18 - July - 2008
Umberto Sansoni. 1994. Le più antiche pitture del Sahara. Milano, Jaca Book. 326.
This reference book about the classical Round Head paintings of the Tassili, at the heart of the Sahara, is unfortunately out of print but it can be ordered directly from the Editor which offers a print on demand service through its web site. The Tassili region was, in the Sansoni's words, a sort of melting pot for the ancient peoples that inhabited the once green Sahara of the Holocene humid phase.
A must to have for the rock art student.
19 - June - 2008
Tim Ingold . 1980. Hunters, pastoralists and ranchers. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology. Cambridge University Press. 326.
As a lover of the Saharan rock art I realized that I had to read a lot not only about rock art but also about anthropology. This book is a classic everybody should read. The analysis of the transition from hunting to pastoralism among the Artic peoples exploiting reindeer herds is extremely interesting and has many implications for the study of the Neolithic African pastoralists too. The highlighted difference between the carnivore pastoralism of the Euro-Asian Artic peoples and the milking pastoralism of the African tradition is tremendously important and rich of suggestions, very useful for anyone is trying to image what kind of society could have been the ones that expresses themselves by the wonderful paintings of the so called Pastoral Phase in the Saharan rock art corpus.
A very intersting text. Reprinted and Available.
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