1. Notational Sequences Theory from Its Introduction to Present Day.
- Author
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Castelli, Andrea
- Subjects
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MAGDALENIAN culture , *PREHISTORIC art , *CULTURAL activities , *RESEARCH personnel , *ARCHAEOLOGY , *PALEOLITHIC Period , *ARCHAEOLOGICAL excavations - Abstract
In the field of prehistoric archaeology, the concepts of notation and notational sequences were first introduced by Alexander Marshack in 1964 to describe the orderly arranged series of marks commonly found engraved on Upper Paleolithic artifacts. Three key concepts can be inferred from the detailed artifact accounts published by the American researcher, the first of which is that each mark was notational and therefore symbolic for a natural or cultural event and the resulting series record of those events. The second is the notion that each mark was meant to represent a day, making the corresponding series an observational or calendrical record. The third and last is the hypothesis that notational sequences reveal lunar periodicities. This was met with skepticism and along with methodological issues attracted most of the early criticism on his research, but the first two concepts still stand as the only modern theory addressing the symbolic meaning and use of non-figurative visual creations from the Magdalenian and earlier cultures. Later criticism was more focused on the technological analyses performed by Marshack and their implications for our ability to identify notations in the archaeological record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...
- Published
- 2024
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