Prehistoric rock-art studies have come of age, as this reviewer has stated recently, being accepted more and more into mainstream archaeological discourse, and the four books for review are no exception to this statement. All four offer different, and some controversial, perspectives on this fascinating and extensive subject. With the exception of Paul Bahn's, they focus mainly on various aspects of prehistoric rock art of the British Isles.

At this juncture, I will introduce British rock art briefly. It is estimated that up to 8,000 sites exist within Britain, mostly of Neolithic and Bronze Age date. More than 1,300 of these are in the county of Northumberland alone. In western Britain and Ireland, there is a small but significant assemblage of megalithic art that forms part of a pan-European group of burial-ritual chambered monuments, mainly passage graves. Rare occurrences also date to the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods; for example, an intricate geometric engraved panel at Aveline's Hole, Mendip, probably dating to the early Mesolithic (Mullan and Wilson 2005) and a plethora of carved and bas-relief zoomorphs in Church Hole Cave and Robin Hood Cave at Creswell Crags on the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border, dating to the Late Upper Palaeolithic (Bahn et al 2003). However, accompanying this limited assemblage is a significant number of portable items that are made from bone and antler.

Richard Bradley's Image and Audience: rethinking prehistoric art is a thought-provoking volume, one of many from the Bradley stable, beautifully written and packed full of examples that exemplify Bradley's rambles around Europe and northern Britain. I found his research on megalithic art particularly interesting and relevant to current thinking on how engraved art influenced the dead and the living in and around the various burial-ritual monuments within the core areas of Europe. In a rare venture into sensory archaeology, Bradley comments on image enhancement through agency, illumination, visuality and the perception between artist, art and audience, using the important ground-breaking research of David Lewis-Williams (2002). Pan-European in scope and incorporating Neolithic and Bronze Age portable and static art, the book is supported by excellent referencing and imagery and will be a refreshing addition to the student and enthusiast's bookshelf.

Writing in the same genre, Stan Beckensall offers a substantial update to his British Prehistoric Rock Art volume (1999) which was, in my view, geographically northern-biased. The approach to his new book is thematic but the northern-centric bias is still there: only four pages are devoted to the rest of Britain, with little on megalithic art in Wales, for example. I would also add that there are some inconsistencies; despite Beckensall's comments, there are currently no painted-over carvings in the Valcamonica (northern Italy) and recent cultural heritage policy in northern Scandinavia prohibits the painting-in of imagery in order to enhance the rock-art panel visually.

Updates include the discovery of Upper Palaeolithic rock art at Creswell Crags and the creation of the Beckensall Northumberland rock-art website. These useful summaries are authored by Paul Bahn and Aron Mazel and therefore question whether or not this should have been billed as an edited volume! While Bahn and Mazel write adequately of their respective fields, I would have thought Beckensall was more than capable of writing these chapters himself. Bahn further adds flavour, albeit bitter to some, with his long-running rant about the concept of shamanism in rock art (see, for example, Helvenston and Bahn 2002). Whether or not one supports his ideas (and this reviewer does to some extent), his chapter and other additions taint this book, taking away the continuity of Beckensall's narrative. It is a pity that my review of this book is dominated by these unnecessary additions.

Tertia Barnett and Kate Sharpe's edited and skilfully crafted volume specifically deals with techniques, management and presentation issues and education; an absolute must-have for the cultural heritage professional. Divided into sixteen chapters (and organized into three sections), invited authors tackle many of the pressing issues facing rock art in the (post-PPG 16) contemporary heritage world; such issues as access to rock-art sites (Phil Abramson), three-dimensional rock-art re-coding (Paul Bryan) and the role of the armature (Keith Boughey), to name but three. Each chapter is supported by excellent pictures – in particular the work of technical photographer Adam Stanford and landscape photographer Brian Kerr. Of particular interest are the issues that were faced by the Northumberland and Durham Rock Art Project (Alistair Oswald and Stewart Ainsworth) and the past progress and future directions of work on rock-art sites in Scotland (Sally Foster). Both chapters provide the reader with a clear narrative of the development of rock-art studies within each region and how each has been promoted, and the synergy and co-operation between the various individuals, societies and governmental agencies. It is worth mentioning here the moving tribute to Blaze O'Connor, to whom this book is dedicated and who sadly died in 2009.

Finally, I arrive at Paul Bahn's latest creation, Prehistoric Rock Art: polemics and progress. This well-written and sometimes controversial volume is ‘supported’ by diabolical images, many of which are out of focus. Others are drab and lacking contrast (figs 44, 54, 57 and 64, for example). Cambridge University Press (CUP) should know better than to publish such poor-quality material, considering that rock art is an extremely visual subject; moreover, this is a complete antithesis to the lavish volumes previously published by Bahn and CUP. Plus points include Bahn's discussions on rock art and water and on the remarkable discoveries made by his team at Creswell Crags in 2003. Alas, throughout the book he is still on his anti-shamanism crusade and, where possible, the same attacks on various researches still prevail. In many ways this book is a rant, not a polemic, and therefore lacks the promised progress. Readers need to know the politics of this subject, and there is plenty of that in this book, but this is not the Bahn readers and researchers know of old.

Each of these books has its own distinct idiosyncratic trajectory and agenda and is a valuable addition to rock-art literature. Richard Bradley's book will be a most useful reference for anyone interested in the way landscapes and monuments are artistically signatured. Reading beyond the additional guest chapters and the northern-centric rhetoric, Stan Beckensall's personal account of rock art will fascinate the seasoned researcher. Paul Bahn's book, using selective referencing and continuing to fight against shamanism in rock art with his mighty sword of truth, will appeal to his loyal supporters. Finally, Tertia Barnett and Kate Sharpe's book is, so far as I am aware, the only book to be published on British rock art that deals with the contemporary heritage issues associated with rock art and is therefore a must for anyone dealing with conservation, cultural heritage management and recording techniques.

Bahn, P, Pettitt, P and Ripoll, S 2003. ‘Discovery of Palaeolithic art in Britain’, Antiquity, 77 (296), 227–31

Beckensall, S 1999. British Prehistoric Rock Art, Stroud: Tempus

Helvenston, P A and Bahn, P G 2002. Desperately Seeking Trance Plants: testing the ‘Three Stages of Trance’ model, New York: RJ Communications LLC

Lewis-Williams, D 2002. The Mind and the Cave: consciousness and the origins of art, London: Thames & Hudson

Mullan, G J and Wilson, L J 2005. ‘A possible Mesolithic engraving in Aveline's Hole, Burrington Combe, north Somerset’, Proc/Univ Bristol Spelaeol Soc, 23 (2), 75–85