num_pages: 304
description: Europeans during the two millennia before Roman conquest had established urban centers mass production of goods like pottery &amp; iron tools a money economy elaborate rituals &amp; ceremonies. Yet as Peter Wells argues the visual world of these late prehistoric communities was very different from those of ancient Rome's literate civilization &amp; today's industrialized societies. Drawing on research in neuroscience &amp; cognitive psychology he reconstructs how pre-Roman Europeans saw the world &amp; their place in it. He sheds light on how they communicated their thoughts feelings &amp; visual perceptions thru the everyday tools they shaped the pottery &amp; metal ornaments they decorated &amp; the arrangements of objects they made in their ritual places--&amp; how these forms &amp; patterns in turn shaped their experience. How Ancient Europeans Saw the World offers a new approach to the study of Bronze &amp; Iron Age Europe challenging views about prehistoric cultures. It demonstrates why we cannot interpret the structures pre-Roman Europeans built in the landscape the ways they arranged their settlements &amp; burial sites or the complex patterning of their art on the basis of how they look to us. Rather we must view these objects &amp; visual patterns as they were meant to be seen by those fashioning them.List of IllustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsOf monsters &amp; flowersSeeing &amp; shaping objects The visual worlds of early EuropeFrame focus visualization Pottery: the visual ecology of the everyday Attraction &amp; enchantment: fibulae Status &amp; violence: swords &amp; scabbards Arranging spaces: objects in gravesPerformances: objects &amp; bodies in motionNew media in the late Iron Age: coins &amp; writingChanging patterns in objects &amp; in perceptionContacts commerce &amp; the dynamics of new visual patternsThe visuality of objects past &amp; presentBibliographic EssayReferences CitedIndex
language: English
title: How Ancient Europeans Saw the World: Vision, Patterns & the Shaping of the Mind in Prehistoric Times
publisher: Princeton University Press (NJ)