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Overview of Rock Art Interpretation

By Angus R. Quinlan, PhD, RPA

The development and history of rock art interpretation has largely been determined by efforts to understand the Upper Palaeolithic cave paintings of Europe on the basis of ethnographic analogy, largely drawn from Australia but more recently South African analogues have assumed greater importance. Usually one general theory regarding rock art’s symbolic meanings and functions has tended to hold sway though since the 1960s a more pluralistic environment has developed with a number of rival theories competing for the attention of rock art researchers.

The painted caves of Europe were the first body of rock art to be interpreted from a general theory stimulated by recent ethnographic reports. Spencer and Gillen’s (1899) ethnographic reports of the performance of ceremonies to increase game animals and aid hunting amongst Australian Aborigines captured the interest of many early rock art researchers.

Reinach (1903) was one of the first to appreciate the potential of such information for understanding the hunter-gatherer art (albeit from the Upper Palaeolithic) of the European caves. He argued that European cave art largely portrayed game animals and was located in areas of caves difficult to gain access to, thus implying a seriousness of purpose underlying the making of the art. Drawing on Spencer and Gillen’s (1899) ethnographic reports Reinach suggested that cave art was incorporated in rituals of sympathetic magic with the painters seeking to exert magical control over the objects depicted. Thus the art functioned to increase the number of game animals or aid in their hunting. This interpretation was eagerly adopted by the other leading figures of the day, Brueil and Bégouën, whose influential position in the study of cave art ensured that sympathetic magic (or hunting magic) dominated interpretation in Europe until the 1950s (Ucko and Rosenfeld 1967:128-9).

Hunting magic came to dominate North American research following the publication of Heizer and Baumhoff’s (1962) seminal study of the rock art of Nevada and California. In addition to providing a synthesis of existing data they applied a systematic hunting magic interpretation to rock art sites in the Desert West and sought to test their approach by reference to site contexts. They noted an apparent tendency for rock art sites in this region to be located in association with hunting features, such as blinds, or along game trails or on good locations for ambush sites. This was viewed as demonstrating a relationship with hunting magic rituals since the harsh environment of the Desert West would have prompted its hunter-gatherer populations to seek magical assistance to secure economic survival.

Although hunting magic remains popular in some rock art circles as a theory of rock art functions, a number of problems have been raised over the years which have dulled its appeal to most researchers. Firstly, there is a general lack of specific ethnography which observes rock art being used in the context of hunting magic type rituals (Bahn 1991; Rector 1985; Ucko and Rosenfeld 1967). The model’s portrayal of hunter-gatherer life as a grim struggle for survival is now seen as an outdated and inaccurate characterization of hunter-gatherer economic routines (Conkey 1981). In response one can note that hunting magic is not as theoretically implausible as its critics sometimes imply since the use of magic as an aid to economic reproduction is well documented in both hunter gatherer and farming societies (e.g., Malinowski 1935; Steward 1938).

More critical is the charge that hunting magic interpretations tended to be based on misinterpretations of site contexts and presented a selective view of imagery depicted (Bahn 1991; Ucko and Rosenfeld 1967). In the case of the European caves it has become clear that not all the art is located in areas of caves difficult to gain access to and it does not predominantly depict game animals. In Nevada it has become clear that many rock art sites occur in association with normal residential sites, rather than predominantly hunting locales. Further, since the imagery depicted is predominantly indeterminate abstract motifs it cannot really be said to depict game animals. Of course, it could depict game animals—merely we are unable to ‘read’ the art correctly. Looking to the specific character of the art is unlikely to resolve the issue of whether or not its production and use was connected in some way with sympathetic hunting rituals. Likewise, specific site contexts cannot refute or support a hunting magic interpretation since there is no a priori reason why the art would have had to have been made in direct association with hunting. In the case of the European caves the fact that the art was located in caves and not in association with game trails or animal ambush sites did not prevent it being proposed as the primary explanation of the art.

In Europe hunting magic was largely replaced as an interpretation by structuralist approaches (Leroi-Gourhan 1968). It was argued that the making and placement of imagery related to mythological structures that were enacted through a ‘grammar’ for image making. Imagery was dominated by certain animal species for their (unspecified) symbolic properties. It was believed that analysis would be able to uncover the ‘formula’ that governed the placement of images in caves (Conkey 1981:103) and thus predict where images would occur in caves since cave topography was an important determinant of placement. Further, certain groups of images would occur together and avoid being placed in association with certain other categories of images (Leroi-Gourhan 1968). The resulting symbolic schemes derived from a careful study of the relationship between distribution of imagery and cave topography were complex and detailed, and is perhaps one reason why the model’s popularity was short-lived outside France.

Currently the most popular approach to rock art interpretation is the neuropsychological or shamanistic model that argues that rock art imagery contains depictions of imagery experienced in trance states (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988). In altered states of consciousness humans experience entoptic phenomena as geometric forms of varying complexity and their portrayal in rock art, as simple geometric forms or as iconic elaborations of them, is interpreted as a reference to trance states, and by extension shamanistic practices. Shamanism is seen as intimately connected with trance states and therefore the presence of trance signifiers in rock art is viewed as demonstration of a connection with shamanistic practices and beliefs (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988:204). In addition cross-cultural shamanic themes may be encoded in rock art. Avian imagery has been interpreted as a representation of shamanic soul-flight (Hedges 1985) since shamans commonly transmogrify into birds (Eliade 1964:477-8). Similarly, entering trance states is sometimes is likened to ‘dying’ leading images of death in rock art to be interpreted as metaphors of trance states (Lewis-Williams 1982, 1997). The reasons why shamans made and used rock art are various but include; to record significant visionary experiences (Whitley 1994:5); negotiate their political status (Dowson 1994), stimulate trance states (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1990) and acquire spirit-helpers (Whitley 1994), amongst other motivations.

One of the problems with this approach is that its reliance on viewing certain abstract forms, and this incorporation in iconic motifs, as signifiers of entoptic phenomena and hence of trance states, is not very convincing to sceptics. As currently constituted the approach does not provide a rigorous methodology for discriminating shamanic from non-shamanic arts (Bahn 1988; Davis 1988; Layton 1988, 2000). Even if rock art was made to represent the experience of trance states, its subsequent uses and interpretation need not have referenced shamanistic beliefs or practices (Bradley 1997:54-5).

More recently landscape approaches to rock art have developed to correct the general inattention to the significance of site context as an extension of site meaning (Bradley 2000). Landscape approaches recognize the significance of place and its role in the construction of cultural identity. Indigenous peoples have a special attachment to the landscape in which they and their ancestors dwell. Defining relationships with the land potentially plays a constituting role in social relations, and significant cultural events are memorialized in the landscape by monuments or landmarks. Encountering important locales in the course of social routines acts as a mnemonic device for social history (Basso 1996). Establishing rock art’s landscape context helps to determine the kind of audiences it was intended for and thus the kind of social relationships it may have negotiated (Bradley 2000:69). For example, rock art located in or near residential areas was presumably encountered by a broad cross-section of society, in contrast to sites located in remote and difficult to access places that presumably were more restricted in their potential users.

Rock art interpretation is particularly challenging since it constitutes an archaeological manifestation of symbolic behaviour which usually has multiplex references (Sperber 1975; Turner 1967, 1971). It is unlikely that a single interpretation will eventually emerge as the explanation for all rock art. The full range of rock art’s past cultural contexts is not likely to be represented by ethnography, though that remains an important precedent for sources of hypotheses (Lewis-Williams 1991:151). Instead, rock art interpretation will remain characterized by divergent interpretations of the same data. It is important that theory continues to stimulates field research that provides a fuller documentation of the properties of rock art sites and fosters amongst archaeologists and the public a respect for a fragile but important cultural resource.
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