This innovative collection offers a holistic portrait of the multimodal communication potential of images from the Upper Paleolithic times through to today, showcasing image-based creativity throughout the centuries and will be of interest to scholars in semiotics, archaeology, cognitive psychology, and linguistic and cultural anthropology.

Silvia Ferrara is Professor of Philology and Civilizations of the Aegean and Pre-Classical Mediterranean in the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, Italy.

Mattia Cartolano is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, Italy.

Ludovica Ottaviano is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, Italy.

Contents

List of Contributors

List of Plates

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

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

Part 1: 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)

Part 2: 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)

Part 3. 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)

Part 4: 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