The Neolithic rock images of Iheren, Algeria are the starting point for Augustin Holl's careful analysis of the iconography of Saharan rock art. Created in the third millennium B.C., the Iheren murals are over 3 meters wide and contain multiple compositions that present an allegorical depiction of the lifeways of Tassilian pastoralists in the Sahara. Holl approaches his task as an archaeologist, examining the various strands of evidence icons, ideas, motifs, colors, and sizes-and weaving them together into a story that offers a window on the pastoralist worldview through the semiotics of their art. His deconstruction and synthesis of this corpus of material should be of interest to African archaeologists, rock art specialists, art historians, and cultural anthropologists alike."

Contains more than two hundred photographs of Africa's rock art, coupled with historical and interpretive analyses, compiled to raise public awareness of the variety, importance, and frailty of these works.

The Central Sahara is considered the greatest “museum” of rock art in the world, containing several thousand prehistoric and recent images. The oldest paintings, called Round Heads, originated during a humid phase in the 10th millennium before present and they were created by dark-skinned hunter-gatherers living in the Algerian and Libyan mountains. Rock shelters show mainly anthropomorphic figures with body paintings and other embellishments testifying ancient rituals and ceremonies. Only two animal species – antelope and mouflon – appear to be as important as men and women; mixed with them on the same walls, these animals had a fundamental place in the ideology of the period. Since the discovery by Europeans in the 19th century, research in the Sahara has been scarce due to the difficult working conditions and to the problematic politics associated with national permissions. The rock art and the archaeology have always been treated as separated disciplines and only rarely were the paintings associated with a material culture. They have been described and classified but not interpreted because it was considered unachievable. Using interdisciplinary studies, this book approaches the previously neglected fields of the study of Saharan rock art, and it proposes new ways to research the art and the societies that created it.

The Neolithic rock images of Iheren, Algeria are the starting point for Augustin Holl's careful analysis of the iconography of Saharan rock art. Created in the third millennium B.C., the Iheren murals are over 3 meters wide and contain multiple compositions that present an allegorical depiction of the lifeways of Tassilian pastoralists in the Sahara. Holl approaches his task as an archaeologist, examining the various strands of evidence—icons, ideas, motifs, colors, and sizes-and weaving them together into a story that offers a window on the pastoralist worldview through the semiotics of their art. His deconstruction and synthesis of this corpus of material should be of interest to African archaeologists, rock art specialists, art historians, and cultural anthropologists alike.

The only book of its kind to examine cave art throughout Africa. The paintings and engravings discovered in African caves are amazing works of art that hold clues to understanding the history of humankind.

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