Bibliography - introduction
The books selected here will offer the reader more information and pictures. The most useful are often those produced in the 1960s and 1970s (especially if updated in later editions), for their range and documentation: notably the Pelican/Yale handbooks; many in the Thames & Hudson (hereafter T&H) Ancient Peoples and Places and World of Art series, and the translations of the Arts of Mankind series; as well as some large compendia. Later works are more up-to-date and well illustrated but often more cursory when it comes to detail, history, techniques, etc., or they take the easy option of discussion by theme rather than history. Latterly, glossy but detailed exhibition catalogues are proving a major resource, their commentary ranging from the detailed to the cursory, but there is much to learn also from the historical (discovery) approach of authors in the small-format Découvertes Gallimard series (many translated by T&H, as New Horizons). There are several detailed and well illustrated relevant Propyläean Kunstgeschichte volumes (Berlin). Everyman, Phaidon/Elsevier (The Making of the Past), Phaidon, and Oxford University Press have also issued series of world art volumes, and there are many British Museum regional handbooks, quite detailed. In Britain, the best concentrated and open ancient art library is in the British Museum Reading Room.
General
For the detailed historical background, Cambridge Ancient History for the Classical world, Egypt and the near east, and the accompanying Plates Volumes; Cambridge History of Iran, ...of Central Asia, ... of India, ... of Ancient China (to 221 BC), ...of the Native Peoples of the Americas (North, Mesoamerica, South), ...of the Pacific Islanders.
A. Toynbee, Mankind and Mother Earth (Oxford 1976)
S. Schama, Landscape and Memory (London 1996)
Atlas of World Art (ed. J. Onians; London 2004)
M.K. O'Riley, Art Beyond the West (London 2001)
J. Boardman, The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity (T&H 1994)
N. Penny, The Materials of Sculpture (Yale 1993)
D. Diringer, Writing (T&H, 1962)
P.T. Daniels and W. Bright (eds.), The World's Writing Systems (Oxford/NY, 1996)
J. Mack, Masks. The Art of Expression (British Museum 1994)
E.J.W. Barber, Prehistoric Textiles (Princeton 1990)
B. Sentance, Basketry (T&H 2001)
V. Ebin, The Body Decorated (T&H 1979) - tattoos etc.
M. Carroll, Earthly Paradises. Ancient Gardens in History and Archaeology (British Museum 2003)
P.D.A. Harvey, The History of Topographical Maps (T&H 1980)
O.A.W. Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps (T&H 1985)
Early
The Oxford Companion to Archaeology (ed. B.M. Fagan; Oxford/NY 1996) for many aspects, except the purely art-historical
The Penguin Archaeology Guide (ed. P.G. Bahn 2001) useful for names and dates
A. Lommel, Prehistoric and Primitive Man (Hamlyn 1966)
P.G. Bahn, Prehistoric Art (Cambridge 1998)
J. Maringer, The Gods of Prehistoric Man (London 2002)
J.-M. Chauvet et al., Chauvet Cave (T&H 1996)
A. Sieveking, The Cave Artists (T&H 1979)
P.R.S. Moorey (ed.), The Origins of Civilization (Oxford 1979)
M.J. Mellink and J. Filip (eds.), Frühe Stufen der Kunst (Propyläen Kunstgeschichte, Berlin 1974)