Zitationsvorschlag
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Dieses Werk steht unter der Lizenz Creative Commons Namensnennung - Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen 4.0 International.
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Understanding Palaeolithic Figurative Manifestations as Art
an Hermeneutic Perspective
Abstract Palaeolithic manifestations constitute an extraordinary window to the lifeworld of people with whom we share many human-making traits even if the precise content of their experiences would have been considerably different from ours. Understanding Palaeolithic visual imagery constitutes a particular case of the more general hermeneutical problem of understanding cultural manifestations of peoples from other times and places. Following Hans-Georg Gadamer’s approach to hermeneutics, Palaeolithic manifestations require taking into account the contexts in which they were produced as well as our contemporary contexts of interpretation. The objection that Gadamer’s hermeneutics would require the elimination of the category art from archaeological research of Palaeolithic manifestations is considered and rejected. It is concluded that hermeneutics offers a valuable, fruitful avenue for deriving new insights regarding their makers’ cultural grasp of the world.
Keywords Palaeolithic, hermeneutics, Gadamer, art, understanding, cave art
