Performing rock art: contemporary resonances of shamanism

Abstract

At the end of the twentieth century, after the discovery of the Chauvet cave, Jean Clottes and David Lewis-Williams, drawing on the latter's ethnographic fieldwork and neuroscientific study of trance states, jointly propounded a new shamanistic interpretation of Palaeolithic cave art. This approach, which belongs to a tradition of magical-religious exegesis of such art, stirred a heated controversy, which cast it as heterodox. Nevertheless, the shamanistic interpretation resonates with our contemporary culture. First, this approach helps to recast Palaeolithic art in the contemporary context and eventually helps elaborate a heterodox version of art history where contemporary and Palaeolithic art practices meet. Furthermore, the cultural reception and representation of this interpretation as heterodox reveals the impact of contemporary culture, media and technique on archaeology. Finally, it helps us to understand the heterodox Weltanschauung of Palaeolithic people. Just as the alternative worldviews of autochthonous people, it challenges our conception of the world which is essential in the context of the global ecological crisis. Ultimately, it impacts archaeological practices and merges geology and archaeology into an interdisciplinary palaeoscience.