How Ancient Europeans Saw the World: Vision, Patterns & the Shaping of the Mind in Prehistoric Times

Europeans during the two millennia before Roman conquest had established urban centers, mass production of goods like pottery & iron tools, a money economy, elaborate rituals & 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 & today's industrialized societies. Drawing on research in neuroscience & cognitive psychology, he reconstructs how pre-Roman Europeans saw the world & their place in it. He sheds light on how they communicated their thoughts, feelings & visual perceptions thru the everyday tools they shaped, the pottery & metal ornaments they decorated & the arrangements of objects they made in their ritual places--& how these forms & patterns in turn shaped their experience. "How Ancient Europeans Saw the World" offers a new approach to the study of Bronze & 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 & burial sites, or the complex patterning of their art on the basis of how they look to us. Rather, we must view these objects & visual patterns as they were meant to be seen by those fashioning them. List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Of monsters & flowers Seeing & shaping objects The visual worlds of early Europe Frame, focus, visualization Pottery: the visual ecology of the everyday Attraction & enchantment: fibulae Status & violence: swords & scabbards Arranging spaces: objects in graves Performances: objects & bodies in motion New media in the late Iron Age: coins & writing Changing patterns in objects & in perception Contacts, commerce & the dynamics of new visual patterns The visuality of objects, past & present Bibliographic Essay References Cited Index