The Archaeology of the Mind

This chapter will enable you to answer these questions: 1. What is the central challenge of “cognitive archaeology”? 2. How do archaeologists study ancient religion? 3. Can archaeologists learn anything from very ancient cases that have no close cultural descendants?

Outline  Introduction  What’s a Symbol?  The Peace Pipe as Ritual Weapon  Exploring Ancient Chavín Cosmology  Blueprints for an Archaeology of the Mind  Upper Paleolithic Cave Art

Introduction  Cognitive archaeology, the study of those aspects of ancient culture that are the product of the human mind: the perception, description, and classification of the universe;  the nature of the supernatural;  the principles, philosophies, and values by which human societies are governed;  the ways the world, the supernatural, or human values are conveyed in art.

Introduction  Symbolic perspectives can lend themselves to scientific testing if appropriate linkages can be made between the interpretations of ancient symbols and human behaviors most directly inferred from the archaeological record.

What’s a Symbol?  Symbol, an object or act (verbal or nonverbal) that, by cultural convention, stands for something else with which it has no necessary connection.

The Peace Pipe As Ritual Weapon  Hopewell Interaction Sphere, the common set of symbols found in the midwestern United States between 2200 and 1600 BP.  Hopewell “culture” included many different peoples speaking different languages and living various ways, from the lower Mississippi to Minnesota, and from Nebraska to Virginia.  These diverse people shared a unifying set of symbols that may indicate common religious beliefs.

The Peace Pipe As Ritual Weapon  Religion, a social institution containing a set of beliefs about supernatural beings and forces and one’s relation to them.  Ritual, a succession of discrete behaviors that must be performed in a particular order under particular circumstances.

The Peace Pipe As Ritual Weapon  Highly standardized Hopewell artifacts are perhaps indicative of rituals.

Exploring Ancient Chaví n Cosmology  Cosmology, the study of the origin, large-scale structure, and future of the universe. A cosmological explanation demonstrates how the universe developed and describes what principles keep it together.  Iconography, art forms or writing systems (such as Egyptian or Maya hieroglyphics) that symbolically represent ideas about religion or cosmology.

Exploring Ancient Chavín Cosmology One of the carved stone heads on the temple at Chavín de Huántar, representing a shaman’s transition from human to jaguar.

Exploring Ancient Cha vín Cosmology  A stone carving of a jaguar outside the temple at Chavín de Huántar.

Ancient Symbolism in Ch avín Iconography  Chavín Iconography draws from inspiration derived from creatures native to the cloud forests and rain forests of the eastern Andean slope, several hundred miles to the east.  Why did the major animals in the religion come from places outside the local highland environment?

Where did Chavín Cosmology Come From?  Paleoenvironmental change cannot explain the nature of the iconography.  Lowland immigrants did not introduce the plants and animals to highland peoples.  Religious leaders deliberately imported Amazonian symbolism, and perhaps magical powers were ascribed to the people who lived in the forests.

Where did Chavín Cosmology Come From?  Oracle, a shrine in which a deity reveals hidden knowledge or divine purpose.  Branch shrines could be established by pledging support for the religion.  Local branches supported the religion’s headquarters with large quantities of cotton, corn, dried fish, llamas, guinea pigs, raw materials and manufactured goods.

The Role of Cosmology in Andean Civilization  Chavín was a large-scale religion, transcending political and ethnic boundaries. Ideology and rituals were powerful to support a hierarchical organization, a central authority exerting power and extracting tribute from smaller organizations.

The Role of Cosmology in Andean Civilization  Shared cosmology was responsible for the spread of the religion.  Priests developed a growing mythology emphasizing mystique over the mundane, capitalizing on forces alien to the local habitat and daily experience.

Upper Paleolithic Cave Art  Upper Paleolithic, the last major division of the Old World Paleolithic, beginning about 40,000 years ago and lasting until the end of the Pleistocene (ca. 10,000 years ago).

Upper Paleolithic Cave Art  The appearance of a complex technology of stone, bone, and antler as well as wall art, portable art objects, and decorated tools.  Many Upper Paleolithic sites contain engraved, carved, or sculpted objects, and caves occupied by Upper Paleolithic peoples often contain wall paintings.

Upper Paleolithic Art Carved from reindeer antler, this bison probably served as the end of an atlatl and is an example of the artistic work that typifies the European Upper Paleolithic.

Upper Paleolithic Cave Art  Magdalenian, the last major culture of the European Upper Paleolithic period (ca. 18, ,000 BP);  Named after the rockshelter La Madeleine, in southwestern France.  Magdalenian artisans crafted intricately carved tools of reindeer bone and antler; this was also the period during which Upper Paleolithic cave art in France and Spain reached its zenith.

Upper Paleolithic Cave Art: Content  Human beings rarely appear and when they do, they are poorly executed in comparison with animal figures.  Images often overlap, no one has identified a “story” or landscape.  Provides vivid evidence documenting the range of animals living in Ice Age Europe, certain animals are emphasized (horses, aurochs, bison, ibex, stags, and reindeer).

Upper Paleolithic Cave Art: Content  Sympathetic magic, rituals in which doing something to an image of an object produces the desired effect in the real object.  Sympathetic magic interpretation assumes that the animals are literal and that they have no symbolic meaning.

Structuralism  Some scholars view the cave paintings as a structured code, drawing the paradigm known as structuralism.  Structuralism, a paradigm holding that human culture is the expression of unconscious modes of thought and reasoning, notably binary oppositions. Structuralism is most closely associated with the work of the French anthropologist Claude Levi- Strauss.

Structuralism  The concept of “life,” is meaningless without the concept of “death.”  The concept of “male” means nothing without the concept of “female.”

Upper Paleolithic Cave Art: Content  Leroi-Gourhan defined binary oppositions, the most prominent male and female symbols.  For example, Leroi-Gourhan suggested the various cave elements clustered into four major sets of images, the small herbivores associated with “maleness” and the large herbivores associated with “femaleness.”

Upper Paleolithic Cave Art: Totems  Totem, a natural object, often an animal, from which a lineage or clan believes itself to be descended and/or with which lineage or clan members have special relations.

Upper Paleolithic Cave Art: Shaman  Shaman, one who has the power to contact the spirit world through trance, possession, or visions.  On the basis of this ability, the shaman invokes, manipulates, or coerces the power of the spirits for socially recognized ends—both good and ill.

Upper Paleolithic Cave Art: Shaman  Lewis-Williams argues that Upper Paleolithic cave art is evidence of shamanic trances.  Vision quest, a ritual in which an individual seeks visions through starvation, dehydration, and exposure; considered in some cultures to be a way to communicate with the supernatural world.

Map of Lascaux Virtual Tour of the Cave: click on

What Does All This Mean? Bison and “falling man” in Lascaux. It is not known if these images were painted at the same time (as a “scene”) or at different times.

What Does All This Mean?  Upper Paleolithic art is not art for art’s sake; nor is it fertility or hunting magic.  The art reflects humanity’s effort to come to grips with the perception that one existence is not all that there is.

Summary Questions 1. What is the central challenge of “cognitive archaeology”? 2. How do archaeologists study ancient religion? 3. Can archaeologists learn anything from very ancient cases that have no close cultural descendants?