Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xfwgj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-17T17:07:24.112Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Wrestling with Analogy: A Methodological Dilemma in Upper Palaeolithic Art Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2014

J. D. Lewis-Williams
J. D. Lewis-Williams
Affiliation:
Rock Art Research Unit, Department of Archaeology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2050, South Africa
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1902 Emile Cartailhac published his Mea Culpa d'un Sceptique. His acceptance of the high antiquity of prehistoric art in western Europe followed Capitan and Breuil's convincing discoveries in Font de Gaume and Les Combarelles and reflected a widespread change of opinion. Despite previous scepticism, researchers were beginning to allow that the parietal as well as the mobile art did indeed date back to the Upper Palaeolithic. But this swing in scientific opinion opened up an even more baffling problem: why did Upper Palaeolithic people make these pictures? In the year following Cartailhac's turn-about Salomon Reinach tried to answer this question by developing an analogical argument based on ethnographic parallels. He could see no other way of approaching the problem: ‘Our only hope of finding out why the troglodytes painted and sculpted lies in asking the same question of present-day primitives with whom the ethnography reveals connections’ (Reinach 1903, 259; my translation, his emphasis).

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , 1991 , pp. 149 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Asaad, G. and Shapiro, B. 1986. Hallucinations: theoretical and clinical overview. American Journal of Psychiatry 143, 1088–97.Google ScholarPubMed
Binford, L. R. and Stone, N. M. 1988. Correspondence: Archaeology and theory. Man 23, 375–76.Google Scholar
Bourguignon, E. 1989. Trance and Shamanism: what's in a name? Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 21, 9–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breuil, H. 1952. Four Hundred Centuries of Cave Art. Montignac: Centre d'Étude et de Documentation Préhistoriques.Google Scholar
Chalmers, A. F. 1978. What is this Thing Called Science? Milton Keynes: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Conkey, M. W. 1987. New approaches in the search for meaning? A review of research in ‘Palaeolithic art’. Journal of Field Archaeology 14, 413–30.Google Scholar
Copi, I. M. 1982. Introduction to Logic. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Dobkin de Rios, M. and Winkelman, M. 1989. Shamanism and altered states of consciousness: an introduction. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 21, 1–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dowson, T. A. 1988. Revelations of religious reality: the individual in San rock art. World Archaeology 20, 116–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowson, T. A. 1989. Dots and dashes: cracking the entoptic code in Bushman rock paintings. South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series 6, 84–94.Google Scholar
Dowson, T. A. and Holliday, A. L. 1989. Zigzags and eland: an interpretation of an idiosyncratic combination. South African Archaeological Bulletin 44, 46–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eichmeier, J. and Höfer, O. 1974. Endogene Bildmuster. Munich: Urban and Schwarzenberg.Google Scholar
Eliade, M. 1972. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Furst, P. T. 1976. Hallucinogens and Culture. Navato, Calif.: Chandler and Sharp.Google Scholar
Gould, R. A. 1980. Living Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Halifax, J. 1980. Shamanic voices. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Horowitz, M. J. 1964. The imagery of visual hallucinations. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 138, 513–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Horowitz, M. J. 1975. Hallucinations: an information-processing approach. In Siegel, R. K. and West, L. J. (eds), Hallucinations: Behaviour, Experience and Theory, 163–95. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Klüver, H. 1942.. Mechanisms of hallucinations. In McNemar, Q. and Merrill, M. A. (eds), Studies in Personality, 175–207. New York: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
La Barre, W. 1970. The Ghost Dance: Origins of Religion. Garden City: Doubleday.Google Scholar
La Barre, W. 1972. Hallucinations and the shamanistic origins of religion. In Furst, P. T. (ed.), Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual Use of Hallucinogens, 261–78. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Layton, R. 1987. The use of ethnographic parallels in interpreting Upper Palaeolithic rock art. In Holy, L. (ed.), Comparative Anthropology, 210–39. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J. D. 1980. Ethnography and iconography: aspects of southern San thought and art. Man 15, 467–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J. D. 1981. Believing and Seeing: Symbolic Meanings in Southern San Rock Paintings. London: Acade mic Press.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J. D. 1982. The economic and social context of southern San rock art. Current Anthropology 23, 429–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J. D. 1983a. The Rock Art of Southern Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J. D. 1983b. Introductory essay: science and rock art. South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series 4, 3–13.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J. D. 1984a. The empiricist impasse in southern African rock art studies. South African Archaeological Bulletin 39, 58–66.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J. D. 1984b. The rock art workshop: narrative or metaphor? In Hall, M., Avery, G., Avery, D. M., Wilson, M. L. and Humphreys, A. J. B. (eds), Frontiers: Southern African Archaeology Today, 323–27. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports IS 207.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J. D. 1986. Cognitive and optical illusions in San rock art research. Current Anthropology 27, 171–78.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J. D. 1988. Reality and Non-reality in San Rock Art. Twenty-fifth Raymond Dart Lecture. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press and the Institute for the Study of Man in Africa.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J. D. and Dowson, T. A. 1988. The signs of all times: entoptic phenomena in Upper Palaeolithic art. Current Anthropology 24, 201–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J. D. and Dowson, T. A. 1989a. Images of Power: Understanding Bushman Rock Art. Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J. D. and Dowson, T. A. 1989b. Theory and data: a brief critique of A. Marshack's research methods and position on Upper Palaeolithic shamanism. Rock Art Research 6, 38–53.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J. D. and Loubser, J. H. N. 1986. Deceptive appearances: a critique of southern African rock art studies. In Wendorf, F. and Close, A. E. (eds), Advances in World Archaeology 5, 253–89. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Lommel, A.Shamanism: The Beginnings of Art. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Maggs, T. M. O'C. and Sealy, J. 1983. Elephants in boxes. South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series 4, 44–48.Google Scholar
Marshack, A. 1985. Theoretical concepts that lead to new analytical methods, modes of enquiry and classes of data. Rock Art Research 2, 95–111.Google Scholar
Pfeiffer, J. E. 1982. The Creative Explosion: An Enquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Reichel-Dolmatoff, G. 1969. El contexto cultural de un alucinogeno aborigen, Banisteriopsis caapi. Revista de la Academia Colombia de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Natureles 3, 327–45.Google Scholar
Reichel-Dolmatoff, G. 1978a. Beyond the Milky Way: Hallucinatory Imagery of the Tukano Indians. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin America Center.Google Scholar
Reichel-Dolmatoff, G. 1978b. Drug induced optical sensations and their relationship to applied art among some Colombian Indians. In Greenhalgh, M. and Megaw, V. (eds), Art in Society, 289–304. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Reinach, S. 1903. L'art et la magie: à propos des peintures et des gravures de l'âge du renne. L'Anthropologie 14, 257–66.Google Scholar
Richards, W. 1971. The fortification illusions of migraines. Scientific American 224, 89–94.Google Scholar
Sacks, O. W. 1970. Migraine: The Evolution of a Common Disorder. London: Faber.Google Scholar
Salmon, M. H. 1982. Philosophy and Archaeology. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Shanks, M. and Tilley, C. 1987. Social Theory and Archaeology. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Siegel, R. K. and Jarvik, M. E. 1975. Drug-induced hallucinations in animals and man. In Siegel, R. K. and West, L. J. (eds), Hallucinations: Behaviour, Experience and Theory, 81–161. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Siegel, R. K. 1977. Hallucinations. Scientific American 237, 132–40.Google Scholar
Thackeray, A. I., Thackery, J. F., Beaumont, P. B. and Vogel, J. C. 1981. Dated rock engravings from Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa. Science 214, 64–67.Google Scholar
Tyler, C. W. 1978. Some new entoptic phenomena. Vision Research 18, 1633–39.Google Scholar
Winkelman, M. 1986. Trance states: a theoretical model and cross-cultural analysis. Ethos 14, 174–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wylie, A. 1982. An analogy by any other name is just as analogical: a commentary on the Gould-Watson dialogue. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1, 382–401.Google Scholar
Wylie, A. 1985. The reaction against analogy. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 8, 63–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wylie, A. 1988a. ‘Simple’ analogy and the role of relevance assumptions: implications of archaeological practice. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 2, 134–50.Google Scholar
Wylie, A. 1988b. Comment on J.D. Lewis-Williams and T. A. Dowson ‘The signs of all times: entoptic phenomena in Upper Palaeolithic Art.’ Current Anthropology 29, 231–32.Google Scholar