Art in the Archaeological Imagination

The book discusses the creative mental processes of the prehistoric and contemporaryartists, as well as of the archaeologists studying them from the perspective ofcognition and art. Its intention is to highlight the artistic thinking within theimagination of the archaeologist, as well as to discuss the concepts of imagination andart in the current scientific research.From this perspective the book suggests a type of research closer to the complexity ofthe human nature and human thinking that can approach cultural and psychologicalsubjects ignored until now.It is hoped that one of the results of the book will be the formulation of new meaningsfor art from the perspective of archaeology.Responding to the recent ongoing growing interest in the art-archaeology interaction,the editor has carefully selected papers written by a series of eminent European andAmerican scholars with a background in ancient and contemporary art, symbolicthinking, semiotics, and archaeological imagination, with the intention of introducingnew arguments and discussions into the emerging art-archaeology discourse. Thebook is composed of three parts: "Art and the ancient mind", "Experiencing theancient mind", and "Exploring the act of creation".
About author: DRAGOS GHEORGHIU is an historical anthropologist/archaeologist (PhD) and professional visual artist (BA Arch. and BA/MA Design) whose studies focus on the process of cognition, material culture and art. He began to produce works of art-and-archaeology starting in 1980, a concept he developed into artchaeology, and worked as a land-artist to reveal prehistoric monuments in Romania, Wales, Portugal and Sardinia. His recent research deals with the problem of immersion in reconstructed contexts in Augmented and Mixed Reality. Professor Gheorghiu is on the board of the UISPP Neolithic Commission, and a member of the European Association of Archaeologists. He is a Paul Mellon Fellow at the Centre of Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.