Theoretical and Cognitive Aspects of Rock Art

Contents: Foreword. Introduction. 1. Re-contextualizing rock art/Subhash Chandra Malik. 2. Decoding rock art/V.H. Sonawane. 3. Cognition: Some aspects of symbolism in rock paintings of central Himalaya/Maheshwar P. Joshi. 4. Illustrations, symbols and material culture in the cognitive representation of the iron age-early-historic South India/V. Selvakumar. 5. Cognitive aspects of rock art from Mahadeo Hills, Pachmarhi, Central India/Ruman Banerjee and Somnath Chakraverty. 6. A behavioural exercise to understand the rock art tradition through an ethno-archaeological perspective/Kanikumar A. Pawar. 7. Understanding rock art in context: an appraisal of astronomical symbolism with special reference to rock art/Bansi Lal Malla. 8. Animals in Indian rock art: an appraisal of relative chronology and deductive methodology/Ruman Banerjee. 9. Tracing the cultural continuum from the present to the past: rock art, mortuary rites and burial practices in India/Somnath Chakraverty. 10. Understanding the rock art of northeast India: issues and context/Dwipen Bezbaruah. 11. Explaining regional patterns of the South Asian symbolic behaviour in the global context/Parth R. Chauhan. 12. Some recent discoveries of petroglyphs in the trans-western Himalayan region/Om Chand Handa. 13. Continuity of art through the ages and some regional variations at Gawilgarh hills,Madhya Pradesh/Nandini Bhattacharya Sahu and Prabash Sahu.

Rock art is a collection of diverse categories of representations covering symbolic, artistic, magico-religious and socio-economic components of human culture from the prehistoric to modern age. It is a form of historical record that helps us to understand the development of artistic and cultural traditions and belief systems. Rock art of India can be better understood through studies focusing on theoretical perspectives. It represents the development of cognition and also reflects the variation in the cognition of different phenomena. There is no universal method for interpretation of rock art. In rock art studies the subjectivity always exists, leading to speculative identifications and interpretations. Logical interpretations of the message intended to be conveyed by the authors of rock art need to be done quite precisely without any preconceived ideas or bias.