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Each cluster is dominated by simple images of faces, typically an outline of a head, two eyes, a mouth. Some have horns. What do they mean?
Edward J. Lenik of New Jersey, an archaeologist who specializes in cultural resource investigations for clients, has been researching petroglyphs since 1976 and is the author of "Picture Rocks: American Indian Rock Art in the Northeast Woodlands (University Press of New England; 2002). He says a petroglyph is a window into a long-ago culture.
"The charm is, it reflects the Indians' thought process, their culture in terms of their stories and myths and belief systems, which you don't really get from artifacts," Lenik said. "Here you look at the artwork and try to imagine what it means. Is the Indian trying to make contact with the spirit world? Or is it something else? That is the fascination."
A Spiritual Place?
One hypothesis holds that the Bellows Falls faces indicate the site was a meeting place of many people. That does not seem far-fetched because the falls would have been a great place to fish for migrating species such as salmon and shad.
Ishtar wrote:You're right, Manystones. I said I wouldn't step into the argument. But when you highlighted the main points of Hodgson, I had to say something because, as I showed, most of his points don't stand up.
Ishtar wrote:The only place he may have had a point is in the claim that LW says that all palaeoart is shamanic. You still haven't shown me where LW says that.
There has been much controversy recently regarding Lewis-Williams’s assertion that altered states of consciousness and shamanism can explain Palaeolithic art. Evidence now seems to be accumulating that this account is unable to provide a sustainable explanation for Upper Palaeolithic depictions. This proposition will be explored and substantiated by examining further weaknesses contained therein. Additionally, in response to claims by those defending altered states that no alternative explanation for palaeoart has been proposed as a viable alternative, it will be shown that such a description does exist but has not been given the attention it deserves because of a misplaced concern for shamanism.
Ishtar wrote:On all his other points, I have shown that his thesis is flawed.
Ishtar wrote:Also, LW did not use second hand drug induced experiences, anymore than Hodgson did. In fact, it's Hodgson that relies on others' research on this.
Ishtar wrote:There is one amusing bit in Hodgson's work, though, where he mentions one chap, Mr Shanon, who evidence is "compelling". This Mr Shanon, in the interests of science, took a hallucinogenic drug and then completely bypassed stages 1 and 2 and was whizzed straight to stage 3 and fullblown hallucinations. Apart from wondering, "Wow..what was he on," it also gave me a bit of a chuckle. This is why shamanism will never fit into commonly accepted lab techniques to arrive at the truth, because it isn't a case of one size fits all. There are many instances, even though they are more rare, of people bypassing stages 1 and 2 to go straight to 3. Mr Shanon, it turns out was one of them.
Manystones wrote:Shanon (2003), a cognitive psychologist, has lived with, minutely studied, and partaken in the shamanistic rituals of South American Indians involving the personal experience of psychotropic drugs, such as Ayahuasca, some 140 times.
Manystones wrote:Helvenston & Bahn (2003; 2004) have shown how the way hallucinations are experienced in drug-induced states does not generally involve the three stages to which Lewis-Williams refers. This is further borne out by the first-hand experience of Shanon (2002; 2003, 301, 304, 375). Despite his exhaustive dissection of the phenomenology pertaining under the influence of psychotropic drugs, phosphenes are either not mentioned or are played down (Shanon 2003, 276, 294), while the three stages to which Lewis-Williams refers are viewed as controversial. In fact, quite often the opposite seems to have been the case, in that the hallucinations were experienced as immediate and full-blown. In the case of Kluver’s (1926) study, he states that the subjects undergoing hallucinations said little about simple geometric designs or more complex images as they tended rather to concentrate on the iconic representations.
Ishtar wrote:Can I also point out we are differing over a book I have read versus a paper I have now read. You have only read the paper.
Ishtar wrote:But in addition to that, I'd like to put Hodgson's views into context of why I began this discussion. I began it because Bednarik categorically dismissed that any palaeoart could have its roots in shamanic practice. He didn't say 'the jury's out on that', or 'in my view, it isn't'. He was very definite that no phosphene art could be shamanic. This makes him as bad as LW, if what you say about LW is true (which you've yet to show) in that they are both polarising the whole issue, which isn't necessary ...and it's certainly not my view.
Ishtar wrote:I wanted to understand on what basis Bednarik felt that he could dismiss the whole shamanic hypothesis school of thought (which is significant in size) so lightly.
Ishtar wrote:If it's on the basis of what's in Hodgson's paper, I have to say he is way out of line. To solely base these conclusions on those who took hallucinogenic drugs is to marginalise the most extreme, and less common, route to the altered state and then claim that this represents the whole shamanic experience. Let me explain why:
Ishtar wrote:Scientists have found that if we are exposed to a rhythm of between 4-7 beats a second, our brain will enter what is known as a theta state. This theta state is what shamans call the non ordinary reality of the altered state, which consists of the three stages.
Ishtar wrote:Michael Harner, of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, is a former anthropologist who has done a lot of work on this. He found that the route via drugs was the least common one, and that the most common method usually involved setting up some kind of resonance, like the beat of a drum. Or in the British Isles, shamans used to beat something that looks a bit like a frying pan, and they called it tanging. And I'm sure you've seen and heard a Tibetan singing bowl.
<Snip> yawn <Snip>
The Scandinavians in general, going back to the female Volva shamans, also used a ullulating voice which is called yoiking.
Ishtar wrote:So anyway, as I said earlier, there's no point in us stepping into an academic tournament where such polarised positions have been chosen by the combatants (although I have yet to see that this is the case with LW).
My own view is that plenty of paleoart has a shamanic ring to it, shall we say. And so I go back to my original offer to explore palaeoart that I think may be shamanic and others can give views on it?
“whole shamanic school of thought (which is significant in size)”
"Einstein was approached by one of his students who pointed out, "The questions on this year's exam are the same as last year’s!" "True," Einstein said, "but this year, the answers are different."
As we have repeatedly noted, visions cannot be separated from social contexts and consequences. The multifaceted nature of a neurologically generated ‘spiritual’ complex opens up numerous forms of social and personal manipulation: there are both social and consciousness contracts. There are maintained givens but also variations.
When certain people at Catalhoyuk moved down into the constructed underworld and then (both literally and spiritually) through the walls, the movements of their journey and the existing imagery primed their minds for what they would see if they themselves experienced altered consciousness. Deliberately designed architectural space, a conceptually constructed underworld, and a selected vocabulary of visual motifs were implicated in the reproduction (but also potential subversion) of the social order.
One notion of consciousness and social contracts thus brings a range of diverse features at Catalhoyuk and other Near Eastern sites into a co-ordinated and, within its own terms, rational framework. There is a coherence in Neolithic diversity. The tiered cosmology, is however, an overarching belief system; it should not be taken to imply that every image or figurine is directly related to altered states of consciousness. On the contrary, the richly resonant motifs probably did not all have precisely the same focus of meaning. What the foci and connotations may have been is a topic for further research. That research will have to consider wider issues, including the mythology that gave coherence to Neolithic life.
This is a very enjoyable book on Neolithic religion. The authors pepper the pages with fascinating vignettes on archaeological discovery and the history of human thought and consciousness (for example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ideas about human nature and the innate religious notions of people are touched on). These asides render many parts of the book eminently readable. However, I must emphasize at the outset that the authors sometimes endorse cognitive interpretations that are quite different from the more economic and practical interpretations that I generally favour. Nevertheless, I fully concur with their basic premise that the physical structure of the human mind creates specific kinds of images (or ways of viewing the world) under altered states of consciousness and that it is individual cultures that determine what aspects (if any) of the altered states and their associated images to recognize.
Lewis-Williams has been developing and refining this approach over the past two decades. However, Lewis-Williams and Pearce break some new ground in this volume, with mixed success. I find it completely plausible, for example, that the non figurative patterns (dots, zigzags, vortices and others) that occur as motifs in art and on monuments are images that people in a sensory-deprived (or otherwise altered) state of mind see when their eyes are closed—effects of the central nervous system. It is also plausible that Neolithic artists were influenced by feeling they were being drawn into a vortex when changing from one state of consciousness to another, as has been frequently reported by people who have had near-death experiences. But Lewis-Williams and Pearce are less convincing when they try to relate the conception of the world as a tiered cosmos (featuring an upper world, a middle earth and a lower world) to the neural structure of the brain. Although I agree entirely that the tiered-cosmos concept is extremely widespread, especially in less complex societies, and was almost assuredly part of the Neolithic worldview, the reasons for the concept being so common are not entirely clear, especially from a neurological perspective.
I also agree that altered states of consciousness (and manipulations of them by political elites) were central characteristics of Neolithic religion. The arguments that certain Neolithic tombs constituted models of the cosmos, with their passageways and vaulted chambers serving as symbolic vortices or portals between the common world, the underworld and the celestial world, all seem reasonable and are well supported by their architecture, art and burial remains. Like a number of other researchers, I endorse the notion that ancient people associated their elite dead with the Sun (after appropriate rituals and expensive sacrifices), which is well exemplified ethnographically today by groups such as the Torajans of Sulawesi. The role that Lewis-Williams and Pearce postulate for the Earth, the Sun and the Moon and their relation to the dead in Neolithic cosmology seems entirely reasonable. These are some of the new and very useful contributions of Inside the Neolithic Mind.
French archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old wall painting underground in northern Syria which they believe is the oldest in the world.
The 2 square-meter painting, in red, black and white, was found at the Neolithic settlement of Djade al-Mughara on the Euphrates, northeast of the city of Aleppo, team leader Eric Coqueugniot told Reuters.
"It looks like a modernist painting. Some of those who saw it have likened it to work by (Paul) Klee. Through carbon dating we established it is from around 9,000 B.C.," Coqueugniot said.
"We found another painting next to it, but that won't be excavated until next year. It is slow work," said Coqueugniot, who works at France's National Centre for Scientific Research.
Rectangles dominate the ancient painting, which formed part of an adobe circular wall of a large house with a wooden roof. The site has been excavated since the early 1990s.
Ishtar wrote:Manystones
When you PM-ed me the other day about my approach being 'bad for the discipline', I was too polite to say: "Bad for what discipline? The discipline of seeing faces in stones?"
To: Ishtar
Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2008 12:18 pm
Subject: re. Shamanism
Hi Ishtar,
If you email me (link on my profile) with your email address I can send you some stuff by Hodgson which illustrates why the Shaminism theory is weak.
Bednarik and others have illustrated this in some detail, for example their extrapolating from the San people or other cultures without shared commonalities or with particular idiosyncracies, and various other assumptions most of which have been falsified successfully.
Don't get me wrong, I am not opposed to a bit of "Shamanism" but as someone put it (in better words than I could ever hope to), the values they ascribe to Shamans are then applied to everyone to the effect that every person is a Shaman thereby negating any meaning. Worst still is the attempt to apply this theory almost blanket like across palaeolithic art
Incidentally, IMHO many of the explanations they ascribe to be in reference to palaeoart and altered experiences demonstrate their own lack of experience in this field and I say this from my personal experience xxxxxCensoredxxxx.
I believe the point about phosphenes is that Bednarik has demonstrated that mark making has evolved determined by the characteristics of the neuro-visual recognition system, i.e. rub your hands in your eyes - therefore one cannot say that "entoptic phenomena" are derived from Shaminism.
Kind regards
Richard.
Ishtar wrote:But I'm not feeling so polite now after reading your arrogant remark about your post getting us ‘back to reality'.
Do you think if you ape the pomposity of the Club, they’ll accept you and your stones? You need to think again.
I write in plain language that most people can understand. So if you can’t understand what I say, you might try a local literacy class.
Ishtar wrote:Two of your man’s Hodgson’s major complaints about this book (that you haven't read) was that the author Lewis Williams a) did not take into account cultural differences in artistic interpretation of Neolithic art and b) that he said all Neolithic art was influenced by the altered state.
Ishtar wrote:I asked you where he said this. You’ve been unable to reply – and you’ve been unable to reply for one simple reason. He never said it.
In fact he said the opposite.
Ishtar wrote:Here is what he said on page 122 of Inside the Neolithic Mind. It answers both your man’s points a) and b), and also explains the cosmological nature of their homes (i.e the microcosm reflecting the macrocosm).
As we have repeatedly noted, visions cannot be separated from social contexts and consequences. The multifaceted nature of a neurologically generated ‘spiritual’ complex opens up numerous forms of social and personal manipulation: there are both social and consciousness contracts. There are maintained givens but also variations.
When certain people at Catalhoyuk moved down into the constructed underworld and then (both literally and spiritually) through the walls, the movements of their journey and the existing imagery primed their minds for what they would see if they themselves experienced altered consciousness. Deliberately designed architectural space, a conceptually constructed underworld, and a selected vocabulary of visual motifs were implicated in the reproduction (but also potential subversion) of the social order.
One notion of consciousness and social contracts thus brings a range of diverse features at Catalhoyuk and other Near Eastern sites into a co-ordinated and, within its own terms, rational framework. There is a coherence in Neolithic diversity. The tiered cosmology, is however, an overarching belief system; it should not be taken to imply that every image or figurine is directly related to altered states of consciousness. On the contrary, the richly resonant motifs probably did not all have precisely the same focus of meaning. What the foci and connotations may have been is a topic for further research. That research will have to consider wider issues, including the mythology that gave coherence to Neolithic life.
There has been much controversy recently regarding Lewis-Williams's assertion that altered states of consciousness and shamanism can explain Palaeolithic art. Evidence now seems to be accumulating that this account is unable to provide a sustainable explanation for Upper Palaeolithic depictions. This proposition will be explored and substantiated by examining further weaknesses contained therein. Additionally, in response to claims by those defending altered states that no alternative explanation for palaeoart has been proposed as a viable alternative, it will be shown that such a description does exist but has not been given the attention it deserves because of a misplaced concern for shamanism.
Ishtar wrote:I would also like to ask why this thread has been moved from the main forum? Rock art is a part of archaeology, despite the controversies it causes.
Ishtar wrote:A range of scenes … are depicted in palaeoart
Ishtar wrote:Again, I believe Hodgson is reading far more into what Lewis-Williams is saying that I gleaned, anyway.
The Mind in the Cave puts forward the most convincing explanation yet proposed for the origins of image-making and art. The Neanderthals, our nearest ancient relatives, lived alongside our Cro-Magnon ancestors for over10,000 years, borrowing stone tool technology but never developing art – how could this be? The answer, David Lewis-Williams shows, lies in the evolution of the human mind. Cro-Magnons, unlike the Neanderthals, possessed a higher-order consciousness and a more advanced neurological make-up which enabled them to experience shamanistic trances and vivid mental imagery.
Both Upper Palaeolithic people and San rock painters were more concerned with Stage 3 hallucinations than with Stage 1 entoptic phenomena. What is significant is that there are Upper Palaeolithic images referable to all three stages of the model, and this strengthens the argument for a connection with the mental imagery of altered states.
They therefore fit the overall pattern suggested by the hypothesis that Upper Palaeolithic parietal art was shamanistic.
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