David Lewis-Williams. 2002. The mind in the cave: consciousness and the origins of art.

David Lewis-Williams. 2002. The mind in the cave: consciousness and the origins of art. London: Thames and Hudson. 320pp, index, figures, illustrations inblack and white, and colour. The mind in the cave presents a readable account of arguments thatLewis-Williams has steadfastly advocated for some years, and adds a newtheory about the origin of rock art in Western Europe Western EuropeThe countries of western Europe, especially those that are allied with the United States and Canada in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (established 1949 and usually known as NATO). . The book providesa clear discussion of method. Lewis-Williams posits a ubiquitouscondition among hunter-gatherer communities (culturally patternedaltered states of consciousness altered states of consciousness,n.pl the various states in which the mind can be aware but is not in its usual wakeful condition, such as during hypnosis, meditation, hall-ucination, trance, and the dream stage. See also alternative states of consciousness. ) and uses selected ethnographic examplesto discover how these states are expressed in rock art. The UpperPalaeolithic communities of Europe were hunter-gatherers and theirbrains were fully modern. One can therefore suspect, he argues, someform of shamanism shamanism/sha��man��ism/ (shah��-) (sha��mah-nizm?) a traditional system, occurring in tribal societies, in which certain individuals (shamans) are believed to be gifted with access to an invisible spiritual in the Upper Palaeolithic. Lewis-Williams gives a good account of the strengths and weaknessesof Structuralism structuralism,theory that uses culturally interconnected signs to reconstruct systems of relationships rather than studying isolated, material things in themselves. This method found wide use from the early 20th cent. and a useful review of the evidence for the slowdevelopment of traits characteristic of modern human cognitivecapacities among anatomically modern humans in Africa. The grounds forart had already been laid before modern humans arrived in Europe. Heargues contact with Neanderthals triggered the origin of image making.It was a signal of social and intellectual differentiation.Lewis-Williams admits this hypothesis would not explain the origin ofrock art in Australia or South Africa. Lewis-Williams dismisses a variety of unnamed archaeologists whohold contrary positions to his own: many researchers are afraid oftheories, some researchers think of portable art as being secular, mostaccounts of the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition treat art brieflyand as if it were of no consequence. Some important counter-argumentsare missing. Neither Guenther's argument that a significantproportion of South African rock art depicts everyday hunting andgathering, nor Parkington and Manhire's argument that the eland eland(ē`lənd), large, spiral-horned African antelope, genus Taurotragus, found in brush country or open forest at the edge of grasslands. Elands live in small herds and are primarily browsers rather than grazers. isprimarily an image of San rites de passage, are cited. Solomon'sproposal that San mythology helps discriminate between art that refersto shamans and that which does not, is not noted. De Beaune's workon Upper Palaeolithic lamps is cited, but not her critique of shamanicinterpretations of Upper Palaeolithic art. If his method is to develop a general theory, and then test itthrough ethnographic cases, counter cases need to be assessed as well.But Australian rock art, much of which is demonstrably secular ortotemic, is not discussed. Lewis-Williams' ethnographic evidencecomes almost entirely from the rock art of the San and of SouthernCalifornia. These two cases have been Lewis-Williams' mainstayssince the 1988 Current Anthropology paper co-authored with Dowson.Lewis-Williams rejects an association between hunting magic and rock artin North America. Keyser and Whitley found almost thirty references torock art, the vision quest vision questsupernatural experience in which an individual interacts with a guardian spirit to obtain advice or protection. Of particular importance to indigenous North and South American peoples, these rituals varied from tribe to tribe. and shamanism on the Columbia Plateau. Trueenough, but in 1918 Teit recorded several other contexts for rock art onthe Plateau. Some paintings were made to ward off disaster foreseen in adream. Guardian spirits were painted near camps or overlooking walkingroutes to deflect enemies or evil. Some paintings were historicalrecords at, for example, sites of battles. Keyser has also shown thereare scenes of hunting and corralling on the Columbia Plateau. Annie Yorkexplained one composition to Daly and Arnett as follows: the line fromthe goat to the grizzly paw, and the headless goat, shows the hunterdreaming of using goat meat to lure the grizzly into a trap. This is nothunting magic in Frazer's sense, since it depends on theintervention of the hunter's guardian spirit. But it is abouthunting success. Images of arrows fired at game animals cannot beassumed to be metaphors for the sensation of trance. Lewis-Williams concedes that during the Upper Palaeolithic, apendant of a horse may not have encoded the same segment of thatspecies' range of meanings as did a painting of a horse in a deepcavern. He suggests that does not matter, because shamanism will alwaysbe in the background. Can the hypothesis really be tested, if theabsence of diagnostic traits merely shows shamanism was backgroundedrather than foregrounded? The lack of entoptic-like forms in UpperPalaeolithic art, except as part of animal or human figures, issimilarly argued to show the artists were less interested in stage oneof trance than in stage three. Lewis-Williams (like Chippindale and Tacon) relies on Wylie'snotion of 'cabling'. Art, ethnography, neuropsychology neuropsychologyScience concerned with the integration of psychological observations on behaviour with neurological observations on the central nervous system (CNS), including the brain. andsocial theory combine to provide a coherent explanation. He has in factcarried out a different kind of 'cabling'. Aspects ofshamanism from different cultures: entoptics from the Tukano, the visionquest from western North America, the rock surface as a veil (deduced byLewis-Williams from traits in South African rock art) are cabled into atemplate for the Upper Palaeolithic. This method assumes rather thantests the uniformity of shamanic rock art. The mind in the cave isstimulating but not conclusive. Reference LEWIS-WILLIAMS, J.D. & T.A. DOWSON. 1988. The signs of alltimes: entoptic entoptic/en��top��tic/ (en-top��tik) originating within the eye. ent��op��ticadj.Occurring or located within the eyeball.entopticoriginating within the eye. phenomenain Upper Palaeolithic art. Current Anthropology29:201-45 ROBERT LAYTON University of Durham (body, education) University of Durham - A busy research and teaching community in the historic cathedral city of Durham, UK (population 61000). Its work covers key branches of science and technology and traditional areas of scholarship.