This book is the first monograph-length attempt at a new way to engage the past: art/archaeology. Taking as its focus the excavation and interpretation of pit-houses in Neolithic Europe, the book critiques current thinking on these early architectural constructions and then provides an original and provocative exploration of the critical element that previous work has neglected: the actions and consequences of digging as defined as breaking the surface of the ground. The work of the book is performed by juxtaposing richly detailed discussions of archaeological sites (Etton and The Wilsford Shaft in the UK, and Măgura in Romania) with the work of three artists-who-cut (Ron Athey, Gordon Matta-Clark, Lucio Fontana), with deep and detailed examinations of the philosophy of holes, the perceptual psychology of shapes, and the linguistic anthropology of cutting and breaking words, as well as with the diversity of frames of spatial reference used by different communities and an understanding of a premodern ungrounded way of living. The book is as much a creative act on its own (seen in its layout, its mixture of work from many disparate periods and regions, and its use of text interruption), as it is an interpretive statement about prehistoric architecture (i.e., the pit-houses of prehistoric Europe and beyond).
Karen Gonzalez Rice. Review of "Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey" by Dominic Johnson.
