Dancing Shaman. Image created with DALL-E.
I am taking
the opportunity to revisit the subject of ‘shamanism’ in rock art because it
seems that more and more references to shamanism can be found in books and
articles about rock art. I feel I need to
state here (again) that I am not denying that there is shamanistic rock art. I
am stating that there are a myriad of potential meanings for a rock art image
and reasons for its production, some of it shamanic, some not.
I once had
an opportunity to attend a lecture by the great Joseph Campbell, author of so
many books on mythology and belief systems. Campbell believed that similarities
in myths were of much greater significance than differences, so he had no
trouble equating myths from different sides of the globe. At this lecture he
explained the significance of the dying man/wounded bison panel from the chimney
at Lascaux in terms of Australian
Aboriginal belief. To my way of thinking this goes way too far afield. These
cultures were separated by tens of thousands of years and thousands of miles,
with no possibility of reciprocal influencing.
Dying hunter scene from Lascaux Cave, France. Internet image, public domain.
My example
from the Campbell lecture is indicative of a problem that I see cropping up all
too frequently in rock art studies. The shamanic or neuropsychological model
for explaining rock art has become such a fad explanation that it is hard to
find people giving credence to any other possibilities. As far as trancing and/or
entoptics influencing rock art I really do not need a trance hallucination or
entoptic vision to inspire the images I make. Once the pigments or hammerstones
are picked up in front of a rock face there are only so many things I can do
with them. Trying to reproduce an image from life or create a geometric shape
needs no artificial stimuli. There are only so many geometric shapes available,
and a reproduction of a living being is inspired by the being itself. To invariably attribute these to anything else is nonsense.
An
understandable, but biased interpretation of rock art is found in the tendency
of the viewer to attempt to define what they are viewing on the basis of what
has been successfully applied to interpretations in the past. An example of
this is seen in the case of David Lewis-Williams whose early work with
interpreting South African rock art in light of San bushman shamanism so
impressed the rest of the rock art community. Since that early success
Lewis-Williams seems unable to consider any other possible interpretation no
matter what the conditions or location the rock art is found in, or what age it
is from. An early success of intellectual application that was thought to
approach the genius level seems to have led him to the status of a one-trick
pony.
The White Shaman, White Shaman Cave, Val Verde County, Texas. Photograph by Peter Faris.
I suggest
that Lewis-Williams made the mistake of taking the wrong message away from his
earlier work. Instead of learning the lesson that he had succeeded by a
rigorous application of reasoning based upon knowledge of ethnographic material
for the San people of Africa, he seems to have come away with the message that
“shamanism” was the correct answer so it would always be the correct answer. In
other words he seems to have subsequently used his mental abilities, knowledge,
and reason, to fit other rock art into his shamanic framework instead of using
those same gifts and abilities to find a unique answer that would fit the
unique conditions of the rock art he was appraising.
Paul Bahn
(1997) pointed out that “Throughout the
book by Clottes and Lewis-Williams (see references below), possibilities are presented as ‘evidence’,
then used as building blocks for speculation that magically acquires the status
of ‘fact’ (Bahn). This is a crucial problem for, in the words of Carl Sagan, if
we become ‘self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we
slide into pseudoscience and superstition’ (Sagan 1997: 27). As Hamayon
(1997:65-66, my translation) puts it, the book’s ‘approach is devoid of any
critical thought: conjectures on one page become, as if by magic, assertions on
the next . . . I have rarely seen such reductionism, I have rarely seen such
simple-minded determinism.” (Bahn 2010:118-119) This is a phenomenon I see
all too often in rock art writings. A concept that is introduced as a
possibility on one page will be used as a fact a page or two later to support
another surmise.
We would do
well to remember that the limited remains of the physical cultures studied by
archaeologists represent a very small proportion of those cultures. They had a
whole world of beliefs, mythology, rituals, and physical knowledge that is not
necessarily represented by those physical remains. Rock art represents that
world of beliefs, mythology, rituals, etc. aspect of the whole world that these
people lived in, and we have no physical artifacts from that world for most of
the cultures that we are studying.
"The Sorcerer," Henri Breuil, Cave of the Trois-Freres, Ariege, France. Internet image, public domain.
In 2011 I wrote “In his 2002
book The Mind in the Cave:
Consciousness and the Origins of Art, David Lewis-Williams revisited the
shamanism argument for the dying man panel. Lewis-Williams originally
swept the rock art community with his early analysis of much of South African
rock art in light of San (bushman) religious practices that he defined as
Shamanism. He eventually served as director of the Rock Art Research Institute at the
University of the Witwatersrand from which he retired in 2000. He has since
published many important books and reached a position of respect world-wide. He
has a great ability to organize and analyze data and search for clues and
patterns. As might be expected, considering his focus and early success on the
interpretation of South African rock art in light of shamanic influences, he
tends to find shamanism behind pretty much anything he looks at. At this point
I must confess that I believe that the use of shamanism as an explanation of
rock art is hugely overdone. I have gotten to the point where I think of
shamanism as the “S”-word.
It has reached the position where anyone who cannot come up with a better
explanation for rock art just calls it shamanic. A few decades ago pretty much
all rock art of animals was dismissed as “hunting magic” and much of the early
respect afforded Lewis-Williams came from the fact that he very convincingly
gave us an alternative to that overused term. We need to be very careful that
we now do not just automatically substitute the “S- word” for “hunting magic” and continue to make the same
mistake.” (Faris 2011)
Self portrait by Samantha (last name unknown), 1998.
”A number of years ago on a field trip an enthusiastic rock art fan
explained to me that all human figures in rock art that have
their arms stretched out straight represent shaman figures. Upon return from
that trip to the museum where I worked as exhibits curator at the time I was
confronted by the illustration above. It turned out that the picture had been
done by a young girl named Samantha who had run out of space on the page when
signing her name. The resulting picture had been posted on a lobby wall by
the institution’s education curator. I kept a copy of the picture because at
that time its innocent childishness seemed to sum up so perfectly the statement
that “all figures in rock art that have their arms outstretched straight
represent shaman figures”; why she even spelled shaman almost correctly. At the
very least it represents scientific proof as definitive as some of
Lewis-Williams’.” (Faris 2011) In this
I have not modified my opinion since.
Grant McCall wrote in 2006 that “The “shamanism” or “neuropsychological” model proposed by
Lewis-Williams and colleagues has had a powerful impact on rock art research,
and has significantly added to our knowledge of past foragers
lifeways in southern Africa and elsewhere in the world. However, this model is
primarily based on the view of shamanism as a universal and unvarying
characteristic of foragers over space and time. This paper raises both
theoretical and empirical problems with this view. The paper examines the
relationship between the specific social roles and practices of shamanism and the
overarching cosmological structures on which they are based in both southern
Africa and Northern Eurasia. In both cases, the paper argues that many
cosmological beliefs are highly persistent and durable, extending into
prehistory, while the specific practices and roles of shamans are variable,
changing to meet the immediate and local needs of their communities.” (McCall 2006)
Korean Shaman dancing. Image from Brittanica.
This concept of rock art being the product of
shamanism had been pushed by the Abbe Breuil. “By Breuil’s death in 1961, the concept of shamanism aligned an idea of
universal early religion with the eminence of the painter, the beauty of the
cave art, the violence of the imagined ritual, and the political influence of
the charismatic leaders. It explained the painter as a shaman too. Like
Picasso, Breuil enjoyed what this meant for himself: the painter saw and moved
where others could not, and like the shaman he plumbed the animal depths and
made them accessible to everyone. The Renaissance of cave painting in the
twentieth century was built on this myth. Contemporary artists, confronted with
an unpleasant, disenchanted world in their own time, couldn’t resist.” (Stefanos
Geroulanos 2024:302) I,
for instance, grew up in the Unitarian church, my wife a Baptist church. If
either, or both of us were to paint a picture of a deer on a cliff or cave
wall, would it then be shamanic in nature. According to Breuil and
Lewis-Williams it would.
Bahn argued basically the same
point. “Unfortunately, the claim is often
made that ‘shamanism is the religion of all hunting and gathering cultures’,
which, as we have seen, is simply not true. For example, there is no shamanism
at all in Australia. Trance and ecstasy are not found in many cultures known to
have produced prehistoric and historic rock art.” (Bahn 2010)
How can anyone state so positively that they know what
was in the mind of people from thousands of years in the past? “There are both theoretical and empirical flaws with the view
that shamanism is a universal feature of forager societies, and that forager
rock art invariably relates to shamanism. Future rock art research in southern
Africa must work to address these flaws in moving beyond past paradigmatic
dispositions. This paper has also argued that rock art is (a) class of
archaeological remains originating from the process of landscape enculturation.
The production of rock art is affected by many short-term and local contingencies, but
rock art affects human behavior at scales beyond human lifetimes.
The accumulation of rock art on landscapes represents a long-term,
inter-generational process. Therefore, this paper has argued that the content
of rock art at regional scales is easier to relate to the durable and
persistent cosmological structures of forager societies than to the variable, flexible, and
transitory social practices of shamanism.” (McCall 2006)
Another point to consider is that among all the rock art images identified as shaman (ie. the Dying Hunter, The Sorcerer, The White Shaman), it is often hard to find common traits. I fear that the S-word has often merely supplanted the term "ceremonial" as an explanation for images that cannot otherwise be identified.
I feel the need to state here (again) that I am not
denying that there is shamanistic rock art. I am stating that there are a
myriad of potential meanings for a rock art image and reasons for its
production, some of it shamanic, some not. Let us not automatically jump to the
use of the “S-word” in all instances. It is just not the only answer.
NOTE 1: In some of the quotations I have included above I
have left citations that are not listed in my references below. To find these I
recommend that you go to the sources listed.
NOTE 2: Some images in this column were retrieved from the
internet with a search for public domain images.
REFERENCES:
Bahn, Paul G., 2010, Prehistoric Rock Art: Problems and Polemics, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
Clottes, Jean, and David Lewis-Williams, 1996. The Shamans of Prehistory, Harry N. Abrams, New York.
Faris, Peter K., 2011, The S-Word, Shamanism- or,
The Dying Man in Lascaux Revisited, Rock Art Blog, 9 July 2011, https://www.rockartblog.blogspot.com.
Geroulanos, Stefanos, 2024, The Invention of Prehistory, Liveright Publishing Company, a
division of Norton and Co., New York.
McCall, Grant S., 2006, Add Shamas and Stir? A Critical Review of the Shamanism Model of
Forager Rock Art Production, 25 September 2006, Journal of Anthropological
Archaeology, doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2006.09.001
Williams, David Lewis, 2004, The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the origins of Art, 1 April
2004, Thames and Hudson, New York.
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