Ambiguous Images: Gender and Rock Art [Paperback]

...presents new avenues for research. Her writing style is clear, and the bibliography is valuable for students of archaeology and rock art. Recommended.Like the other books in this series, this one creates new paths for others to follow. Kelley Hays-Gilpin doesn't cut the path with a machete, however, but with a scalpel and a fine sensibility for detail. She dispassionately probes the explanations that have been put forward about gender and rock art, and without posturing shows better ways to think about both topics and to discriminate between more and less likely interpretations...The reader has in hand a wise guide, a thoughtful analysis, and a good read.With this book American rock art research comes of age. Far from a rock art-book-about-rock art, this instead is a book on how rock art informs us about prehistoric gender and social life. It is essential reading for anyone interested in symbolism, prehistoric art, feminist theory or western North American prehistory.Ambiguous Images is a timely volume in which Kelley Hays-Gilpin covers a wide range of issues as she challenges popular and past stereotypes about rock art and gendertopics she describes as often marginal to the archaeological community. Yet perceptions of sex and gender affect social processes, life cycles, politics, economics, religion, and world views. Drawing on rock art throughout the world, Hays-Gilpin points the way and lays out routes for the dynamic use of rock art imagery as a creative avenue of discovery into richly gendered worlds of the past. This is an exciting addition to the fast-growing literature on gender in archaeology.Ambiguous Images is a welcome addition to gender, aterial, visual and even 'science' culture studies, and a text I will eagerly recommend and use in the classroom.In its wide ranging selection of case studies the book introduces the reader not only to a variety of rock art manifestations and contexts, but also to aspects of gendered rock art studies that may inspirlS6