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The Archaeology of Shamanism The meaning of ‘shamanism’ has been debated for almost three centuries, ever since the term was coined to describe the activities of those who attained altered states of consciousness in order to mediate between human beings and the supernatural world. The ritual practices that characterised these perceived contacts with other realities have left highly physical traces in the archaeological record of prehistoric peoples, and the potential for the recognition of shamanic belief systems in the past is now being realised as never before. In this timely collection, Neil Price provides a general introduction to the archaeology of shamanism by bringing together recent work on the subject. Blending theoretical discussion with detailed case studies, the issues addressed include shamanic material culture, responses to dying and the dead, shamanic soundscapes, the use of ritual architecture and shamanism in the context of other belief systems. Following an initial orientation reviewing shamanism as an anthropological construct, the volume focuses on the Northern hemisphere with case studies from Greenland to Nepal, Siberia to Kazakhstan. The chapters span a chronological range from the Upper Palaeolithic to the present and explore such cross-cutting themes as gender and the body, identity, landscape, the social perception of animals, prehistoric ‘art’, and shamanism in the heritage and cultural identity of indigenous peoples. The volume also addresses the interpretation of shamanic beliefs in terms of cognitive neuroscience and the modern public perception of shamanism in the past. This book is an essential study of ancient shamanism through its material remains. It serves as a source of front-line case studies for specialists, while making these discussions accessible to a broader public. Archaeologists, anthropologists, historians of religion and psychologists will ﬁnd the volume a valuable work of reference, as will those interested in alternative religions and spiritual philosophies. Neil S. Price is a Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. He has written extensively on the Viking Age, and has conducted research projects in France, Iceland, Russia and Sápmi (Lappland).



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Frontispiece. Ivory maskette, 500–1 BC, Tyara, northern Québec. (Photo: Canadian Museum of Civilization; KbFk-7:308).



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The Archaeology of Shamanism



Edited by Neil S. Price



London and New York



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First published 2001 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.



© 2001 selection and editorial matter, Neil S. Price: individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The archaeology of Shamanism/edited by Neil Price. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Shamanism. 2. Ethnoarchaeology. 3. Material culture. I. Price, Neil S. GN475.8.A73 2001 306.6፱91144–dc21 ISBN 0-203-45170-8 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-45737-4 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-25254-7 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-25255-5 (pbk)



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Contents



List of ﬁgures vii List of contributors ix Acknowledgements xi PART ONE The archaeology of shamanism: Cognition, cosmology and world-view Chapter One



AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF ALTERED STATES: SHAMANISM AND MATERIAL CULTURE STUDIES Neil S. Price Chapter Two SOUTHERN AFRICAN SHAMANISTIC ROCK



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ART IN ITS SOCIAL



AND COGNITIVE CONTEXTS



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J.D. Lewis-Williams PART TWO Siberia and Central Asia: The ‘cradle of shamanism’ Chapter Three



ROCK ART



AND THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF



CENTRAL ASIAN SHAMANISM Ekaterina Devlet



SIBERIAN AND 43



Chapter Four SHAMANS, HEROES AND ANCESTORS IN THE BRONZE CASTINGS OF WESTERN SIBERIA 56 Natalia Fedorova Chapter Five



SUN



GODS OR SHAMANS? INTERPRETING THE ‘SOLAR-HEADED’



CENTRAL ASIA Andrzej Rozwadowski



PETROGLYPHS OF



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Chapter Six



THE



MATERIALITY OF SHAMANISM AS A ‘ WORLD-VIEW ’:



PRAXIS, ARTEFACTS AND LANDSCAPE Peter Jordan



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THE



Chapter Seven MEDIUM OF THE MESSAGE: SHAMANISM PRACTICE IN THE NEPAL HIMALAYAS Damian Walter



AS LOCALISED



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PART THREE



North America and the North Atlantic Chapter Eight PEOPLING OF NORTH AMERICA:



THE GENDERED ADDRESSING THE ANTIQUITY OF SYSTEMS OF MULTIPLE GENDERS Sandra E. Hollimon



123



Chapter Nine



SHAMANISM AND



PALAEO-ESKIMO Patricia D. Sutherland



THE ICONOGRAPHY OF



ART



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Chapter Ten SOCIAL BONDING AND SHAMANISM AMONG LATE DORSET GROUPS IN HIGH ARCTIC GREENLAND 146 Hans Christian Gulløv and Martin Appelt PART FOUR Northern Europe Chapter Eleven SPECIAL OBJECTS – SPECIAL CREATURES: SHAMANISTIC IMAGERY AND THE AURIGNACIAN ART OF SOUTH-WEST GERMANY 165 Thomas A. Dowson and Martin Porr



THE



AND RITUAL IN



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Chapter Twelve ACOUSTICS, MONUMENTS THE BRITISH NEOLITHIC 178 Aaron Watson



SOUNDS OF TRANSFORMATION:



IDEOLOGY OF



Chapter Thirteen TRANSFORMATION: CREMATION RITES AND IN EARLY ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND 193 Howard Williams



ANIMAL SACRIFICE



Chapter Fourteen WAKING ANCESTOR SPIRITS: NEO-SHAMANIC ENGAGEMENTS WITH ARCHAEOLOGY 213 Robert J. Wallis Index 231



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Figures



Frontispiece Ivory maskette, 500–1BC, Tyara, northern Québec 2.1 Map showing the locations of San groups and places mentioned in the text 2.2 Rock painting of a shamanistic dance 2.3 A painted shamanistic dance scene 2.4 A shamanistic dance group 2.5 A rock painting showing ‘non-real’ relationships between human beings and eland 2.6 A unique painting of two fresh-water crabs 2.7 A rock painting that shows an upside-down eland 3.1 Rock art anthropomorphs in the ‘X-ray style’ 3.2 Rock art images of shamans from the Altai region 3.3. Fine line engraving of a shaman on a stone plaque from the Altai 3.4 The Niukzha rock art panel, Olekma River basin: a shaman is ﬂying among the celestial bodies 3.5 Rock art images of shamans 3.6 Paintings on shamans’ drums 3.7 Rock art anthropomorphs in head-gear with rays 3.8 Burial from Ust’-Uda and a reconstruction of the ritual coat of a female shaman 3.9 Shamans depicted on Yakut birch-bark tobacco containers 3.10 Shamanizing in a yurt 4.1 The anthropomorphic images of the Early Iron Age 4.2 The images of warriors with sabres 4.3 The anthropomorphic bird-headed images 4.4 The bird images 4.5 The bear in the so-called ‘ritual posture’ 5.1 Examples of ‘sun-gods’ in Saymaly-Tash, Kirghizstan 5.2 ‘Sun-headed’ petroglyphs in the Tamgaly Valley 5.3 The big panel with ‘sun-headed’ petroglyphs, Tamgaly Valley 5.4 ‘Shamans’ associated with the horse, Tamgaly Valley 5.5 Examples of dressed humans with crosier-like staffs 5.6 The staff of the Central Asian dervish 5.7 The horse divided by two parallel cracks, Tamgaly Valley 5.8 The transformed human ﬁgure associated with two parallel cracks, Tamgaly Valley 5.9 ‘Sun-heads’ and entoptic imagery 5.10 The human ﬁgure with unnatural head versus visual imagery 5.11 Zigzag motifs in Saymaly-Tash 5.12 Comparison of double crenelation motifs in petroglyphs 5.13 Painted images on the slabs of graves in Altai 5.14 Location of the sites with rock art imagery of potential shamanistic features in relation to the hypothesis about expanding Indo-Europeans from the Eurasian steppes



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viii • Figures 6.1 The social and material contexts to shamanism 6.2 Acts of communication linking human and spirit domains 6.3 Lengths of white cloth (pory) hung from a tree at a sacred site on the Malyi Iugan River 6.4 Kot Mykh (earth-house) cedar tree from which a domestic idol has been cut 6.5 Ritual meal at the Daughters of Pugos Anki holy site 6.6 The role of the shaman/healer within broader elements of Khanty cosmology 6.7 The location of sacred sites and the cemetery at a base yurt on the Malyi Iugan River 6.8 Carving of the bear on a cedar tree 6.9 Skin of a sacriﬁced animal hung at a local holy site 7.1 A Chetri dha–mi-jhãkri dances and drums on the veranda of the house during a familial healing ritual (cinta–) 7.2 A Chetri house in the Solu Khumbu district of Nepal 7.3 Sketch plan of the ground ﬂoor of a Chetri house 7.4 A Chetri kul-dha–mi uses bundles of leaves (sya–ulı–) to indicate his possession by the lineage deities 9.1 Map showing areas occupied by Early Palaeo-Eskimos and the Dorset culture 9.2 Antler baton with faces, c.AD 1000 9.3 Animal/woman ﬁgure, carved in ivory, c.AD 700 9.4 Ivory shaman’s teeth, c.AD 500–1000 9.5 Ivory ﬂying bear with skeletal markings, c.AD 0–500 9.6 Ivory seal with skeletal markings, c.AD 1000 9.7 Four bell-shaped tubes, carved in ivory 10.1 Late Dorset ‘longhouse’ distribution 10.2 General plan of the Greenland megalithic site, Hatherton Bay, Smith Sound 10.3 The megalithic structure prior to excavation 10.4 The mid-axial passage 10.5 General plan with stone-lined pits 10.6 Distribution of ﬂakes in the megalithic structure 10.7 The megalithic structure with the authors’ reconstruction of the colonnade of upright stones 11.1 The Vogelherd horse 11.2 The reconstructed human-lion statuette from Hohlenstein-Stadel 11.3 A lion statuette from Vogelherd with pointed ears 11.4 The head of a lion from Vogelherd 11.5 A bear statuette from Geißenklösterle in an aggressive posture 11.6 A schematic rendition of a more complex motif of multiple arcs, zigzags and notches on a statuette from Vogelherd 12.1 The passage entrance and façade at Camster Round 12.2 Maeshowe passage grave 12.3 An elevation and plan of Maeshowe 12.4 Looking out along the passage from the chamber inside Maeshowe 12.5 The chamber inside Maeshowe 13.1 The conjectural and simpliﬁed sequence of rites during early Anglo-Saxon cremation practices informed by archaeological and osteological evidence 13.2 Aged burials from Spong Hill containing animal remains 13.3 Sexed burials from Spong Hill containing animal remains 13.4 Urn from burial 2443 from Spong Hill 14.1 A large procession of Druids at Avebury Henge 14.2 ‘Runic’ John, Heathen neo-shaman, completing a shamanic healing 14.3 ‘Runic’ John is possessed by the spirit of the god Woden, in a public shamanic ritual



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Figures



Contributors



Martin Appelt is a Research Fellow in Archaeology at the National Museum of Denmark’s Greenland Research Centre. His recent work and writings have focused on the Palaeo-Eskimo cultures of the Eastern Arctic, and since 1985 he has conducted archaeological ﬁeldwork in Greenland, Denmark, Canada and Tunisia. Among his recent books are Late Dorset in High Arctic Greenland (co-author, 1999) and Identities and Cultural Contacts in the Arctic (co-editor, 2000). Ekaterina Devlet is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, and Assistant Professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities. She has published over 50 papers on prehistoric art and shamanism, while her books include Pre-Columbian Art of the Central American Indians (2000) and Spiritual Life of the Ancient Peoples of Northern and Central Asia: the World of the Rock Art (with Marianna Devlet, 2001). Thomas A. Dowson is a Lecturer in the School of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Manchester. He has published extensively on various rock art traditions, with research focusing on shamanism, archaeological approaches to artistic traditions and their popular representation, and the impact of sexual politics on archaeology. His publications include Rock Engravings of Southern Africa (1992), Images of Power: Understanding San Rock Art (with David Lewis-Williams, 2000) and Queer Archaeologies (editor, 2000). Natalia Fedorova is a Research Fellow at the Institute of History and Archaeology (Ural Division, Russian Academy of Sciences) in Ekaterinberg. Her research focuses on the Iron Age of western Siberia, ancient art and cultural communication. Among her recent books are Ugrian Heritage (1994), Gone into the Hills: Iron Age Cultures of the Northwestern Yamal (1998), and Cholmogor Treasure: Antiquities of the 3rd–4th Centuries AD from the Surgut Arts Museum Collection (2001). Hans Christian Gulløv holds a professorship in Greenland’s Cultural History at the National Museum of Denmark’s Department of Research. He is a former senior scholar at the Institute of Eskimology and Danish Polar Center, visiting lecturer at the University of Greenland and curator of Inuit Collections at the National Museum. He is the scientiﬁc editor of Monographs on Greenland, Man & Society Series, and has conducted anthropological and archaeological ﬁeldwork in Greenland and Siberia. Sandra E. Hollimon is Lecturer in Anthropology at Sonoma State University, California. She is also Senior Prehistoric Archaeologist at Sonoma State’s Anthropological Studies Center. Her publications include “Archaeology of the ‘Aqi: gender and sexuality in prehistoric Chumash society”, in Archaeologies of Sexuality (Routledge), and “Death, gender and the Chumash peoples: Mourning ceremonialism as an integrative mechanism” (American Anthropological Association).



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Contributors Peter Jordan is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. He has conducted research into the material culture of hunter ﬁsher gatherers in western Siberia and recently received his doctorate from the University of Shefﬁeld. J. D. Lewis-Williams is Professor emeritus in the Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He has published extensively on southern African San and west European Upper Palaeolithic art, and his many books include Shamans of Prehistory (with Jean Clottes, 1998) and Stories that Float from Afar: Ancestral San Folklore (2000). Martin Porr is currently a PhD student at the University of Southampton, preparing a thesis on Early Upper Palaeolithic mobiliary art. He has published several works on hunter-gatherer anthropology, social theory and Palaeolithic archaeology. Together with Linda R. Owen, he is coeditor of Ethno-Analogy and the Reconstruction of Prehistoric Artefact Use and Production (1999). Neil S. Price is a Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. He has written extensively on the Viking Age, and has conducted research projects in France, Iceland, Russia and Sápmi (Lappland). His books include The Vikings in Brittany (1989), Cultural Atlas of the Viking World (co-author, 1994), and The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (in press). Andrzej Rozwadowski is a Lecturer at the Institute of Eastern Studies of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznañ, Poland, where he completed his doctorate. His research focuses on the ancient art of Central Asia and Siberia and its relations to local cultural traditions, particularly that of shamanism. He has undertaken ﬁeldwork in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Yakutia, and is co-editor of Rock Art and Shamanism of Central Asia (in Polish, 1999). Patricia D. Sutherland is a Curator of Archaeology at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Since 1975 she has worked extensively throughout Arctic Canada, where her research has focussed on the Palaeo-Eskimo cultural tradition. She co-curated the museum exhibit Lost Visions, Forgotten Dreams: Life and Art of an Ancient Arctic People, and is currently preparing a book on Palaeo-Eskimo art. Robert J. Wallis is a Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology and Co-ordinator of Archaeology at New College, University of Southampton, where he received an MA (Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art) and PhD. Research interests include the archaeology of shamanism and neo-Shamanism, art and society, the politics of the past, and the Neolithic and Germanic communities of north-western Europe. Damian Walter completed his doctorate in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 2001. He currently works as a teaching assistant in the same department. Aaron Watson, University of Reading, UK, specialises in the Neolithic and Bronze Age of the British Isles, and has recently completed a doctorate examining stone circles and henges. He has a particular interest in exploring how people might have experienced monumental buildings in prehistory, and seeks to reintegrate elements such as sound into archaeological interpretations. Howard Williams is a Lecturer in Archaeology at Trinity College, Carmarthen, Wales. He has published a series of articles on early medieval cemeteries, social memory and burial archaeology, and has recently completed a doctorate on early Anglo-Saxon cremation practices. He is currently editing a book entitled Death, Memory and Material Culture, and co-directing a research project on Roundway Down, Wiltshire.



Contributors



Acknowledgements



The core of The Archaeology of Shamanism is formed by a series of papers presented in a session of the same name which I organised for the 5th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA), held at Bournemouth in September 1999. However, the idea of the book in fact pre-dated the conference, and several of the contributors who did not attend the session had already agreed to write for this volume: rather than a collection of conference proceedings, it should instead be seen as a structured work of which certain parts were aired in preliminary form at a meeting along the way. As organiser, I would like to thank Tim Darvill and Eileen Wilkes whose administrative work made the EAA session possible; as both organiser and editor, I would like to thank all the contributors for their hard work and commitment to this project, which began life as a long series of emails sent out from Uppsala to various corners of the globe in late 1998. One participant in the EAA session did not contribute to the book, one non-participant who had originally agreed to contribute had to pull out at a later stage due to other commitments, and two would-be contributors patiently remained on my ‘stand-by list’ until it was clear that the session and/or book were full. All of them nonetheless made their mark on the project, and I would therefore like to thank Tim Bayliss-Smith, Robert Layton, Inga-Maria Mulk and David Whitley for their understanding and encouragement. An important part of this book developed during the spring of 2000 on a combined conference and ﬁeld-trip visiting sites of shamanic rock art in the Drakensberg, Waterberg and Magaliesberg of South Africa, under the guidance of David Lewis-Williams and his colleagues from the Rock Art Research Institute (RARI) at the University of the Witwatersrand. The experience of discussing the shamanic world-view with some of its most brilliant interpreters is always invigorating under any circumstances, but the memory of these conversations in the speciﬁc context of the rock shelters, as the sun set on the Berg, or around the ﬁre as the constellations of the southern sky appeared overhead, will remain long in my mind. My thanks to all at RARI, and to all the friends and colleagues who were there. The project of bringing this volume to fruition has run parallel with the latter stages of producing my book on the belief systems of the early medieval North, and the academic advice and assistance that I have received for the latter has inevitably affected the former: I therefore refer the reader to the more extensive acknowledgements given in The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (Price in press). However, for very speciﬁc contributions to the present work, bestowed in various forms from a kind word to long nights of conversation, I would like to thank Amanda Chadburn, David Miles, Adrian Olivier and Andrew Sherratt. I am also grateful to my colleagues and students at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Uppsala, whose lively engagement with the ancient mind has been



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Acknowledgements a constant source of inspiration. I would especially like to thank my wife, Linda Qviström, for her unswerving support, cheerfully provided despite my early imposition of a moratorium on shaman jokes in our home. For permission to reproduce photographs and ﬁgures, I thank the Canadian Museum of Civilisation; Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service; and the Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, Abteilung Ältere Urgeschichte und Quartärökologie, Universität Tübingen. For early encouragement at Routledge I would like to thank a number of enthusiastic referees, and former commissioning editor of archaeology Vicky Peters. My editor has been Julene Barnes, who, together with editorial assistant Polly Osborn and the members of the design team, has my heartfelt thanks for all the hard work and good humour (far better than I deserved) that has gone into the preparation of this book. Its gestation has been accompanied by an exchange of emails and conversations on subjects ranging from theatrical criticism to Cajun food, and I hope that some of the fun that we had shows in these pages. Neil Price Uppsala, at the turn of winter, March 2001



Part One The Archaeology of Shamanism Cognition, Cosmology and World-View



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An archaeology of altered states



Chapter One



An archaeology of altered states: Shamanism and material culture studies Neil S. Price



INTRODUCTION: SˇAMAN/SAMA:N/SHAMAN When a dissident priest called Avvakum arrived in the lands of the nomadic, reindeer-herding Evenki in the early 1650s, having been exiled to central Siberia by the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, no outsider had ever heard of a ˇsaman, let alone written the word down or explored the cosmological understandings that underpinned its meaning. By the time of his execution for heresy in 1682, Avvakum’s descriptions communicated during his sojourn among the Evenki had already laid the foundations for what anthropologists would later term the study of shamanism. Over the following 150 years, as Siberia was traversed by missionaries, political exiles (often highly educated intellectuals), Tsarist agents and European travellers, more and more stories were recorded of the intriguing beliefs and practices to be found among the tribal peoples there: from the Nenets, Mansi, Khanty, Ngansan and Enets of the Uralic group around the Yamal peninsula, the Ob and Yenisei river basins and the north Siberian coast; the Turkic-speaking Yakut and Dolgan on the lower Lena; the Tungusic–Mandchurian peoples of central Siberia, including the Even and the Evenki themselves; and the Yukaghir, Chukchi, Koryak and Itelmen of eastern Siberia and the Paciﬁc coast, amongst many others. The tales told by these early voyagers were startling, and aroused intense interest in Russia and Europe. A fragmentary picture emerged of an ‘ensouled world’ in which everything was alive, and ﬁlled with spirits – animals, natural features, even what to Western eyes were inanimate objects. To such beings could be linked almost every aspect of material life: sickness and health, the provision of food and shelter, success in hunting, and the well-being of the community. The maintenance of good relationships with these spirits was thus of crucial importance, and the most striking of the travellers’ stories concerned the special individuals who attained states of trance and ecstasy in order to send out their souls to communicate with these beings, to enlist their aid or bind them to their will, sometimes even to engage them in combat. The operative sphere of these people, whom the Evenki called ˇsaman, was revealed as a world of mediation, of negotiation between the realm of human beings and the adjacent, occasionally coincident, planes of existence in which dwelt the gods, the spirits of nature, and the souls of the dead. The complex variety of equipment used in these ceremonies was also described: the strange headgear and jackets hung with jingling amulets, the fur and feathers of animals, metal images; the masks and veils; the efﬁgies and ﬁgurines; and above all, the drums.



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Neil S. Price Some of this data was published and widely discussed in scholarly circles, and during the eighteenth century the Evenk concept of the ˇsaman was taken up in Russian as a useful collective for the similar ﬁgures that were encountered from one tribe to another across the region. From the phonetic constructions used to record these concepts (the indigenous Siberians had no written language), ˇsaman or sama:n was soon normalised via Russian to the western European languages, creating the more conventional ‘shaman’ (the Evenki pronounced the word with the accent on the second syllable, ‘sha-márn’, but the alternative forms of ‘shárman’ or ‘sháy-man’ are now more common). At ﬁrst, there were few that associated these individuals, and the role that they played within their communities, with ‘religion’ in the sense of an organised system of worship. The notion of a collective pattern of belief – shamanism – arose ﬁrst when the Christian missions began to seriously target the Siberian peoples for conversion, and thus sought to identify a pagan religion towards the overthrow of which they could concentrate their efforts (see Thomas and Humphrey 1994, and Znamenski 1999, for recent studies of church/state perceptions of indigenous belief ).



SHAMANIC RESEARCH IN RUSSIA AND BEYOND This interpretation of exactly what shamanism was/is has been central to shamanic studies from the very beginning. Already in 1853, the Finnish scholar Castrén challenged the idea that shamanism could be described as a religion rather than as a pattern of behaviour, and this debate continued throughout the late 1800s when the ﬁrst major Russian works on the subject appeared. By the beginning of the twentieth century, this social, psychological and (arguably) religious phenomenon was already the subject of an established body of literature (see, for example, Shashkov 1864; Potanin 1881–3; Agapitov and Khangalov 1883; Radloff 1884; Pripuzov 1885; Mikhailovski 1895; Shimkevich 1896; Sieroszewski 1993 [1896], 1902; this period of early research is summarised in Hultkrantz 1998). Similar practices had earlier been described from other parts of the northern hemisphere, for example in Schefferus’ inﬂuential book Lapponia (1673) on the Sámi of Fenno-Scandia, but it was not until the early 1900s when the American Museum in New York launched the Jesup North Paciﬁc Expedition that the beliefs of other circumpolar arctic and sub-arctic cultures began to be speciﬁcally – though tentatively – described in terms of shamanism. The link to Siberia was eased by the widespread accessibility of English-language publications such as Bogoras’ (1911) and Jochelson’s (1908) reports from the Jesup Expedition, Czaplicka’s 1914 survey of the region, and Shirokogorov’s classic Psychomental Complex of the Tungus (1935). Through the early twentieth century the notion of shamanism spread slowly in North America, being applied to the ‘medicine-men’ of First Nations peoples, but even here the deﬁnitions common in Siberia were being adapted to local circumstances (e.g. Dixon 1908). Although shamanism was widely adopted as a psychological and psychiatric concept in the years between the world wars, as Hultkrantz has noted, ‘it is difﬁcult to ﬁnd surveys of [nonRussian] shamanism before 1950’ (1998: 61). There were, however, many foreigners working on the Siberian material. Finnish researchers were particularly active (e.g. Holmberg [Harva] 1915, 1922, 1927, 1938; Granö 1919–21; Donner 1922; Lehtisalo 1924, 1937; other signiﬁcant Western works include Stadling 1912 and Nioradze 1925), and post-Revolutionary Russian research continued within the strict ideological frameworks of Marxist interpretations (see Hultkrantz 1998: 65–7 and Balzer 1990). Until the fall of the Soviet Union, or at least the late 1980s, the division between Western and Eastern studies of shamanism was almost total. Soviet writers such as Zelenin (1936, 1937, 1952) and Anisimov (1963) sought to explain shamanism in terms of a particular concentration of power and shifting control of production,



An archaeology of altered states with an additional emphasis on medical interpretations often based on notions of mental illness. The explanation of shamanism as due to a kind of ‘arctic hysteria’ induced by cold and deprivation was raised by Ohlmarks in 1939 – signiﬁcantly in the political climate of Nazi Germany – and together with the idea of the shaman as mentally unbalanced psychopath this was adopted with enthusiasm in Soviet Russia, where it became fundamental in the policies of suppressing this perceived threat of independent thought and spiritual allegiance. Ethnocentric ‘explanations’ were also given prominence, while other Russian scholars sought refuge in collecting raw data which did not need to be forced into an ideologically inspired interpretative straitjacket (the research from this period is summarised in Popov’s bibliography from 1932, listing some 650 Russian works on shamanism; a German-language version appeared in 1990). The scholars who maintained a most strictly empirical line, and thus avoided the regime’s appropriation of their work, are now bearers of the tradition of Russian research in the post-Soviet era (e.g. Vajnstein and Basilov – see Hultkrantz, 1998: 66, for an assessment of these writers’ signiﬁcance). At the socio-political ‘border’ of Russian scholarship, another major block of work developed, again building on research from the late 1800s and focusing on shamanism among the Nordic and Sámi populations of Scandinavia. More than 300 publications have appeared on the shamanic complex of seidr and related rituals in Old Norse belief (collected and discussed in Price in press, with further treatment in Price 2000a and b, 2001b; see also DuBois 1999 for a recent cross-cultural study of Scandinavian religion). An even greater number of publications, over 800, deal with Sámi religion (collected in Rydving 1993b; the works of Bäckman, Hultkrantz, Manker, Mebius, Pentikäinen, and Rydving himself are especially central). Case studies of the Norse and Sámi demonstrate particularly clearly the use of specialised shamanic practices for aggressive ends, and also the prominence of sexual elements in shamanic rituals; importantly, both of these traits are relatively common among the arctic and sub-arctic peoples, a fact that belies the common association of shamanism almost exclusively with healing that has characterised Western perceptions in the wake of Eliade’s classic work from 1964. The research history of shamanism in Western anthropology, comparative theology and related disciplines has been charted many times, and this is not the place for yet another introductory essay on the ‘meaning’ of this phenomenon (useful texts in this regard include Eliade 1964, into the orbit of which most subsequent works have been drawn; Lessa and Vogt 1965; Wallace 1966; Edsman 1967; Motzki 1971; Furst 1974; Hultkrantz 1973, 1979, 1993, 1998; Humphrey 1980; Lewis 1981, 1989; Atkinson 1992; Ripinsky-Naxon 1993; Vitebsky 1995; Pentikäinen 1998; Pentikäinen et al. 1998; Bowie 2000: 190–218; Larsson 2000). We may, however, note the importance of two key themes of relevance to the archaeological interpretations of the present book. The ﬁrst of these concerns the relationship of shamanic belief systems to their environmental setting (e.g. Hultkrantz 1965; Pentikäinen 1996; Bowie 2000: 118–50), explored further below in a landscape context. The second focuses on the links that are sometimes postulated between shamanism and another, equally hotly debated anthropological construct: totemism (the classic introduction can be found in Lévi-Strauss 1962; see Layton 2000 for a recent review of this discussion). As the study of northern shamanism has ebbed and ﬂowed in popularity during the last century, three main forms of interpretation have predominated. The Nivkh ethnographer Chuner Taksami, himself an ethnic Siberian and acquainted with several shamans, has perhaps stated it best (1998: 14): Shamanism is an historical phenomenon within a system of traditional faiths distinctive of nearly all Siberian peoples. Some people consider shamanism as a variety of primitive religion; others tend to think of it as a set of beliefs and customs centred on the shaman’s personality; and others still associate shamanism with witchcraft and magical spells.



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Neil S. Price Retrospective reviews of these changing fashions of interpretation, and more recent responses to them, can be found in the international journal of shamanic research, Shaman, and in a series of inﬂuential conference publications from the last three decades (e.g. Diószegi and Hóppal 1978; Hóppal 1984; Hóppal and von Sadovszky 1989; Hóppal and Pentikäinen 1992; Siikala and Hóppal 1992; Hóppal and Howard 1993). One major trend however continues to polarise shamanic studies: the question of geographic frames of reference. Even now, echoing the debates of the early twentieth century, some historians of religion strongly resist the use of the term ‘shamanism’ beyond certain regions of central Siberia. In one sense these objections seem bafﬂing, given that – as we have seen – the concept of shamanism has always been an externally imposed construction, and does not exist anywhere at all other than in the minds of its students. Not even the Evenki have an overall word for what the ˇsaman does, though like several other Siberian peoples they have a broad vocabulary for the different components of the shamanic complex. As both a term and a notion, shamanism is entirely an academic creation, and as such it is certainly a useful tool serving to describe a pattern of ritual behaviour and belief found in strikingly similar form across much of the arctic and sub-arctic regions of the world. Even within this broad understanding, the meaning of shamanism is entirely a matter of consensus, discussion and continuing redeﬁnition; this extends to terminology, many scholars now prefering to write of ‘shamanhood’ or ‘shamanship’. The essential question is to whether we can truly speak of shamanism beyond the circumpolar sphere. It is here that we enter a broader framework of interpretation, which moves outward from Siberia and the circumpolar region on a sliding scale of inclusion to embrace shamanistic traits in the ritual practices of South America, Oceania, Africa (particularly controversially), and ultimately the globe – an approach recently typiﬁed by the work of Piers Vitebsky (1995). In many cases this is still rooted in scholarly discussion, but in the broadest and most popular understanding ‘shamanism’ has latterly come to cover virtually any kind of belief in ‘spirits’ and the existence of other worlds, states of being or planes of consciousness – a deﬁnition that of course encompasses the majority of the world’s religions, organised or otherwise, ancient and modern. In this context the term ‘shaman’ has similarly been used to refer to almost any kind of mediator, in any kind of medium, between one perception of the world and another. As a result, those popularly described as shamans have included an astonishing variety of individuals ranging from Jesus to Jim Morrison. These are not the shamanisms of this book. Instead we follow the general direction taken by related academic disciplines, as summarised by Mathias Guenther: ‘the view held generally by scholars in the anthropology of religion and in comparative religion . . . [is] . . . that shamanism is a religious phenomenon that can be formally delineated and differentiated from other, more complex religions’ (1999: 426). Considering Taksami’s identiﬁcation of shamanism as an historical phenomenon (1998: 14), how far is it reasonable to talk of shamanism in the prehistoric past? The answer, of course, can only be sought in studies of material culture, and thus archaeology.



SHAMANISM AND MATERIAL CULTURE STUDIES The inclusion of shamanism in archaeological interpretations has in general run parallel with its adoption in anthropological and comparative theological circles, as discussed above. Until relatively recently, however, such work was largely conﬁned to the study of prehistoric ‘art’, especially in the context of the Palaeolithic painted caves and the early identiﬁcation of their images as artefacts of ‘hunting magic’ (see Bahn and Vertut 1988; cf. Lommel 1967). In the 1960s and 70s, a concern for the material culture of consciousness received new impetus with explorations of narcotics and hallucinogens in the archaeological record (in later years the work



An archaeology of altered states of Andrew Sherratt has been particularly important here, e.g. 1987, 1991). From the 1980s onwards, shamanism has reappeared in archaeological interpretations with some regularity, mostly in the context of the post-processual concern for ancient symbolism and the meaningcontent of material culture. Latterly, the emphasis on cognitive archaeology has increased this trend. Individually, the ‘shamanically relevant’ publications of recent years run well into treble ﬁgures, making separate citation meaningless here: what has been missing in this work is an overview of the ﬁeld as a whole – the stated purpose of this book. There are, of necessity, many omissions. We do not discuss the rich shamanic heritage of the Classical world, the ecstatic cults of the Greeks and Romans; to an extent, some aspects of early Christianity and the desert religions of the Middle East may also be viewed in this light. In many parts of Europe even down to relatively recent times, there were traces of shamanism in the agrarian cults and local folkloric observances of the rural population (see Ginzburg 1983, 1990 and Klaniczay 1990: 129–50 for examples from the Mediterranean, the Baltic and the Balkans). Similarly, available space sadly did not permit a discussion of African and Paciﬁc cultures, nor do we touch upon the belief systems of the central and southern Americas. The ‘shamanic world’, in all its diversity, is vast, and is impossible to cover comprehensively in a volume of this kind – nor is this our aim. The shamanic traditions of all of the regions represented here, and those that are not, could and do form the subject of book-length studies in their own right. Instead, this volume has been conceived as an introduction to the ﬁeld, focusing deliberately on the northern hemisphere while taking occasional diversions to follow speciﬁc lines of enquiry and interpretation. We begin with Siberia and Central Asia, the ‘cradle of shamanism’ discussed above, which has been curiously neglected in recent archaeological works on this aspect of early belief. We then move eastwards to North America, Canada and Greenland, and conclude by moving out of the arctic and sub-artic territories to Northern Europe and a group of papers that explore new dimensions, even new deﬁnitions, of shamanism outside this circumpolar sphere. The geographical organisation has been chosen advisedly, because all of shamanic research is characterised by cross-cutting themes that would soon render redundant any attempt to draw them out in individual sections. In allowing the regional variations of northern shamanism to emerge, we hope to simultaneously provide the reader with a comprehensive survey of archaeological approaches to speciﬁc shamanistic themes through studies of prehistoric ‘art’, both portable and parietal; constructions of gender, identity and the body, including their articulation in dress and costume; landscape; architecture; mortuary behaviour; and human–animal relationships. We also address issues such as the interpretation of shamanic beliefs in terms of cognitive neuroscience, and the response to ancient shamanism among modern Pagans.



Shamanism and rock art The ﬁeld of rock art research is a special case, as it is here that the archaeological employment of shamanic interpretations has undoubtedly been most prominent in the last two decades. Perhaps as a result of the considerable inﬂuence that this exciting work has exerted on shamanic studies in a broader sense (see Price 2001a), the application of shamanic metaphors to parietal art has also aroused surprisingly vitriolic reactions from a small minority of researchers. However, such Pavlovian responses have earned little sympathy in the wider profession, and most recent collections exploring the current state of rock art research have included appropriately detailed reviews of shamanic approaches (e.g. Helskog and Olsen 1995; Chippindale and Taçon 1998). For this reason we shall not concentrate on this material here.



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Neil S. Price However, the very signiﬁcant prominence that rock art interpetations have assumed in the archaeology of shamanism does require an overview of this work, here provided in chapter 2 by David Lewis-Williams, the pioneer of these approaches in southern Africa and one of the most internationally inﬂuential scholars in shamanic research. We here go back to the source for explanatory models that have been much imitated in the subsequent work of others, tracing the development of ideas that have set the pattern for this branch of shamanic interpetation in archaeology: from entoptic phenomena and altered states of consciousness, dreams, transformation and spirit animals, to the crucial concept of the rock surface as a membrane between the worlds, through to recent work emphasising the past and present political context of the art; Lewis-Williams’ paper also includes a bibliography of the major literature within this ﬁeld. The ﬁrst of the papers on Siberia and Central Asia, by Katja Devlet (chapter 3), also considers rock art, but from a quite different perspective to the ‘southern African School’ by putting forward an empirical discussion of imagery related to ritual costume and the shamanic coat. Western readers in particular may be astonished by the detail of the motifs presented, in many cases for the ﬁrst time in an English-language publication: there surely cannot be a closer correlation between recent, ethnographically recorded data and archaeological ﬁnds from the distant past, though the exact (causal?) nature of their relationship is intriguing. Andrzej Rozwadowski takes a different approach in chapter 5 by reviewing the above-mentioned discussion of entoptic phenomena ‘ten years on’, presenting a critically-aware reappraisal of images in the rock art of Kazakhstan, focusing not on individual motifs but on their combination and landscape context.



Shamanism and portable art The focus on shamanic interpretations of rock art has tended to obscure the role played by images on portable objects, and by material culture related to shamanic practices but not directly part of the shaman’s ‘equipment’. In chapter 11 Thomas Dowson and Martin Porr move directly on from discussions of Upper Palaeolithic cave art to the plastic decoration of sculpted anthropomorphic ﬁgurines found in Germany, arguing that they must be seen in a similar shamanic context to the paintings that have received more attention. Their detailed analysis of markings on the carvings, and their themes of human-animal transformation, suggest new interpretations of early Stone Age beliefs. Patricia Sutherland analyses a different, and far more extensive, repertoire of shamanic artefacts, from the Palaeo-Eskimo cultures of northern Canada. In chapter 9 she reviews a wide range of objects, some puzzling, all beautifully carved, that chart the arctic hunters’ relationship to their prey and the other beings (both real and in spirit form) that seem to have populated their environment. Again, themes of transformation and trance visions recur in this material, and we can trace a dim ancestry between the ‘X-ray’ depictions of animals and similar motifs in Siberian shamanism. Our third example of portable shamanic ‘art’ comes from Siberia itself, where in chapter 4 Natalia Fedorova surveys a century of interpretations that have been applied to the cast bronze ﬁgures of warriors, birds and bears that emerged in the ﬁrst century BC. She examines the case for shamanic iconography in the metalwork in the light of changing ideologies and social stratiﬁcation during the Iron Age, and presents a new conclusion.



Shamanism and landscape In chapters 6 and 7 we take a long step back from the individual, and examine respectively the shamanic landscapes of the modern-day Siberian Khanty and the hill tribes of the Nepal Himalayas. Peter Jordan and Damian Walter examine shamanic ritual and its practitioners in



An archaeology of altered states relation to space, both of performance and of perception: Jordan traces the signiﬁcance of different zones within the landscape, decoding their combined association with shamanic belief and the seasonal procurement round; Walter contrasts two different types of ritual practitioners – shamans and lineage mediums – and examines how their respective spheres of inﬂuence are linked to spatial perceptions. Both authors focus on the role played by material culture in articulating and expressing these ideas, and confront the archaeological implications. Like Håkan Rydving’s innovative studies of Sámi religion (e.g. 1987, 1993a), these works look further to the reconstruction of a partly lost shamanic perspective from the memories that it has left behind, working within a ‘postshamanistic’ thought-world in which the old ideas are still potent but obscurely transformed. This can even involve a kind of shamanism without shamans, which can perhaps best be formulated as a ‘shamanic approach to life’ (Willerslev In press, on Yukaghir hunters in Siberia; additional examples of the same phenomenon can be found in other accounts of recent ﬁeldwork among Siberian groups, such as Humphrey 1983 and Pentikäinen 1998).



Shamanic architecture Leading on from the broad canvas of landscape and ‘shamanic space’ we come to essays on architectural constructions speciﬁcally built in connection with shamanic practices. In chapter 10, Hans Christian Gulløv and Martin Appelt provide one of our most extraordinary case studies with their report of excavations in High Arctic Greenland, more than 1,000 km north of the arctic circle at the point where the ﬁrst immigrants are believed to have crossed over from northern Canada. Referring to detailed ethnographies and archaeological data on the ancestral Inuit and their predecessors, they discuss the construction of a megalithic stone structure used for collective shamanic rituals, preserved largely intact by the freezing conditions for over a millenium. In chapter 12, Aaron Watson similarly breaks new, though utterly different, ground in considering the aural dimensions of shamanic practice. His sonic experiments inside megalithic structures from the British Neolithic suggest that their design incorporated elements that caused sound to behave in unusual ways, and that altered states of consciousness – even trance – could be induced through drumming and other percussive practices. His demonstration of how the movement of the drummer affected the sonic patterns and thus the neuropsychological responses of the listeners is startling, as is the realisation that sounds made inside one structure could be heard inside another nearby, while nothing could be heard by those standing outside. What was the role of sonic performance in the function of megalithic architecture in the Neolithic and early Bronze Age?



Shamanism and identity From the earliest observations, scholars of shamanic practice have focused on the highly complex gender constructions that are associated with almost all such rituals (see Schmidt and Voss 2000 for recent overviews). The so-called ‘soft-men’ of Siberia and the ‘berdaches’ of the Native Americans are well-known, if somewhat misleading, archetypes in this context, and the sexual elements touched on above in relation to Scandinavian shamanism are of vital importance here. These have formed the primary focus of attention for generations of Russian researchers, as well as for more recent scholars such as Bernard Saladin d’Anglure and Sabine Lang. This material is reviewed here by Sandra Hollimon in chapter 8, who argues that the systems of multiple gender that characterise(d) many First Nations peoples in North America should be accepted as the rule rather than the exception when examining the earlier prehistory of the continent.



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Neil S. Price The theme of social identity and the deliberate construction of shamanic experience is echoed by Howard Williams, who in chapter 13 discusses the evidence for an ‘ideology of transformation’ manifested in the mortuary behaviour of the early Anglo-Saxons. Using shamanic metaphors, he argues that the social identity of the dead was renegotiated through their cremation together with specially selected – perhaps even specially bred – animals, merging different aspects of their natures in the transformative medium of ﬁre.



Variation and change in shamanism and its sources Another theme running throughout the book is the dynamic nature of shamanic practice and belief – in all the examples presented these patterns of behaviour are never static, but instead both change over time and vary from one region to the next. The common elements that empower a shamanic interpretation are discussed alongside the individual traits that distinguish its culturally speciﬁc expressions. We hope that this variation is also emphasised in the range of contributions here, from the remote prehistory of the Upper Palaeolithic to ﬁeldwork among modern peoples. The use of anthropological analogy to bridge sometimes immense gaps of time and location is a great temptation in shamanic research, and the scholars whose studies are presented here all work with a deliberate concern for the distinctions between ethnographic data and archaeological sources. Many deﬁnitions for shamanism are offered in these pages, but all are individually outlined by reference to the long tradition of shamanic research sketched above and ultimately dating to the ill-fated Avvakum’s ﬁrst observations among the Evenki in the seventeenth century. At all times, this archaeology of shamanism remains sharply aware of its human sources: the indigenous peoples on whom virtually all our understanding of shamanism is based. This is important, as is the observation that the current resurgence of shamanic interpretation among archaeologists is ﬁrmly a part of this tradition, and is unrelated to the growing popular interest in shamanism in the context of alternative spiritual philosophies. In this volume we have deliberately sought not to avoid this aspect of shamanic perceptions, but wish instead to promote dialogue, believing that a willingness to meet – in a balanced way – the challenges brought by these new perspectives on the past is a fundamental prerequisite for archaeologists working in this ﬁeld. For this reason, considerable space is devoted here to a discussion of these issues, linking to a more extensive review later in the book.



MODERN PAGANISM AND THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF (NEO-)SHAMANISM Several scholarly works have appeared in recent years treating the emergence of neo-shamanic movements in the Western world (a selection are reviewed by Bowie 2000: 209–13; see also Vitebsky forthcoming). However, modern Pagans of all persuasions have themselves been active in publicising their beliefs, and some of these works, such as the monumental alternative survey of prehistoric Britain produced by the musician and poet Julian Cope (1998), are certainly worthy of serious consideration by archaeologists: a close reading makes it clear that the latter share a surprising majority of concerns – if not approaches – with Pagans (see Darvill 1999). An offhand academic rejection of differently-framed perspectives ironically risks alienating a part of archaeology’s public which is actively interpreting, using and experiencing the past in precisely the way that many theorists have long been advocating. It should also be noted that a promotion of dialogue in no way obstructs archaeologists’ critical evaluation of different views of the past (the spectre of ultimately empty relativism conjured up by many opponents of postprocessualism has long since been laid to rest).



An archaeology of altered states Many academics react with alarm to any association of their work with alternative religious beliefs and the perceived professional ridicule that can attach to them, while others strive for increasing dialogue and collaboration with groups of ‘neo-shamans’ and others working within the broad traditions of modern Paganism. The contributors to this volume fall into both camps, and the balance of papers is intended to reﬂect this ongoing debate and tension in archaeological shamanic research. The majority of academic archaeologists probably see themselves as somewhat astride this division, being generally materialists maintaining a deliberately wide distance between their own work and the beliefs of modern Pagans, while hopefully remaining open to dialogue. Clearly, mutual respect must form the foundation of any effective reciprocity, but beyond this three distinct issues – often wrongly conﬂated – emerge in the relationship between neo-shamanists and archaeologists. First, there are debates centring on the right of open interpretation and access (in every sense) to the past, especially as physically represented by ancient monuments. This is the area of broadest archaeological agreement with the position taken by many neo-shamanists, who request a proportionate level of consultation on heritage management policies relating to the public interpretation, and perhaps excavation, of places seen as spiritually signiﬁcant. Unfortunately polarised positions have occasionally been adopted on both sides here, but there are indications of increasing mutual comprehension and sympathy. There are clearly also questions of balance to consider, remembering that this does nevertheless concern a minority interest – if 16 per cent of visitors to Avebury outside the periods of Pagan festivals come there for spiritual reasons (Wallis, this volume), presumably 84 per cent do not – but this viewpoint could perhaps be equally applied to sites associated with other faiths. Particularly in the wake of the controversial excavations at ‘Seahenge’, the Bronze Age timber structure discovered in 1999 at Holme-NextThe-Sea on the east coast of England and discussed by Wallis below, there are signs that archaeologists and Pagan groups are moving into more productive positions in their relationship. The second main issue in this context concerns the speciﬁc interpretative contribution of neo-shamanist groups. Many Pagans argue that their beliefs, and particularly the ways in which these are put into practice, provide them with a unique insight into the nature of what they perceive as similar beliefs in the past. It is here that many archaeologists differ sharply from neoshamanist opinion, ﬁnding it hard to credit any link (beyond basic inspiration) between ancient practices and modern neo-shamanic rituals often given the same names by their adherents. This is not in any way an expression of doubt as to the sincerity of modern Pagans, but merely to question the privileging of their understandings of ancient religion above those of anyone else. From a purely academic viewpoint, with all its inherent biases and limitations, it is almost always impossible to ‘reconstruct’ ancient shamanic rituals; the claim that this can be achieved by other means – operative and spiritually empowered – remains to most archaeologists an article of faith, with all its inherent biases and limitations. Here, too, there are those who argue for greater common ground than is readily perceived, but there is little doubt that any progress (as deﬁned variously by the different parties involved) will be slow. This question of shamanism as a living belief system lies at the heart of the third area of concern, namely the relationship between the traditional cultures from which almost all our knowledge of shamanism derives, and those who transform this knowledge into new practices ﬁrmly rooted in the developed nations of the West. Many indigenous peoples regard neoshamanism as little more than an expression of ‘consumer religion’, an essentially familiar process of cultural imperialism and carefully selective appropriation played out in a new form by spiritually jaded Westerners, and exclusively on their terms. Harsh though this assessment sounds, it is worth stating clearly, as there is a widespread sense of frustration among indigenous groups who feel that archaeologists prefer to play down such differences in the cause of a liberal



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Neil S. Price pluralism within the discipline. The multitude of stresses placed upon indigenous cultures around the globe, very many of which are the inheritors of shamanic traditions in various manifestations, frequently threaten the very continuation of their lifestyle in its most fundamental form. In this context, the depth of bitterness felt towards neo-shamanists, who are seen as collaborative agents of this process of cultural oppression, truly has to be seen to be understood. As noted above, archaeologists in general have usually been bystanders in this conﬂict, perhaps unjustiﬁably, as material culture studies has long been implicated in many aspects of the debate on indigenous rights; however, those archaeologists who work closely with indigenous groups almost exclusively take their part in these discussions – a further dimension of the tensions between academics and neo-shamanists. In this as in other aspects of these issues, we should of course note the difﬁculties of generalising about ‘indigenous peoples’, ‘neo-shamanists’ or, indeed, ‘archaeologists’. All these terms naturally cover a multitude of organisations and individuals, and here it should be emphasised that the vast majority of neo-shamanists clearly have nothing but respect for the indigenous groups who accuse them of stealing their spiritual heritage. They are profoundly saddened by what they feel to be a misunderstanding of intent, and indeed regard their embracing of neo-shamanism as a sign of even deeper commitment to the values of what they often see as more psychologically healthy cultures, a way to greater harmony with the environment and their fellow humans that is in active opposition to the very agenda with which they are often identiﬁed by traditional peoples. However, indigenous spokespeople have been quick to point out that ‘good intentions’ also abounded among the European empires that had the most devastating impact on their way of life. There are, furthermore, darker sides to a small minority of neo-shamanic groups, who take their beliefs into the realm of explicitly political appropriations of archaeology, especially on the far right of the political spectrum. The activities of such groups, particularly in North America, further complicate the relationship between modern Pagans (the vast majority of whom abhor such extremism) and archaeologists. Another factor also arises here, as Piers Vitebsky (1995: 151) has noted when he describes how the values commonly found as a fundamental part of neo-shamanic lifestyles – though by no means exclusive to them (such as vegetarianism) – are frequently at odds with those prevailing in traditional shamanic cultures. He warns of a worrying trend in which, because of this, a few neo-shamanic groups are beginning to look unfavourably on the practices of indigenous peoples, and to ﬁnd them wanting. This is clearly a problem, and one which again goes to the core of related concerns in modern archaeology, as articulated in the growing awareness of post-colonial context and the necessity of acknowledging the indigenous voices of the Third and Fourth worlds. In the ﬁnal chapter of this volume, Robert Wallis addresses all these questions, arguing persuasively from his dual position as both an academic archaeologist and active neo-shaman. Clearly, modern Paganism can no longer be ignored by archaeologists working in this ﬁeld, any more than we can disassociate ourselves from other political issues of race, sexuality and gender. Wallis claims that the archaeology of shamanism must in some way begin with the archaeology of neo-shamanism: few archaeologists may agree with this controversial assessment, but many are coming to see that such perspectives must at least be recognised and included in their work.



CONCLUSION The research history of shamanic studies, in any discipline, has always followed a cyclical pattern of deﬁnition and redeﬁnition: the archaeology of shamanism is no exception to this. However, as with the development of theoretical perspectives in archaeology, the incorporation



An archaeology of altered states of ideas that originated in anthropology, comparative theology and related areas of research inevitably involves their transformation into something new, and uniquely related to material culture studies. Much has been written in recent years about an ‘archaeology of mind’, with various permutations of cognitive approaches on offer, and the search for ancient thought patterns, ‘world-views’ and ‘mind-sets’ is now part of the archaeological mainstream. However, there can be few areas of archaeology so intimately bound up with these aspirations as the study of shamanism, itself deﬁnable as a view of the world, a particular perception of the nature of reality. We should not forget that in the shamanic societies contacted and documented through early modern ethnography (and still existing under cultural siege in many parts of the globe), the understanding of ‘shamanism’ that the community shared with the ‘shaman’ provided the ultimate basis for the continuation of existence: the essential pattern of what it was to be a human being in those cultures. There can be little doubt that this kind of perception – and above all its impact on the material traces that constitute our research base – is fundamental for our own comprehension of prehistoric peoples and the worlds in which they understood themselves to move. Through an archaeological examination of shamanism we necessarily draw nearer these intangibles that are so important a part of our research but yet so difﬁcult to close with. The papers in this book demonstrate a variety of avenues by which to approach these elusive mentalities, and it is hoped that they may serve as a introduction for others wishing to pursue a similar goal – a true archaeology of altered states.



REFERENCES Agapitov, N.N. and Khangalov, M.N. (1883) Materiali dlja izuchenija shamanstva v Siberi, Irkutsk: no publisher credited. Anisimov, A.F. (1963) ‘The shaman’s tent of the Evenks and the origin of the shamanistic rite’, in H.N. Michael (ed.) Studies in Siberian Shamanism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Atkinson, J.H. (1992) ‘Shamanisms today’, Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 307–30. Bahn, P. and Vertut, J. (1988) Images of the Ice Age, London: Windward. Balzer, M.M. (1990) Shamanism: Soviet Studies of Traditional Religion in Siberia and Central Asia, New York: Sharpe. Bogoras, V.G. (1911) The Chukchee, Publications of the Jesup North Paciﬁc Expedition vol. XI, New York: American Museum of Natural History. Bowie, F. (2000) The Anthropology of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell. Castrén, M.A. (1853) Vorlesungen über die ﬁnnische Mythologie, Nordische Reisen und Forschungen vol. 3, St Petersburg: Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Chippindale, C. and Taçon, P. (eds) (1998) The Archaeology of Rock-art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cope, J. (1998) The Modern Antiquarian: A Pre-millenial Odyssey through Megalithic Britain, London: Thorsons. Czaplicka, M.A. (1914) Aboriginal Siberia: A Study in Social Anthropology, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Darvill, T. (1999) ‘Music, muses, and the modern antiquarian: a review article’, The Archaeologist 34: 28–9. Diószegi, V. and Hóppal, M. (eds) (1978) Shamanism in Siberia, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Dixon, R.B. (1908) ‘Some aspects of the American shaman’, Journal of American Folkore 21: 1–12. Donner, K. (1922) Bland samojeder i Siberien. Helsinki: Söderström. DuBois, T.A. (1999) Nordic Religions in the Viking Age, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Edsman, C.-M. (ed.) (1967) Studies in Shamanism, Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. Eliade, M. (1964) Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, New York: Pantheon. Furst, P. (1974) The roots and continuities of shamanism, ArtsCanada 184/7: 33–50.



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Neil S. Price Ginzburg, C. (1983) [1966] The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. —— (1990) Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath. London: Hutchinson. Granö, J.G. (1919–21) Altai: upplevelser och iakttagelser under mina vandringsår. 2 vols, Helsinki: Söderström. Guenther, M. (1999) ‘From totemism to shamanism: hunter-gatherer contributions to world mythology and spirituality’, in R.B. Lee and R. Daly (eds) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Helskog, K. and Olsen, B. (eds) (1995) Perceiving Rock Art: Social and Political Perspectives, Oslo: Novus. Holmberg [Harva], U. (1915) Lappalaisten uskonto, Borgå: Poorvoosa. —— (1922) The Shaman Costume and its Signiﬁcance, Turku: University of Åbo. —— (1927) Finno-Ugric, Siberian [mythology]. The mythology of all races, Vol. 4, Boston: Archaeological Institute of America. —— (1938) Die religiösen Vorstellungen der altaischen Völker, Helsinki: Suomalainen tiedeakatemia. Hóppal, M. (ed.) (1984) Shamanism in Eurasia, Göttingen: Herodot. Hóppal, M. and Howard, K. (eds) (1993) Shamans and Cultures, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Hóppal, M. and Pentikäinen, J. (eds) (1992) Northern Religions and Shamanism. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Hóppal, M. and von Sadovszky, O. (eds) (1989) Shamanism Past and Present, 2 vols, Budapest: Ethnographic Institute. Hultkrantz, Å. (1965) ‘Types of religion in the arctic hunting cultures: a religio-ecological approach’, in H. Hvarfner (ed.) Hunting and Fishing, Luleå: Norrbottens Museum. —— (1973) ‘A deﬁnition of shamanism’, Temenos 9: 25–37. —— (1979) The Religions of the American Indians. Berkeley: UCP. —— (1993) ‘Introductory remarks on the study of shamanism’, Shaman 1/1: 3–14. —— (1998) ‘On the history of research in shamanism’, in J. Pentikäinen, T. Jaatinen, I. Lehtinen and MR. Saloniemi (eds) Shamans, Tampere: Tampere Museum. Humphrey, C. (1980) ‘Theories of North Asian shamanism’, in E. Gellner (ed.) Soviet and Western Anthropology, London: Duckworth. —— (1983) Karl Marx Collective: Economy, Society and Religion in a Siberian Collective Farm, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jochelson, W. (1908) The Koryak, Publications of the Jesup North Paciﬁc Expedition, Vol. VI, New York: American Museum of Natural History. Klaniczay, G. (1990) The Uses of Supernatural Power, Cambridge: Polity Press. Larsson, T.P. (ed.) (2000) Schamaner: essäer om religiösa mästare, Falun: Nya Doxa. Layton, R.H. (2000) ‘Shamanism, totemism and rock art: ‘Les chamanes de la préhistoire’ in the context of rock art research’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10/1: 169–86. Lehtisalo, T. (1924) Entwurf einer Mythologie der Jurak-Samojeden, Helsinki: Société Finno-Ougrienne. —— (1937) ‘Der Tod und die Wiedergeburt des künftigen Schamanen’, Journal de la Société FinnoOugrienne 48/2: 1–34. Lessa, W.A. and Vogt, E.Z. (eds) (1965) Reader in Comparative Religion, 3rd ed, New York: Harper and Row. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1962) Totemism, London: Merlin. Lewis, I.M. (1981) ‘What is a shaman?’ Folk 23: 25–35. —— (1989) Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism, 2nd ed, London: Routledge. Lommel, A. (1967) Shamanism: The Beginnings of Art, New York: McGraw-Hill. Mikhailovski, V.M. (1895) ‘Shamanism in Siberia and European Russia’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 24: 62–100, 126–58. Motzki, H. (1971) Schamanismus als Problem religionswissenschaftlicher Terminologie, Köln: Brill. Nioradze, G. (1925) Der Schamanismus bei den siberischen Völkern, Stuttgart: no publisher credited. Ohlmarks, Å. (1939) Studien zum Problem des Schamanismus, Lund: Gleerup. Pentikäinen, J. (ed.) (1996) Shamanism and Northern Ecology, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyer. —— (1998) Shamanism and culture. Helsinki: Etnika.



An archaeology of altered states Pentikäinen, J., Jaatinen, T., Lehtinen, I. and Saloniemi, M-R. (eds) (1998) Shamans, Tampere: Tampere Museum. Popov, A.A. (1932) Materialy dlja bibliograﬁ russkoj literatury po enija shamanstva, Leningrad: no publisher credited. —— (1990) Materialen zur Bibliographie der russischen Literatur über das Schamanentum der Völker Nordasiens, Berlin: Schletzer. Potanin, G.N. (1881–3) Rocherki severo-zapadnoi Mongolii. Rezul’tati puteshestviya, ispolnennago v 1876–1877 godakh, St Petersburg: RS. Price, N.S. (2000a) ‘Drum-Time and Viking Age: Sámi-Norse identities in early medieval Scandinavia’, in M. Appelt, J., Berglund and H.C. Gulløv (eds) Identities and Cultural Contacts in the Arctic, Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark and Danish Polar Center. —— (2000b) ‘Shamanism and the Vikings?’, in W.W. Fitzhugh and E.I. Ward (eds) Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. —— (2001a) ‘The archaeology of shamanism: beyond rock-art’, in C. Chippindale, B. Smith and G. Blundell (eds) Seeing and Knowing: Ethnography and Beyond in Understanding Rock-art. —— (2001b) ‘The archaeology of seidr: circumpolar traditions in Viking pre-Christian religion’, in S. Lewis (ed.) Proceedings of the Viking Millenium International Symposium, St John’s: Parks Canada. —— (in press) The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia, Uppsala: Uppsala University Press. Pripuzov, N.V. (1885) Materiali dlja izuchenija shamanstva po Iakuty, Irkutsk: no publisher credited. Radloff, W. (1884) Aus Sibirien, Leipzig: Weigel. Ripinsky-Naxon, M. (1993) The Nature of Shamanism: Substance and Function of a Religious Metaphor, Albany: SUNY Press. Rydving, H. (1987) ‘Shamanistic and postshamanistic terminologies in Saami (Lappish)’, in T. Ahlbäck (ed.) Saami religion, Åbo: Donner Institute. —— (1993a) The End of Drum-Time: Religious Change Among the Lule Saami, 1670s-1740s, Uppsala: Uppsala University Press. —— (1993b) Samisk religionshistorisk bibliograﬁ. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press. Schefferus, J. (1673) Lapponia, Frankfurt: no publisher credited. Schmidt, R.A. and Voss, B.L. (eds) (2000) Archaeologies of Sexuality, London: Routledge. Shashkov, S. (1864) Shamanstvo v Sibirii, St Petersburg. Sherratt. A. (1987) ‘Cups that cheered: the introduction of alcohol to prehistoric Europe’, in W. Waldren and R. Kennard (eds) Bell Beakers of the Western Mediterranean: The Oxford International Conference 1986, Oxford: BAR. —— (1991) ‘Sacred and profane substances: the ritual use of narcotics in later Neolithic Europe’, in P. Garwood, D. Jennings, R. Skeates and J. Toms (eds) Sacred and Profane: Proceedings of a Conference on Archaeology, Ritual and Religion, Monograph 32, Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology. Shimkevich, P.P. (1896) Materiali dlja izuchenija shamanstva po Goldi, Khabarovsk: no publisher credited. Shirokogoroff [sic], S.M. (1935) Psychomental Complex of the Tungus, London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner. Sieroszewski, W. (1902) ‘Du chamanisme d’après les croyances Yakoutes’, Revue de l’histoire des religions 46: 204–33, 299–338. —— (1993) [1896]. Iakuty: opyt etnograﬁcheskogo issledovaniia, 2nd ed., Moskva: Rossiiskaia politicheskaia entsiklopediia. Siikala, A-L. and Hóppal, M. (eds) (1992) Studies on Shamanism, Helsinki: Finnish Anthropological Society. Stadling, J. (1912) Shamanismen i norra Asien, Stockholm: Cederquist. Taksami, C.M. (1998) ‘Siberian shamans’, in J. Pentikäinen, T. Jaatinen, I. Lehtinen and M-R. Saloniemi (eds) Shamans, Tampere: Tampere Museum. Thomas, N. and Humphrey, C. (eds) (1994) Shamanism, History and the State, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Vitebsky, P. (1995) The Shaman, London: Macmillan. —— forthcoming. The New Shamans: Psyche and Environment in an Age of Questing, New York: Viking Penguin.



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Neil S. Price Wallace, A.F.C. (1966) Religion: An Anthropological View, New York: Random House. Willerslev, R. (in press) ‘The hunter as a human ‘kind’: hunting and shamanism among the Upper Kolyma Yukaghirs of Siberia’, in T.A. Vestergaard (ed.) Religious Ideas and Practices in the North Atlantic Area, Moesgård: Centre for North Atlantic Studies. Zelenin, D. (1936) ‘Die animistische Philosophie des sibirischen Schamanismus’, Ethnos 1/4: 81–5. —— (1937) ‘Zur Frage der Entwicklungeschichte der primitiven Religionen’, Ethnos 2/3: 74–91. —— (1952) Le culte des Idoles en Sibérie, Paris: Payot. Znamenski, A.A. (1999) Shamanism and Christianity: Native Encounters with Russian Orthodox Missions in Siberia and Alaska, 1820–1917. Westport: Greenwood Press.



An archaeology of altered states



Chapter Two



Southern African shamanistic rock art in its social and cognitive contexts J.D. Lewis-Williams



The images of San (Bushman) rock art1 are among the most captivating and best understood in the world. This dual claim may read like the rhetoric of a tourist brochure or a chauvinist’s hyperbole. It is nevertheless justiﬁable. The ﬁrst part of my claim is supported by the endless variety, delicacy, ﬁne shading, and animation that one ﬁnds in the, literally, many thousands of rock shelters scattered throughout the subcontinent. These are the characteristics of the art that account for its popularity and abiding interest. But they are also responsible for an assumption that has bedevilled study of the art since the ﬁrst researchers started to investigate it in the nineteenth century. It was almost universally assumed that the images that we ﬁnd so exquisite were made as ends in themselves and that they had no social or symbolic signiﬁcances; they merely depicted animals and people. Arising from this notion, the art-for-art’s-sake explanation held sway for many decades. Researchers claimed that the San made the images as objets d’art, to entertain and be admired by their fellows; the paintings were thought ‘to record scenes and events, sometimes the loss of a headman or ruler or some other misfortune, but more often a scene of beauty remembered for its aesthetic qualities’ (Cooke 1969: 150). Even today, when we know a great deal about the cognitive and cosmological signiﬁcances of the images, it is hard to believe that the care that was so obviously taken in shading and depicting tiny details was not admired at the time when the images were made. A possible aesthetic component is, however, insufﬁcient to explain the meanings of the images. The images were made in socially contingent circumstances that were, of course, very different from those of the researchers who study them and that in all probability did not embrace twentieth-century Western notions of commodiﬁed ‘art’. The sheer beauty of the images has blinded many a researcher to aspects of San society and belief that may have impinged on the making and meaning of the paintings. Indeed, it was long assumed that researchers could know nothing about the beliefs of the people who made the images and that they should therefore concentrate on elucidating stylistic sequences in the same way that art historians recognise ‘schools’ of Western art (e.g. Burkitt 1928). Today we know that such pessimism is unfounded and that there is as much evidence for the second part of my opening claim as there is for the ﬁrst. The images themselves are not the only category of data that requires explanation; they are not the only life-line that we have to the



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J.D. Lewis-Williams ancient rock painters. Both nineteenth- and twentieth-century records have preserved a great deal about San beliefs, myths, rituals and general way of life. Like all ethnographies, these records are incomplete and must be seen in the context of the times and manner of their recording. Still, whatever the limitations of the ethnography, the images cannot be explained in isolation from it, any more than a Renaissance painting of the Nativity can be understood in isolation from Christian beliefs, Church history, and the Bible. San image-making must be set in its intellectual and social contexts; the ethnography and the images should be studied in tandem as mutually illuminating corpora of data: the ethnography sends us to the painted rock shelters with more informed ideas about what to look for; and the images return us to the ethnography to seek explanations for their enigmatic features and, moreover, for their apparently ‘literal’ components. When researchers direct their attention to the ethnographic record, it soon becomes apparent that the art is not a literal ‘narrative’ of San life: it does not ‘reﬂect’ daily life with its social structures and economy. Nor are the animals depicted a reﬂection of the range of species that lived alongside of the image-makers (Vinnicombe 1976; Lewis-Williams 1981); even hunting, often taken to be a major theme of the art, is comparatively rarely represented (Pager 1971: 335–6). How, then, did San image-making articulate with the lives and beliefs of the imagemakers? In the ﬁrst place, it is necessary to recall that material culture, far from passively reﬂecting daily life, is variously implicated in the construction, reproduction and subversion of beliefs and social relations (Hodder 1982a and b; Shanks and Tilley 1987; Giddens 1984; Bordieu 1977). In daily life, human beings manipulate material culture to achieve ends of which they are often perfectly aware. By manipulating items of material culture they attempt, successfully or unsuccessfully, to shift the locus of power, to exploit social relations, in short, to intervene in their socio-political environment. Now, if rock art images are items of material culture, which they surely are, they can be interrogated as socio-political interventions rather than as passive reﬂections (cf. Conkey 1993). Moreover, an art as detailed and varied as that of the San holds exceptional promise of success for such an undertaking. In rock arts where the imagery is largely uniform and repetitive it is much more difﬁcult to link notions of human intervention and agency to speciﬁc images and features of images. With San rock art, researchers can go beyond generalised, theory-derived assertions about ‘the art’ to precise demonstration that deals with speciﬁc images and their intelligible features; in many other archaeological contexts this is a difﬁcult task indeed (Johnson 1989). To show that the making of San rock art images was only one part of a concatenation of social events and processes and that they were ‘used’ in multiple ways after their apparent completion, I begin by sketching in outline the area of San belief and life with which the images were principally concerned. I then show that the production and consumption of the art was situated in a web of social relations that were negotiated and contested at all stages in the production and use of images (cf. Conkey 1993; Dobres and Hoffman 1994; Dobres 2000).



SAN RELIGION IN ITS SOCIAL AND CONCEPTUAL CONTEXTS Today there is some controversy about the terms that should or should not be used to denote San religion (Lewis-Williams 1992). A century and a half ago, many southern African colonists denied that the San had any religion at all, or indeed were intellectually capable of entertaining religious beliefs. A lone voice of protest against this view was raised in the 1870s by Wilhelm Bleek, the German philologist who was at that time working in Cape Town. He trenchantly declared that San rock art expressed the ‘ideas that most deeply moved the Bushman mind, and



Southern African shamanistic rock art ﬁlled it with religious feelings’ (Bleek 1874: 13). In the theological and political tenor of the time, this was a shocking and subversive assertion. Indeed, Bleek made his claim in the context of a theological dispute in which the Anglican Church charged Bishop J.W. Colenso with heresy because he believed that the Zulu people, with whose evangelisation he was charged, had sincere and genuine beliefs in God and evinced Christian virtues (Spohr 1962; Eberhard 1996; Lewis-Williams 2000). Bleek represented Colenso at the heresy trial because the cleric himself refused to recognise the authority of the Archbishop of Cape Town. In such a prejudiced climate it is not surprising that Bleek’s insights were ignored, and it was many decades before the existence of ‘San religion’ came to be recognised. Bleek and his sister-in-law, Lucy Lloyd, worked largely in the 1870s, before anthropology was a widely accepted discipline and before much was known about the religions of small-scale societies. Devotedly, they took down verbatim what their informants told them about their beliefs, but they evidently understood very little of it; nor did the Bleek family publish the key texts concerned with San religion until the 1930s (Bleek 1933, 1935, 1936). There was, therefore, no debate in the nineteenth century and the ﬁrst decades of the twentieth about what their informants’ religion should be called. Today, in the much more informed anthropological climate of our time, a suitable label for San religion is sometimes disputed. This is no idle logomachy for, as we shall see, the essence of San religion and what it has in common with religions in other small-scale societies impact on our understanding of southern African rock art. To grasp something of that, admittedly elusive, essence, I draw on the Bleek and Lloyd records, which were contemporary with the making of the last images, and also on twentiethcentury records of San religion in the Kalahari Desert some 1,400 km to the north of where the Bleek informants lived (Figure 2.1). Researchers have demonstrated marked parallels between these two San groups, despite their considerable linguistic differences (Vinnicombe 1972a; Lewis-Williams and Biesele 1978; Lewis-Williams 1981, 1988a, 1992; Guenther 1999); the framework, if not all the details, of San religion was widespread. The people whom the Bleek family studied were known as the /Xam-ka !kwe, or simply the /Xam (for a series of articles on the /Xam San see Deacon and Dowson 1996; Deacon 1986, 1988; for verbatim /Xam texts see Bleek and Lloyd 1911; Bleek 1924; Guenther 1989; LewisWilliams 2000). They lived in the semi-arid interior of the southern African plateau (Figure 2.1), a region characterised by hot summers with scattered thunderstorms, and cold, dry winters. They lived in bands, or camps, of on average about twenty-ﬁve people and moved seasonally to exploit the scarce plant foods and waterholes that were liable to dry up or turn bitter in the winter (see /Xam texts in Bleek and Lloyd 1911; Lewis-Williams 2000). They hunted with bows and poisoned arrows. Farther to the east, a similar life-style prevailed in the much better watered Drakensberg mountains, though with due regard to perennial streams and more proliﬁc plant foods. This is a densely painted area on the eastern and southern fringes of the south-eastern mountain massif of South Africa and Lesotho. Both in the land of the /Xam and in the Drakensberg, the San believed in a trickster-deity known as /Kaggen, a word often translated as ‘the Mantis’ (Bleek 1924). The San did not, however, ‘worship’ the preying mantis insect, as the colonists came to believe; the insect was but one of /Kaggen’s many avatars, which included eland, eagles and snakes (for more on /Kaggen see Schmidt 1973; Lewis-Williams 1981:117–26 and 1997; Hewitt 1986). The cosmos which /Kaggen and the /Xam inhabited was three-tiered: there were spiritual realms above and below the level on which people lived. The spiritual realms nevertheless constantly impinged on the lives of people, and the San conception of the cosmos was less clearly formulated than ‘tiered’ and an anthropological description may suggest (Silberbauer 1981: 52, 95; Lewis-Williams 1996, 1997; Guenther 1999).



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Figure 2.1 Map showing the locations of San groups and places mentioned in the text.



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Southern African shamanistic rock art Ritual specialists moved between these realms. They accomplished this kind of transcendence by entering an altered state of consciousness in a large ‘medicine’ dance, in more solitary circumstances, or in dreams. Trance was induced not through the ingestion of psychotropic substances but by intense concentration, prolonged rhythmic dancing, audiodriving and hyperventilation (but see Winkelman and Dobkin de Rios 1989). In the spirit world, they healed the sick of ailments often sent by malevolent spirits of the dead, caused rain to fall, and guided the movements of antelope so that they ran into the hunters’ ambush (Bleek 1933, 1935, 1936; Marshall 1969, 1999; Biesele 1978, 1993; Katz 1982; Katz et al. 1997). In the 1950s researchers in the Kalahari found that up to half of the men and a third of the women in a San camp were ritual specialists of this kind, and the nineteenth-century texts suggest that similar proportions obtained amongst the /Xam. These specialists did not enjoy any political privileges and very few, if any, material beneﬁts. Today those living in the Kalahari still say that they brave the terrors of the spirit world for the beneﬁt of the people whom they represent and not for personal gain (e.g. Katz et al. 1997; but see Wilmsen 1989; Gulbrandsen 1991). The /Xam called these ritual specialists !gi:ten (sing. !gi:xa). A !gi:xa is a person who is full of !gi:, a supernatural potency, or energy, that /Kaggen created and put in many ‘strong’ things, chief of which was the eland, the largest and fattest of all African antelope. !gi:ten activated this potency and caused it to ‘boil’ up their spines and to ‘explode’ in their heads, thus catapulting them into the spirit world (an altered state of consciousness). In the language of the !Kung San of the northern Kalahari such ritual specialists are called n/om k”ausi (sing. n/om k”au). N/om is the equivalent of !gi:, and k”au means ‘owner’. Other San languages have their own words for potency and those who manipulate it. There is thus no indigenous word to denote ritual specialists in all San communities. In the absence of such a term, I use the now-universal Tungus (central Asia) word ‘shaman’ and refer to San religion as ‘shamanism’. (For more on San shamanism see Marshall 1969, 1999; Katz 1982; Biesele 1978, 1993; Katz et al. 1997; LewisWilliams 1981, 1987; Hewitt 1986; Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1999; Guenther 1999; Keeney 1999.) Shamanism is today a disputed category (Atkinson 1992). Some researchers feel that the word has been used to cover too wide a range of beliefs and rituals (for deﬁnitions of ‘shamanism’ see, among others, Shirokogoroff 1935; Eliade 1964; Lommel 1967; Hultkrantz 1973; Bourguignon 1974; Vitebsky 1995). On the other hand, it usefully points to worldwide phenomena. The many varieties of shamanism should come as no surprise: Christianity, too, has widely different churches, ranging from Eastern Orthodox, to Roman Catholic, to charismatic fundamentalist groups, but there is no reasonable objection to referring to all of them as ‘Christian’. Similarly, there are sufﬁcient commonalties between central Asian shamanism, the so-called ‘classic’ shamanism, and that practised in North America and elsewhere. San religious beliefs and rituals fall comfortably into this category, and the general word ‘shamanism’ is therefore appropriate (Lewis-Williams 1992). /Xam San myths show that /Kaggen was the original shaman (Lewis-Williams 1997). He created potency and imbued the eland with it (Bleek 1924). When he created the eland, he was in fact creating the foundation of San shamanism (Lewis-Williams 1997). Together with the eland, /Kaggen protected other large antelope and tried to outwit San hunters and cause the animals to escape from them (Bleek 1924, 1935). He was thus also a ‘Lord of the Animals’, a ﬁgure common in shamanistic communities. To outwit /Kaggen, hunters observed a series of ritual avoidances. Most importantly, ‘shamans of the game’, as the /Xam called them, entered the spirit world to trick the trickster and to guide antelope herds into the hunters’ ambush.



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SAN ROCK ART Whatever other meanings San rock art may have conveyed, it was in large measure concerned with the n/om, rituals and experiences of shamans (Lewis-Williams 1981, 1982, 1987, 1990; Lewis-Williams and Blundell 1998; Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1999; Yates et al. 1985; Dowson 1992; Deacon 1988; Walker 1996). The shamanistic images include: depictions of trance dances in which the men dance with ﬂywhisks and suffer nasal haemorrhages (an indication in San rock art of altered states) while the women, depicted peripherally, sing and clap the rhythm of potency-ﬁlled songs (Figs 2.2, 2.3, 2.4). The eland, the most n/om-ﬁlled animal, is in many regions of southern Africa also the most frequently depicted and the one on which the painters expended most care and energy. In addition, there are images depicting shamanistic activities and hallucinatory percepts, such as out-of-body travel, transformation into an animal, and fantastic rain-animals that were killed in the spirit world so that their blood and milk would fall as rain.



Figure 2.2 Rock painting of a shamanistic dance. In the centre, two or more ﬁgures dance and hold what appears to be a rope studded with white dots; to the right, another ﬁgure holds the line above its head. This line represents the mystical ‘threads of light’ that San shamans climbed to reach God’s realm in the sky where they pleaded for the lives of the sick and for rain (Lewis-Williams et al. 2000). These ‘threads’ can be seen by shamans only; the viewers of this painting thus see what ordinary people at a dance cannot see. To the left, ﬁve seated ﬁgures clap the rhythm of a powerful ‘medicine song’ that will enable the shamans to climb the ‘threads of light’. Above the dance is a line of conical men’s hunting bags, oblong women’s carrying bags, quivers, bows and other objects. Bags were symbols of transition to the spirit world (Lewis-Williams 1996). Below the dance are numerous arrows. Men do not leave dangerous poisoned arrows lying around; these painted arrows may therefore represent the invisible ‘arrows of sickness’ that spirits of the dead shoot at people (Bleek 1935: 5) and that are seen by shamans only. To both the left and the right are women’s digging-sticks, weighted with round bored stones. Women beat on the ground with these stones to contact the spirit world (Bleek 1935: 35–7). Colours: dark red and white. KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg. Copy by Harald Pager.



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Figure 2.3 In this painted shamanistic dance scene, a number of men dance towards a group of seated, clapping women, some of whom have babies on their backs. Marshall (1969: ﬁg. 2) illustrates “Young men dancing their strong approach steps” as they advance to seated, clapping women; a comparison between Marshall’s 1950s photograph and this rock painting is striking. In the painting, the men hold ﬂywhisks and what may be arrows. Flywhisks are closely associated with the trance dance and are not used in everyday life. Some of the men are wearing eared caps. These caps were made from the scalps of small antelope and sewn so that the ears stood up. Game was believed to follow the wearer of such a cap and thus be enticed into the hunters’ ambush. A curious therianthropic ﬁgure wearing dancing rattles is in the centre of the group. Unusually, its antelope head is at the rear, not the head, of the ﬁgure. It represents transformation in the context of the shamanistic dance. Colours: dark red and white. KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg. Copy by Harald Pager.



It is unlikely that every shamanistic vision was depicted; the circumstances of the experience probably determined whether it should be ‘ﬁxed’ or not. Nor is it possible to say that all apparently shamanistic images were made by shamans, for we have very few records of the identities of the painters. It does, however, seem likely that the images that depict visions were made by those who actually experienced them. If ordinary people did paint, the images that they produced are today indistinguishable from those done by shamans; if there were any nonshaman painters, they drew on the same vocabulary of images as did the shamans, and their images were thoroughly integrated into panels of shamanistic paintings. Similarly, images of eland, though delicately shaded, exquisitely delineated and lacking any non-real features and,



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Figure 2.4 In this shamanistic dance group standing and seated women are shown surrounding a single dancing ﬁgure. They are clapping the rhythm of a medicine song. The dancer holds ﬂywhisks and a large number of them are next to him. As in Figure 2.2, there are bags and weighted digging-sticks. One of the women to the left has a hand raised to her nose in a frequently painted posture. The nose was believed to be the seat of potency, and it was from here that blood ﬂowed when a trancer entered an altered state of consciousness (Lewis-Williams 1981). Colour: dark red. KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg. Copy by Harald Pager.



moreover, that may or may not have been made by shamans, are frequently shown in contexts that are clearly shamanistic (Figure 2.5). Indeed, there is evidence, to which I shall come in a moment, that suggests strongly that eland depictions were ‘reservoirs of n/o’ to which people, perhaps not shamans alone, turned when they felt a need for transcendent support (LewisWilliams and Dowson 1990). It is therefore an error to believe that each and every image originated in a speciﬁc vision. Some images may be a blending of numerous visits to the spiritual realm or, such as in the case of eland, a ﬁxing of n/om for various purposes. At this point a further word of caution is necessary. Rather than being a one-dimensional, monolithic shamanistic statement, San rock art deals in subtle and oblique ways with a broad diversity of (nevertheless interrelated) referents, including girls’ puberty rituals, boys’ ﬁrst-kill observances, marriage rites and diverse social relations (Lewis-Williams 1981, 1998, 1999). It would, however, be wrong to suppose that these additional meanings are present in equal proportion to the aspects and implications of shamanism and that they impacted equally on the original San viewers. The context of an image focuses attention on one segment of its semantic spectrum (Lewis-Williams 1990, 1998). In San rock art, the rock face (Lewis-Williams and



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Figure 2.5 One of many rock paintings that show ‘non-real’ relationships between human beings and eland. The emanations of blood and/or foam from the eland’s nose indicate that it is dying; the ‘hanging’ positions of its hoofs suggest that it may be lying on its side or ‘ﬂoating’ in the spirit world. One ﬁgure attends to the eland’s head, a common occurrence in the art, while two others hold the eland’s body. Above the eland, a man is depicted in the typical bending-forward posture that shamans adopt when their n/om causes their stomach muscles to contract painfully (Lewis-Williams 1981). This ﬁgure also bleeds from the nose, an indication that he is ‘dying’ in trance as his spirit leaves his body on extracorporeal travel. This ﬁgure conceptually parallels the dying eland, the source of his n/om. Above and to the right of the eland is a ﬁgure that may be therianthropic and that has a hand raised to its nose (cf. Fig. 2.4). It is in a crossed-legged position that is frequently associated with shamanistic groups (Vinnicombe 1976; Lewis-Williams 1981). Four ﬁgures walk towards the left. Each is ‘inﬁbulated’, that is, each has an enigmatic line drawn across the penis (cf. Fig. 2.4). In front of them is another ﬁgure in an acute bending-forward posture and a number of dots made with the tip of a ﬁnger. Such dots, which appear in many paintings, may represent n/om (Dowson 1989; see also Lewis-Williams and Blundell 1997). Colours: dark red and white. KwaZulu-Natal. Copy by Harald Pager.



Dowson 1990) and associated paintings focus on the shamanistic associations of images (LewisWilliams 1998). This claim for the primacy of shamanistic concerns may, perhaps, be contested because we have no direct access to the original viewers and because, as some researchers have it, meaning is created at the moment of interaction between viewer and image. I doubt the usefulness of these reservations in the study of San rock art. Whatever the variations in personal apprehension of the images may have been, there was, I argue, a notion in the mind of the painter before he or she began to fashion the image, and that shared beliefs made it possible for this notion to be accessed by the majority of viewers.



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J.D. Lewis-Williams In any event, San shamanism is not an ‘optional extra’ for a few people; it was and still is the very framework of San thought and society (Biesele 1978, 1993). Its pervasive and persuasive power is founded largely on altered states of consciousness that everyone has the potential to access, even if only in dreams. Later, I describe an instance in which a woman who was not a shaman received a revelation from the spirit world. Indeed, the shared human nervous system is universally a powerful foundation that can be exploited in socio-political contexts. As Bourguignon (1974: 234) points out, visions acquired in altered states are ‘raw materials for potential cultural utilisation’. Making a similar point, Rappaport (1999: 219) no