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Animate objects: a biography of prehistoric ‘axe-amulets’ in the central Mediterranean region

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2014

Robin Skeates
Robin Skeates
Affiliation:
School of World Art Studies & Museology, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TS
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Abstract

This paper considers some of the relationships between people and things. It develops a broadly-based model of the later life-histories of prehistoric stone axes in the south-central Mediterranean region, taking account of their production, circulation, and consumption, and their cumulative transformation by physical and conceptual processes, of which the latter may have included personification, sacralisation, and animation. Attention is focused upon the value, meanings, and uses of axe-pendants, and intepretations are placed within a dynamic historical and political context of changing social practices and strategies in central and southern Italy, Sicily Malta, and Sardinia.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 61 , 1995 , pp. 279 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1995

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References

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