To begin with, if anything is cumbersome or confusing to use please send us email so that we can offer some navigation advice or fix the problem.

At its simplest, this site consists of pictures of our sculpture and information about the cultures that made the original pieces.

There is an art page which has all of the sculptures broken down according to culture, and a cultures page which has detailed information about each of those cultures also broken down by culture.

The meaning page explains, in general terms, the types of meanings assigned to primitive art and the materials page explains how they were made.

This site is organized in what we hope is a consistent fashion. Each page has an identical navigation bar at the top and bottom of the page. These text links go to commonly used pages and to pages which are jumping off points, such as the art and cultures pages.

Navigation is grouped into four categories:

The descriptions of each category are organized using those same four categories. The list below explains, in some detail, what each of the buttons or links in a particularly category leads to.

The Site category has pages related to using this site, including Help Page, Search Page, New Page, and Home Page.

The Help page provides a description of all of the pages accessed via buttons. The purpose of the other pages should be self-explanatory based on the context in which they are accessed.

As with the navigation buttons and text links that lead to this page, this help entry does not have a link to the help page since this is the help page and there is no point in chasing one's tail by selecting the help link from the help page.

The Search page allows you to search all pages on this site. The problem with search engines is that they are mindless machines which have no idea of what is actually sought, and instead grind away finding all files matching the search criterion.

This means search terms sometimes need to be carefully chosen, and that results can sometimes be puzzling. One source of confusion is that pages with fewer references can rank higher than those with many such references. This comes about because certain tags, like headings and links, count more than ordinary paragraph text. Despite these problems, a search is often a good way to find references that would otherwise be missed.

The New page lists major additions or changes to the site, broken down to allow you to determine what has changed since your last visit.

The Home page provides a way to get back to the main page. Each of the buttons at the top and bottom of the page allow navigation identical to the buttons on the main page.

The Who We Are category has pages related to Ancestral Art including About Us Page, Email Page, and Guestbook Page.

The About Us page describes who we are, what we make, and how to contact us.

The Contact page allows individuals to contact Ancestral Art. It also has a short, entirely optional, questionnaire about how you found the Ancestral Art site and your impressions of it.

The What We Make category has pages related to Ancestral Art's creations, including the Art Page, Media Page and Gallery Page.

The Available Artwork category has pages related to Ancestral Art's creations, including the Art Page, Media Page, and Gallery Page.

The Art page provides a set of links to the various pages displaying pieces available for purchase.

Each of the pages linked to deals with pieces from a particular culture. For example, the "Mimbres" link brings up the page with all of the pieces of images from the Mimbres culture. The Art page works as the Cultures page does, except that it has information about pieces instead of the cultures producing them.

The images of our sculptures are essentially monochrome drawings, since this reduces downloading time, and are not photographs. (The sculptures are cut from metal so a monochrome image is a very accurate representation of the piece.) This page is different from the Gallery page which has photographs of the pieces in the home and office.

The Gallery page has photographs of our pieces in the home and office. This page can hopefully show what some of the sculptures -- which are depicted one the art pages as monochrome drawings -- actually look like when they are displayed.

This page is currently empty.

The What It Means category has pages explaining the significance of Ancestral Art's sculptures and the cultures which produced them, including the Cultures Page, Materials Page, and Meaning Page.

The Cultures page provides a set of links to the various pages describing the cultures producing primitive art.

Each of the pages linked to describes a particular culture. For example, the "Mimbres" link brings up the page with information about the Mimbres culture. This information is interspersed with pieces drawn from our portfolio. The Cultures page works just as the Art page, except that it has information about cultures instead of the pieces available for purchase.

These pages have detailed information about the meaning of primitive art in the context of a particular culture, whereas the Meaning page draws examples from a variety of cultures.

The Materials page has information about how primitive art is made. This information explains how rocks were carved or painted and how ceramics were decorated, both at a high level as well at a detailed level, such as how paint is made from naturally occurring minerals. The individual pages on specific cultures have links into the Materials page to explain issues in detail.

The Meaning page explains, in general terms, the meaning behind primitive art. This meaning ranges over a variety of topics, ranging from the categories of images, the meaning of rock art as a written language, and the meanings behind specific figures. The Meaning page complements the individual Cultures pages, since it is a high level overview and introduction.