Introduction: Art beyond the image

The creation of art is often regarded as a genuinely human activity. In the academic search for human origins, the appearance of art objects in the archaeological record is often interpreted as reflections of ‘people like us’, and the origins of art are equated with the origins of humanity. Tim Ingold has interrogated many aspects relevant to the discussion of human origins. Human beings continue to create themselves in response to their respective environments, along with other human beings and fellow creatures. Similarly, art is what humans do, but humans in the past did not set out expressly to create artistic objects or to engage in artistic practices. They engaged with the world around them and created their lives in their own particular ways. Ingold has gone on to explore correspondences and convergences between different human practices such as reading, writing, drawing, painting, and walking, in order to develop a non-representational understanding of so-called art objects and activities.