A major advance in interpreting rock art, and in rock art theory and method, was made in the 1980's with the development of David Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson’s (1988) interdisciplinary neuropsychological model. This is an ethnographically informed "middle range" theory. They proposed that the neuropsychological model, which had been developed in South Africa, could be applied to Upper Paleolithic European rock art. Unlike the discredited idea of "sympathetic hunting magic," which Lewis-Williams argued was based on anthropologists’ "vague and misguided notions of ‘primitive mentality’ rather than reliable ethnography," the neuropsychological model was an explicitly anthropological model based upon ethnography, medical science, laboratory findings, and Homo sapiens shared neurology (Lewis-Williams 1982:430; 1988:201-204). As a scientific model it made empirical predictions that could be tested against a rock art site, which gave a means of adjudicating between competing interpretations. Rationalist science and scientific methodology were thus applicable to the study of archaeological cognition. The ethnographically informed interpretation of the San rock paintings as the product of shamen who later depicted their visions and hallucinations during altered states of consciousness (ASC) designed to obtain power, turned out to have unexpectedly broad and global application. Ethnographies from around the world, frequently neglected by archaeologists in the past, now could be seen to refer directly or through metaphorical references to the connection between shamen, vision quests, and rock art. The issues of epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics in archaeology that were the subjects of lengthy debates between processualists of the new archaeology like Binford (1987) and the post-processualists like Hodder (1986), and Shanks and Tilley (1987) were viewed as resolvable by Whitley (1992) if the post-processual criticisms of processual methodology were acknowledged as mostly correct, the need for scientific rigor and explanation sought by the New Archaeology was preserved, and a realist, rationalist approach was taken to analysis using scientific methodology to "achieve interpretive and symbolic explanations" (Whitley 1994:xv). Whitley viewed the neuropsychological and ethnohistoric approach to rock art studies of Lewis-Williams and Dowson (1988) to be at "the methodological forefront of archaeology in general" since it "has conjoined the opposing positions in this increasingly rebarbative debate" (Whitley 1994:xv). A cognitive archaeology which is to be scientific and hermeneutic "suggests that archaeology fundamentally is an interpretive endeavor, but one in which scientific method and heuristic play their part" (Whitley 1992:59).
COSQUER, CHAUVET, AND THE USE OF AMS DATING TO COUNTER CLAIMS OF FRAUD BASED UPON STYLISTIC ANALYSIS.
Several very significant Upper Paleolithic caves have been found in southern France during the past few years including, the now famous, Cosquer and Chauvet caves. AMS dating techniques have been used at both of these sites by Jean Clottes et al. (1995) with great effect to verify the age of the caves and refute persons who claimed the paintings were fakes on the "stylistic" ground that the artists were too sophisticated and therefore had to be modern. At Chauvet cave three AMS samples were taken from animal paintings and were dated to around 31,000 BP (Clottes et al. 1995). It was initially argued, for example, that no Upper Paleolithic artist could have done the paintings at Chauvet because they show an understanding of perspective. AMS dating of many paintings and the circumstances of the finds conclusively established their Upper Paleolithic age (Clottes et al.1995). The AMS technique involved physicists removing about half a milligram of charcoal directly from the painting. Since 1990, twenty-five dates from paintings in five caves including Chauvet, Cosquer, Cougnac, Le Portel, and Niaux have been taken and several caves dated to other time periods by other methods have been corrected. The French are also refocusing their studies from the paintings to the context of the cave and environmental questions which have often been overlooked in the past (Clottes 1996:184-185). Examination of the paintings by ethologists, or animal specialists, have given new insights into the degree of familiarity Upper Paleolithic people had with the animals they lived with e.g. conceptually these are not broadly generic bison but show, for example, "the aggressive male bison, the young bison playing, the dead adult," etc. (Clottes 1996:188). For Clottes: "Shamanism provides a framework which makes more sense of this art (Lewis-Williams & Dowson 1988) than any of the previous explanatory theories" (Id.).
In 1996, Jean Clottes and David Lewis-Williams wrote a short piece explaining their collaboration and explicitly stated the elements of their theoretical approach in interpreting some of the Upper Paleolithic caves in France.
"We accept that ethnographic analogy is unavoidable. Refusal to use any ethnographic analogy merely forces researchers to fall back on unacknowledged Western notions of art and artists. But we certainly do not suggest that any single analogy will illuminate 20,000 years of the making and meaning of Upper Palaeolithic art. Instead, we are developing multiple analogies that will build on the San analogy and piece together a complex hypothesis to account for the diversity and historical progression of Upper Paleolithic art. New interpretations deriving from this work are being judged by their internal consistency, the quantity and diversity of data they explain and their heuristic potential. Above all, our interpretations are linked to the Upper Palaeolithic by human universals and what philosophers call strong relations of relevance (Wylie 1988)" (Clottes & Lewis-Williams 1996:138).
Clottes and Lewis-Williams are looking for images that are broadly shamanic and are trying to separate those from images "that may be better explained by some other hypotheses" (Id.). They are also "studying the different uses to which parts of the caves may have been put" (Id.) In their view, a moratorium on interpretation of the Upper Paleolithic caves occurred after structuralist approaches collapsed following the death of Leroi-Gourhan in 1986. As they put it: "Researchers had already begun to doubt the philosophical foundations of his work and also its empirical content. Understandably enough, a new wave of research emphasized a need to return to the data, and interpretation took a back seat" (Clottes & Lewis-Williams 1996:137). Clottes and Lewis-Williams are now attempting to renew interpretation of the cave art.
Rock art is a physical remnant of prehistoric behavior related to subjective experiences and products of the human mind such as myths, institutions, beliefs, etc. (Whitley 1992:61-62) Positivism’s emphasis on "immediately perceived" sense data was criticized by postpositivists or realists as too narrow since many material phenomena can only be indirectly observed, all sense data are theoretically informed, and science should not be defined as simply empirical or methodological since by necessity our senses incorporate presuppositions and generalities (ibid:64). Once it is acknowledged that humans fundamentally tend to perceive what they are looking for and frequently do not perceive what they are not educated to see, it becomes important to make presuppositions consciously explicit and subject to debate, or the unspoken and unexamined presuppositions become "embedded" into "the fabric of the field" e.g. the data (ibid.:65; Reed 1981:477). The positivist idea that one crucial falsifying or verifying test is possible has also been criticized as simplistic and therefore a method or means of validation based upon "inference to the best hypothesis" is needed since many ideas have evidence both confirming and disconfirming them (ibid.:65). If paradigm shifts occur when a new theory matches the empirical evidence better, implicit theoretical disputes may be masked by what appears to be an empirical and methodological debate.
A post-positivist philosophy of science does not "imply only a single approach to research" (ibid.:66). Rationalist cognitive archaeology has a goal and a set of principles for comparing rival theories and recognizes that ontological theories are "true or false by virtue of how the world actually is, independent of ourselves," but that scientific truth is "only progressively approximating the real truth per se" (ibid.:66-67). The set of principles for comparing rival theories include observational nesting or preserving past observational success of prior theories while improving upon them, fertility or guidance for future development, track record or the record of accumulated success of the theory, inter-theory support, smoothness or accounting for observational anomalies, internal consistency, compatibility with well-grounded metaphysical beliefs, and simplicity (Newton-Smith 1981; Whitley 1992:67).
Rock art theorists like Whitley, Lewis-Williams, Dowson, Clottes, and Dronfield have been ahead of archaeology as a whole in using anthropological, testable, rock art theories that model the relationships between human neuropsychology to rock art sites using good "middle range" theory that is grounded in the post-positivist, realist, and rationalist philosophy of science.
The renewed focus on ethnohistoric sources is also a part of this "theory based" form of anthropological archaeology, and so the post-modern crisis of confidence in social-cultural anthropology about the problem of doing ethnographic fieldwork is of some concern. Anthropologists have long recognized the problems of ethnography and the difficulties of obtaining accurate and understandable information about beliefs, values, and meanings directly from informants who may not be able to articulate meaning or beliefs, may use metaphoric language, may themselves misunderstand cultural symbols, may be disinclined to articulate them, or may intentionally mislead and make false statements (Whitley 1992:76). Geertz has even taken a position favoring observation of public events as a means of accessing cultural symbolic systems (Geertz 1973:17). Viewing ethnographic accounts critically and as a raw data set containing multiple sources can alleviate some of the concerns regarding the construction of truth that has caused the current crisis of confidence in post-modern ethnography. Ethnohistoric accounts exist in Scotland, northern England, Finland, Norway, France, etc. that address the meaning of cupmarks. Up to this point they have been largely ignored and have rarely been used even by the anthropological archaeologists.
STYLISTIC ANALYSIS VS. ABSOLUTE DATING
The entry of desert varnish, carbon 14, Accelerated Mass Spectrometry (AMS), thermoluminescence, and chlorine 36 dating has been heralded (perhaps prematurely) as causing a "Post-stylistic" era in the study of rock art, with conferences and publications (e.g. Bahn 1993) that discuss the effect of absolute dating techniques on the primary place that stylistic analysis has had in the study of rock art. In stating his opinion that the Coa Valley petroglyphs, "discovered" in November 1994, were of recent age, Robert Bednarik (1995) even entitled his article in the journal Antiquity: "The Côa petroglyphs: an obituary to the stylistic dating of Palaeolithic rock-art." The obituary may have been premature however because João Zilhão (1995) who wrote the opposing article entitled: "The stylistically Palaeolithic petroglyphs of the Côa valley (Portugal) are of Palaeolithic age: a refutation of their 'direct dating' to recent times" got the dam that would have flooded the paintings stopped, at least temporarily.
Several of the most important people in rock art studies have given opinions on whether or not the petroglyphs are from the Paleolithic period. Those indicating that they are stylistically Paleolithic in age include Bahn (1995); Clottes et al. (1995); Zilhão (1995); and Züchner (1995). On the other side of the argument are the radiocarbon results of Watchman (1995; 1996) and the microerosion arguments of Bednarik (1995a; 1995b; 1995c; 1995d) suggesting a more recent age. One might ask whether or not the dam should not be stopped anyway, even if they are of a more recent age, but the era the paintings were made seems to be a determinative factor in whether or not the dam will be built.
The accuracy of various dating methods has been a subject of heated and public controversy. For example, Ronald Dorn (1997), who pioneered desert varnish dating, has recently taken the position that microscopic carbon 14 dating of the Coa petroglyphs in Portugal is not reliable because the layer of silica that forms over the trapped carbon is permeable. He and Alan Watchman produced similar dates based upon carbon 14 based tests of small samples but Dorn has argued that the dates are not reliable because of this newly discovered fact. In his 1997 article he indicates the technique is not reliable because of, "evidence for the addition of younger carbon in an open system, and evidence of contamination from older sources of carbon." (Dorn 1997). Using another approach based upon a different technique Phillips et al. (1997) have concluded that the "panel faces in the Côa valley, Portugal, were available for engraving during the Upper Palaeolithic, according to 36Cl exposure ages of 16,000 to 136,000 years."
ROCK ART STYLE AND EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
The early assumptions of a linear stylistic evolution in Paleolithic art was already being criticized by Garcia (1993) before the recent dateable finds at Chauvet of early advanced artistic techniques. Garcia pointed out that:
the stylistic method ‘obliges’ the figures being studied to be constrained by hypothetical, evolutive ‘formal rules’ whose credibility is the basis of the fundamental methodology. Any alteration, variation or undervaluation of these formal rules invalidates the method completely, as it destroys the framework supporting the whole deductive-chronological process of the relationship betweenstyle and date (Garcia 1993:37).
The trend towards looking more closely at the soft preserved materials inside caves has resulted in new terminology. Faulkner and Simek (1996) reported on a series of caves in east Tennessee that were discovered with rock art from the Mississippian culture that are now called "mudglyphs." These are images drawn with fingers on mud, clay and other soft material. The imagery was recognizable from other sources and demonstrated the possibility of finding "art" in materials, softer than rock, that are well preserved deep in caves. Their cave was also referred to as "1st Unnamed Cave" because there is nothing blocking the entrance or protecting the site yet. Locatoring information was therefore deleted or generalized and seems to be a current trend.
JEREMY DRONFIELD AND THE ROCK ART OF IRISH PASSAGE GRAVES
Jeremy Dronfield who is working in Ireland with the neuropsychological model has added a statistical component to the theory using associational and distributional indexes of characteristics such as the position of circles and entoptic related phenomena found in the rock art (Dronfield 1993; 1996). Dronfield has explicitly turned to the "vortex or tunnel experience" commonly encountered in altered states of consciousness and described in near death accounts to explain the appearance of circles found in association with the dead in Irish passage tombs (Dronfield 1996). Neurological research suggests the spiral or vortex phenomenon occurs in human beings with spontaneous firing of specific neurons in the V5 or medial superior temporal area of the visual cortex (Dronfield 1996:40). The tunnel experience is also obviously a physically real experience for those charged with bringing the dead down the narrow tunnels to the back of the passage tomb-a physically tangible underground realm of the dead that was still accessible through a tunnel allowing access and reemergence from a real underworld of one’s ancestors. The passage tombs may be an attempt to physically reconstruct a mental journey or experience. Based upon the distribution of the concentrics, Dronfield concluded that the concentrics inside the Irish passage tombs were not simply representations of past passages but "signified the locations of points of access to other worlds" (i.e. for the living and the dead)(ibid.:54). In Dronfield’s view this would make the tombs more than just bone repositories or places for "ritually enacted communication with the dead. They were places where, through myth, ritual and manipulation of the central nervous system, people were able to travel between dimensions, interact with ancestors and other spiritual beings and witness firsthand the making of their contextually constructed worlds" (Id.). Richard (1992) working in Orkney, Scotland has suggested that the passage down the passage tomb structure symbolized the journey towards the otherworld and the back stone was the portal which could only be passed through after death. Having personally crawled through several of these tunnels, I would have to say that it is an experience not easily forgotten and it seems reasonable that these tombs phenomenologically invoked feelings and perceptions which are reconstructable today. A more phenomenological approach focused on envisioning the landscape as it would have been during the Neolithic has also been suggested by Richard Bradley working at rock art sites in north-west Spain, and the British Isles (1989, 1994). The concept of a sacred landscape is an old conception of the landscape in North American rock art studies (Dewdney 1975, Molneaux 1983).
© 1997 call0031@tc.umn.edu