Books by Mark Hudson

Recent interdisciplinary studies, combining scientific techniques such as ancient DNA analysis with humanistic re-evaluations of the transcultural value of bronze, have presented archaeologists with a fresh view of the Bronze Age in Europe. The new research emphasises long-distance connectivities and political decentralisation. 'Bronzisation' is discussed as a type of proto-globalisation. In this Element, Mark Hudson examines whether these approaches can also be applied to East Asia. Focusing primarily on Island East Asia, he analyses trade, maritime interactions and warrior culture in a comparative Eurasian framework. He argues that the international division of labour associated with Bronze Age trade provided an important stimulus to the rise of decentralised complexity in regions peripheral to alluvial states. Building on James Scott's work, the concept of the 'barbarian niche' is proposed as a way to model the longue duree of premodern Eurasian history. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

This ground-breaking publication provides a new view of the great Scottish artist Alan Davie (1920-2014), whose intensely physical gestural painting stood the staid post-war British art world on its head. In advance of a new Davie gallery in Hertford, the visually spectacular book argues that far from being an essentially historical figure, defined by the abstract expressionist era of the Fifties and early Sixties when he enjoyed his greatest fame, Davie was a prophetic artist whose preoccupations with universal creativity and self-realisation are more relevant today than they¿ve ever been.Lavishly illustrated with rare archive photographs and little-seen paintings, Alan Davie in Hertford demonstrates that Davie¿s visionary art was far more closely bound up with physical places than is generally supposed, not least the quiet market town of Hertford, where he lived for 60 years. A catalogue of 40 works intended as the new gallery¿s core collection, provides a ¿rich and fabulous¿ survey of Davie¿s work, from student works of the Thirties to some of his very last paintings.

The book is a quest - a journey through Titian's life and work, towards the physical and spiritual landscape of his last paintings.