Lynne Bevan. Worshippers and Warriors: reconstructing gender relations in the prehistoric rock art of Naquane National Park, Valcamonica, Brescia, northern Italy.

Lynne Bevan. Worshippers and Warriors: reconstructing gender relations in the prehistoric rock art of Naquane National Park, Valcamonica, Brescia, northern Italy. LYNNE BEVAN. Worshippers and Warriors: reconstructing genderrelations in the prehistoric rock art of Naquane National Park,Valcamonica, Brescia, northern Italy Northern Italy comprises of two areas belonging to NUTS level 1: North-West (Nord-Ovest): Aosta Valley, Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria North-East (Nord-Est): Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige/S��dtirol, Emilia-Romagna (British Archaeological ReportsInternational Series 1485). xv+ 192 pages, 187 illustrations, 10 tables.2006. Oxford: Archaeopress; 1-84171-920X paperback 34 [pounds sterling]. The lower Alpine valley of Valcamonica, and its immediatesurroundings, is home to an estimated excess of 300 000 prehistoric rockart motifs, about 80 per cent of which date from the Iron Age. Themotifs range in subject matter from the entirely abstract to huntingscenes, agricultural depictions and warriors in combat or stages ofinitiation. Traditional interpretation has focused upon the motifsthemselves, predominantly looking for literal translation This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the for details.This article has been tagged since September 2007. andinterpretation, and much of the thinking has suggested that theevidently male depictions of men and animals predominate over the lesserrepresented female images. Lynne Bevan has made a valuable contributionto the study of Valcamonica with her published PhD, which attempts toproperly analyse the gender roles played within the rock art. Thisreviewer's interest lies more with rock art studies than withgender studies: I would venture that Bevan's work stands as aconstructive contribution to gender studies, perhaps more so than torock art in general. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Valcamonica area is paradoxically poorly served bycomprehensive academic examination, particularly in the Englishlanguage English language,member of the West Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Germanic languages). Spoken by about 470 million people throughout the world, English is the official language of about 45 nations. . Those that are involved in the various ongoing full-time studyprojects do so against numerous obstacles including inadequate funding,development and indifference. Publications tend to be piecemealarticles, and no all-inclusive synthesis has yet been attempted.Bevan's study provides a useful background to current research anddescribes many of the varieties of rock art available in the valley. Bevan's core aim is to 'identify and describe genderedrepresentations and imagery' (p. i) in the National Park ofNaquane. Having introduced us to the rock art and its research inValcamonica in the first chapter, and gender theories and their relationto rock art in the second, Bevan uses chapters three to seven toidentify various gender aspects in the rock art such as femaledepictions, gender-related objects or signs, and sexual scenes, withchapter eight covering her conclusions. This final chapter, however,fails to properly draw together the various investigations in aconclusive manner. Instead it goes off in one final investigativedirection. The result is that the work is somewhat insufficiently'wrapped up'. The overall impression of the gender related discussions is anexcessive reliance on ethnographic eth��nog��ra��phy?n.The branch of anthropology that deals with the scientific description of specific human cultures.eth��nog analogy. Though incorporating a rangeof case studies or comparative sites highlights potential, here it tendsto confuse or obfuscate Bevan's own argument. One is also led tobelieve that every aspect of Valcamonica's rock art is genderrelated in its origin. I wholeheartedly whole��heart��ed?adj.Marked by unconditional commitment, unstinting devotion, or unreserved enthusiasm: wholehearted approval.whole agree that rock art can revealaspects of gender roles, but not that the raison d'etre rai��son d'����tre?n. pl. rai��sons d'��treReason or justification for existing.[French : raison, reason + de, of, for + ��tre, to be. of the rockart is heavily engendered. Bevan admits that her study is not a landscape study (p. 18), but Iwould suggest that it is impossible to understand any aspect of rock artwithout some degree of contextualising the motifs. Studying the imageryalone, without a sensible understanding of access or relative vicinityto activity areas, does not allow a reasonable debate about restrictedaccess to rock art. In some places aspects of landscape are acknowledgedin passing, e.g. the 'wooded areas at Naquane would have been ideallocations for hunting and for its accompanying male rituals' (p.107). This area, however, was virtually treeless within living memory(Fossati pers. comm.): all the current tree cover is re-growth, and thepredominance of chesnut trees throughout the rock art areas is a resultof historic introduction (Gehrig 1997). The area may well have beenforested in prehistory prehistory,period of human evolution before writing was invented and records kept. The term was coined by Daniel Wilson in 1851. It is followed by protohistory, the period for which we have some records but must still rely largely on archaeological evidence to , bur no reference is made to environmentalstudies. The study uses mainly other people's recordings of the motifs;a better critique of these recordings would have been welcome, as wouldthe inclusion of Bevan's own recordings, particularly as this mayhave clarified the ambiguity of many of the images. Each recorderattempts to record what is on the rock but is inevitably guided byparadigms and personal take; to have seen more of the author's ownwork would have proved most instructive. The publication is readable and well presented. There are minormisprints, some confusion over the labelling of images and someindistinct in��dis��tinct?adj.1. Not clearly or sharply delineated: an indistinct pattern; indistinct shapes in the gloom.2. Faint; dim: indistinct stars.3. photographs (admittedly the material is frequently difficultto depict). One image purports to show a medieval church, but is in factan Iron Age house, shown on its side (p. 162). Despite these criticisms, this is an extremely useful and timelyaddition to the discussion of Alpine rock art in general, and ofValcamonica in particular. The book is there for readers to developtheir own opinions; after all, it is only through exhaustiveinvestigation, theorising and discussion that we have any chance ofunderstanding what was intended by prehistoric rock art. Reference GEHRIG, R. 1997. Pollenanalytische Untersuchungen zur Vegetations-und Klimageschichte des Val Camonica (Norditalien). DissertationesBotanicae 276: 1-152. NICK TRUSTRAM EVE Department of Archaeology, University of York This article is about the British university. For the Canadian university, see York University. The University of York is a campus university in York, England. , UK (Email: nte@post.com)