Canonical Figures and the Recognition of Animals in Life and Art

The visual brain and the early depiction of animals in Europe and Southeast Asia

“…Although playing down the role of neuroscience and the brain, Malafouris (2007) also made a significant contribution to the field by accentuating the role of embodied or enactive/grounded cognition by showing that the 'mind' is rooted in the material world, where image making not only serves to engage the immediacy of visual experience, but also sets up the ability to question and reformulate this immediacy. Dobrez and Dobrez (2014) have recently taken up some of the original points made by Hodgson (2003aHodgson ( , 2003bHodgson ( , 2006 regarding the depiction of animals by expanding the way in which the pervasive graphic features identified can be applied to rock art. Alpert (2009) similarly refers to the graphic strategies employed in Franco-Cantabrian Ice Age art by referring to neuroscience and perceptual psychology.…”

“…A number of other investigators have employed perceptual psychology to shed light on the graphic strategies utilized in palaeoart, most notably Halverson (1992aHalverson ( , 1992b, Deręgowski (1989Deręgowski ( , 1995, and Hudson (1998). As neuroscience began to reveal the way the visual brain processes visual information, the findings were incorporated into existing theories of perceptual psychology to be subsequently applied to understanding palaeoart that Hodgson (2000;through to, 2013a; references within) explored in a series of papers from 2000 onwards, followed by, for example, Alpert (2009), Cheyne, Meschino, and Smilek (2009), Dobrez (2010-11, 2013a, Dobrez and Dobrez ( 2014), Hodgson and Helvenston (2006), Helvenston and Hodgson (2010), Petru (2008) and Watson (2009Watson ( , 2011Watson ( , 2012aWatson ( , 2012bWatson ( , 2013. Although playing down the role of neuroscience and the brain, Malafouris (2007) also made a significant contribution to the field by accentuating the role of embodied or enactive/grounded cognition by showing that the 'mind' is rooted in the material world, where image making not only serves to engage the immediacy of visual experience, but also sets up the ability to question and reformulate this immediacy.…”

Humans Making History through Continuities and Discontinuities in Art

“…People who produced art in caves could only maintain the practice by word of mouth and shared culture. Even if there were no explicit traditions, the commonalities in the bricolage (Conkey & Fisher 2020) derived from shared cultural values (which are a type of tradition), or from the simplicity of the rules of representation involved (Dobrez & Dobrez 2013). There was no written record or history of this art, and the oral tradition seems to have been conservative.…”

Que animal é esse? Uma proposta teórico-metodológica de classificação taxonômica arqueológica em registro rupestre das representações zoomórficas reconhecíveis

“…A exemplo da discussão temática das pinturas zoomórficas por meio das representações humanas, L. Dobrez e P. Dobrez (2013) indicam uma perspectiva canônica nas formas de produção dessas figuras e pontuam, pelo fenômeno da percepção, a necessidade de abordar conceitualmente, na ciência arqueológica, o reconhecimento das representações zoomórficas que podem ser estudadas através da combinação entre hermenêutica, história da arte, arqueologia, perspectiva psicológica e neurofisiologia.…”