The book is about how art arose; and how it became what we call art today. How did art emerge from the relationships between people and the things they produce and the ideas of producers? How do people manipulate those relationships in their own society? How do outsiders work out the ways in which those relationships were used to make art? 

What is art and why are all people engaged with it in one way or another? From its very beginning, and everywhere, art has always been embedded in its cultural context—the contexts of the people who made and see it—and that context has often been ritual. The history of art confused “social and institutional changes” of view because western critics (or artists) sought to define the boundaries of art so tightly that ritual, purposeful or utilitarian works were excluded from it. In their definition, art only existed if the rituals of the original producers were stripped from the works or if the objects were appropriated away from the situation in which they were produced. The objects stripped from their context could then only be valued for their aesthetics. Art consists of relationships between people, things, and ideas in quite specific ways. Those relationships are discussed at length in this book.

The book is aimed at artists, art historians and archaeologists, but also at the general public interested in art. It is intended both for people whose interest in art comes from knowledge of the art of all continents, and for those who have no knowledge.