Contents

List of Contributors

List of Plates

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Can Images Talk? (Silvia Ferrara and Ludovica Ottaviano)


Part1: The Earliest Images, Symbols, and Cognition

1. Marks, Signs, Symbols: Behavioural Modernity and the Early Homo sapiens (Enza Elena Spinapolice)

2. Between Nature and Culture: Interpreting Changes in Human Representations During the Early Neolithic in Northern Mesopotamia (Marion Benz and Joachim Bauer)


Part2: When Images Interact with Writing

3. Images Hidden in Script: The Invention of Writing in Ancient Iran (Kathryn Kelley)

4. Emblem Glyphs: Orthography and the Political World of Classic Maya Scribes (Mallory E. Matsumoto)


Part3. Images Outside their Boxes

5. Europe’s Other Writing: ‘Ominous Hieroglyphics’ and Belated Ekphrasis in the 19th Century (Christopher Pinney)

6. Aghori - The Voyage of an Anti-Hero: Comic Book Images and the Art of Storytelling (Roma Chatterji)


Part4: Representing Images through Lines, Bodies and Language

7. Art from Calligraphy: Chinese Writing Turns into Pictorial Images, Performative Actions, Design Products, and Graffiti Works (Adriana Iezzi)

8. Facial Scripts: The Semiotic Journey of Maori Tattoos from Colonial Gaze to Cultural Revival (Massimo Leone)

9. From Expressive Sign to Denotative Sign: On Some Semiotic Passages Connected to the Invention of Writing (Claudio Paolucci)

Epilogue: Images Talking Through Time and Space (Mattia Cartolano)

Index