Seeing and Knowing : Understanding Rock Art with and without Ethnography

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Contributors
Acronyms
Chapter 1 Rock art with and without ethnography
	The Lewis-Williams revolution: Studying rock art in southern Africa and beyond
	The dual ethnographic-neuropsychological approach: The classic style of study in the classic area
	Extending beyond the classic style of study in the classic area
	From South Africa to the world, from informed methods to formal methods
	Understanding rock art: Informed methods, formal methods, and the uniformitarian issues
	This book
Chapter 2 Flashes of brilliance: San rock paintings of heaven’s things
	Heavenly bodies, human imaginations
	Heaven on earth in Africa
	Stellar sites in South Africa
	Age determinations
	Potency, astral travel and agency
	Future horizons
Chapter 3 Snake and veil: The rock engravings of Driekopseiland, Northern Cape, South Africa
	Driekopseiland
	Who, and why? Stow’s account
	Bushman or Korana – and other preoccupations
	What, and how old?
	Towards an archaeological context
	Towards meaning
	Driekopseiland landscape and history
Chapter 4 Cups and saucers: A preliminary investigation of the rock carvings of Tsodilo Hills, northern Botswana
	Tsodilo Hills
	The carvings
	Local beliefs
	Antiquity
	Meaning
	Conclusions
Chapter 5 Art and authorship in southern African rock art: Examining the Limpopo-Shashe Confluence Area
	Rock art and regionality
	The study area, its environs, and rock art traditions
	Towards understanding the historical context
	Evidence from excavation
	Evidence from archaeo-linguistic studies and historical sources
	Evidence from the rock art
	Implications
Chapter 6 Archaeology, ethnography, and rock art: A modern-day study from Tanzania
	Tanzania: Rock art and ethnography
	Location, location, location
	Sandawe praxis: Iyari
	Metaphors for fertility: Objects and colour
	Rain-calling
	Archaeology and ethnography in rock art studies: Lessons from the Sandawe
Chapter 7 Art and belief: The ever-changing and the never-changing in the Far West
	Ethnography and North American rock art
	Beyond the tyranny of the ethnographic record
	The conservatism of culture
	The essentialist challenge
	Situating cultural stability and change
	Making supernatural power personal: The emergence of Numic bands and headmen
	Long-term uses of summarising symbols
	Elaborating symbols: Where power becomes personal
	Conservatism versus change
Chapter 8 Crow Indian elk love-medicine and rock art in Montana and Wyoming
	Love-magic and the American elk
	Elk images at rock art sites in Montana and Wyoming
	Summary
Chapter 9 Layer by layer: Precision and accuracy in rock art recording and dating
	Background: Informed and formal approaches in conjunction
	El Ratón and its rock paintings
	People of the Sierra de San Francisco
	Recording methods and techniques
	Relative stratigraphy and dating at El Ratón
	Provisional sequence at El Ratón and some implications for interpretation
	Placement and depiction of motifs in El Ratón
Chapter 10 From the tyranny of the figures to the interrelationship between myths, rock art and their surfaces
	The tyranny
	Choosing the surface
	The panels
	Understanding the elk
	Conclusion
Chapter 11 Composite creatures in European Palaeolithic art
	Identifying composite creatures
	Man–beast
	Beast–man
	Humans and animals
Chapter 12 Thinking strings: On theory, shifts and conceptual issues in the study of Palaeolithic art
	After a founding text
	On theory and theorising
	Shifts in and for the study of Palaeolithic art
	Intellectual shifts and new perspectives
	Thinking strings: Some different conceptual directions
	Are there ‘conclusions’?
Chapter 13 Rock art without ethnography? A history of attitude to rock art and landscape at Froysjoen, western Norway
	Rock art and ethnography
	Rock art of western Norway and western Mozambique
	‘Pre-contact’ natural history and ethnohistory at Froysjoen
	The ‘post-contact’ period: A grand discovery, and its aftermath
	Froysjoen ‘ethnography’ and the making of the hunting-magic explanation
	After hunting magic: The past in the present
	Romancing a mountain: Folklore and myth at Froysjoen
	In the footsteps of Gjessing until paths divide: A brief return to southern Africa
	The value of present-day ethnographies and ethnohistory
Chapter 14 ‘Meaning cannot rest or stay the same’
	‘What is the meaning of your work?’
	Fluidity of oral tradition
	Images are real
	A seamless unity
	Mimesis
	Access to power
	Structure
Chapter 15 Manica rock art in contemporary society
	Studying rock art in Manica Province, Mozambique
	The geography of Manica
	The rock art of Manica
	Manica Valley
	Art in the Guidingue area
	Archaeological excavations
	Shona history and ethnohistory
	Discussion: Art then and art now
Chapter 16 Oral tradition, ethnography, and the practice of North American archaeology
	The changing shape of North American archaeology
	Rock art and the ‘new archaeology’
	Rock art and the ‘newer archaeology’
	Examples: Ethnography, oral tradition and understanding
	Integration of ethnographic information and traditional archaeological data: Implications for archaeology
Chapter 17 Beyond rock art: Archaeological interpretation and the shamanic frame
	Introduction: Southern African rock art research, in southern Africa and elsewhere
	Diversity and definition in a shamanic archaeology
	Shamanism: The big question
	The antiquity of shamanism
	Shamanism and the indigenous voice
	Archaeological interpretation and the shamanic frame
List of figures
List of tables
List of publications by David Lewis-Williams
Index