Making Art in the Ice Age

The Story of How Our Ancestors Made Images

Paul Bahn author Elle Clifford author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Archaeopress

Published:13th Nov '25

Should be back in stock very soon

Making Art in the Ice Age cover

The extraordinary phenomenon of Ice Age art endured for over 30,000 years of our prehistory. This book will show you how the art was discovered, how it was made, how we know its age and if it’s genuine. But this art is much more than pictures and paint – it tells us more about our early ancestors than bones and tools ever will. Life during the Ice Age was a huge part of our human journey, and the people who lived then, by painting on cave walls and engraving their myths on animal bones, have reached out to us down the millennia with their stories and memories. It is unlikely we will ever know the meanings of the simple handprints or the animal silhouette paintings, or the ideas that were shared in great cave wall murals, but they are likely to be profound. And despite our inability to understand the messages, we can still marvel at the valuable gifts these Ice Age artists have bestowed on us.

'...Making Art in the Ice Age provides enough detail to inspire children to learn more about Ice Age life and living, perhaps even to try making copies of the artworks, -though not in caves! I think this book will be a valuable and essential purchase for public libraries and for school libraries. Any schoolteachers contemplating teaching about Ice Age people and their world would do well to read this book first.' – John Shea (2026)


'Over the course of 94 colourful and well-illustrated pages, Bahn and Clifford have taken this monumental and deeply mysterious part of our human story and succeeded in creating an accessible, engaging, and fascinating resource.' – Simon Norton (2026): Current World Archaeology #136

ISBN: 9781805830887

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 508g

94 pages