This book began life as the second series of M. I. Rostovtzeff Lectures, which I was honored to give at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, in the spring of 2011. My first thanks go to the faculty there, and in particular Roger Bagnall, for their confidence in my ability to address the academic mission of that institute, which pursues a connected vision of Old World cultures from prehistoric times to later antiquity. Both staff and students showed me enormous hospitality during my stay in New York, and responded with open minds to what were still, at that stage, a fairly raw set of ideas about the relationship between image, cognition, and institutional change. My second thanks go to the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, and especially Stephen Shennan, for granting me sabbatical leave to prepare those lectures and to develop them into the chapters that follow.
In doing so, I have been constantly reminded of the difficulties involved in approaching sources of evidence and bodies of theory outside my main areas of expertise, which lie in archaeology and anthropology (as opposed, for example, to cognitive science, ancient history, or art history, all of which play a role here). I hope that specialists working in other fields, especially those who gave so generously of their time and knowledge, will not find my treatment too cavalier, and that they will see this book primarily for what it is: an attempt to initiate dialogue between disciplinary approaches and area studies that are normally pursued in mutual isolation.
While none of the following can be held responsible for any of the arguments or evidence presented here, all will I hope accept my heartfelt thanks for their patience, interest, and much-needed advice: Bob Bagley, John Baines, Andy Bevan, Suzanne Blier, Maurice Bloch, Philippe Descola, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Stephan Feuchtwang, Wang Haicheng, Bruce Kapferer, Susanne Küchler, Joseph Maran, John Mitchell, David Napier, Lukas Nickel, María Núñez, Asko Parpola, Dorit Peleg, Holly Pittman, Beate Pongratz-Leisten, Michael Puett, Stephen Quirke, Karen Radner, Jessica Rawson, Mike Rowlands, Erhard Schüttpelz, Stephen Shennan, Karen Sonik, Jeremy Tanner, Judith Weingarten, Irene Winter, and Norman Yoffee.
In preparing the book for publication, I have benefited from the experience and enthusiasm of Rob Tempio, Ali Parrington, and Ryan Mulligan at Princeton University Press, and from the generosity of those researchers who allowed me permission to use images from their work. I am grateful to all of them. My final thanks go as ever to my family and especially to Rinat Koren, who watched this project stumble from one false conclusion to another but never lost faith in my ability to complete it.
David Wengrow
London, 2013