rome's literate civilization and today's industrialized societies. Drawing on startling new research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, Wells reconstructs how the peoples of pre-Roman Europe saw the world and their place in it. He sheds new light on how they communicated their thoughts, feelings, and visual perceptions through the everyday tools they shaped, the pottery and metal ornaments they decorated, and the arrangements of objects they made in their ritual places—and how these forms and patterns in turn shaped their experience.How Ancient Europeans Saw the World offers a completely new approach to the study of Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe, and represents a major challenge to existing views about prehistoric cultures. The book demonstrates why we cannot interpret the structures that Europe's pre-Roman inhabitants built in the landscape, the ways they arranged their settlements and burial sites, or the complex patterning of their art on the basis of what these things look like to us. Rather, we must view these objects and visual patterns as they were meant to be seen by the ancient peoples who fashioned them.It has often been claimed that "monsters"--supernatural creatures with bodies composed from multiple species--play a significant part in the thought…
and imagery of all people from all times. The Origins of Monsters advances an alternative view. Composite figurations are intriguingly rare and isolated in the art of the prehistoric era. Instead it was with the rise of cities, elites, and cosmopolitan trade networks that "monsters" became widespread features of visual production in the ancient world. Showing how these fantastic images originated and how they were transmitted, David Wengrow identifies patterns in the records of human image-making and embarks on a search for connections between mind and culture. Wengrow asks: Can cognitive science explain the potency of such images? Does evolutionary psychology hold a key to understanding the transmission of symbols? How is our making and perception of images influenced by institutions and technologies? Wengrow considers the work of art in the first age of mechanical reproduction, which he locates in the Middle East, where urban life began. Comparing the development and spread of fantastic imagery across a range of prehistoric and ancient societies, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and China, he explores how the visual imagination has been shaped by a complex mixture of historical and universal factors. Examining the reasons behind the dissemination of monstrous imagery in ancient states and empires, The Origins of Monsters sheds light on the relationship between culture and cognition.