Patterns That Connect: Social Symbolism in Ancient & Tribal Art

by Carl Schuster and Edmund Carpenter

The American art historian, Carl Schuster (1904-1969), discovered a set of patterns designed by ancient peoples to illustrate their ideas about kinship. They tattooed and painted such statements on their bodies and clothing, and carved them on tools, game boards, pots, ceremonial objects, coins and other items, and carried these with them wherever they went. Through broad comparative study, Schuster decoded this iconography, which lasted over 10,000...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810963264
• ISBN13: 9780810963269
• Release Date: September 1996
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 3.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 9.0" x 11.5"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

Brilliant

Every artist, educator and scholar should have a copy of this book. It is Brilliant.

One of the most beautiful books of the last decade

Forget the content, which is interesting enough in itself. I'm neither an ethnographer, nor an anthropologist; but the sheer beauty of the stippled and line drawings make this surely one of the most beautiful books produced in the last decade of the twentieth century. If you can't get to see a copy in the flesh, you will scarcely understand. The contents are summed up in the sub-title - indeed this is what Schuster and Carpenter's point is, that tribal and ancient artifacts contain the genealogy of the creators of these artifacts, whether or not the craftsman still remembers or knows of his tradition. I have personal story in confirmation of their thesis. I have a tribal work, which I interpreted along their lines. I then had written confirmation from the craftsman responsible for the work that my surmise; taken in toto from Shcuster and Carpenter was correct. Nevertheless, I'll repeat my view, that for the breathtaking beauty of the drawings alone, this book deserves a wide public.