Transcript
Speaker: You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello out there in archaeology podcast land. This is Dr. Alan Garfinkel. I'm the president and founder of the California Rock Art Foundation. And what we do is we identify, evaluate, manage and conserve rock art both in Alta, California and in Baja, California.
Speaker: We conduct field trips, we have trainings, exercise, we do research, and in every way possible we try to preserve, protect, and coordinate treasures of Alta and Baja California rock art, of which there are many, and diverse. We also work closely with Native Americans and partner with them to recognize and protect sacred sites.
Speaker: So for more info about the fabulous California Rock Art Foundation, you can go to carockart .org. Also, I'm open to give me a call, 805 -312 -2261. We would welcome sponsorship or underwriting, helping us to defray the costs of our podcasts, and also membership in California Rock Art Foundation, and of course, donations since we are a 501c3 nonprofit scientific and educational corporation. God bless everyone out there in podcast land.
Speaker: You're listening to The Rock Art Podcast. Join us every week for fascinating tales of rock art, adventure, and archaeology. Find our contact info in the show notes and send us your suggestions.
Speaker: Well, out there in archaeology podcast land, this is your host, Dr. Alan Garfinkel. We're going to have episode 122. We're going to have a deep dive into something that I've been pondering recently. Is there a thing called pre -shamanic rock art? Is there a kind of religious expression that may have been a precursor earlier than shamanism? And is there evidence for that archaeologically, iconographically?
Speaker: ethnographically. So we'll talk about that very interesting peering into the past.
Speaker: Welcome to the Rock Art Podcast. It's Chris Webster, which means I'm talking to Alan about something today. Alan, how are you doing? Good. How are you, Chris? Where are you now? I'm doing great. I'm in central California. Actually, I'm not that far from you, so probably the closest we'll be all year. Okay. I think you mentioned you might be in San Luis Obispo County, correct? That's right. Yeah, actually, San Luis Obispo proper, the town. So definitely over here. Yeah. Yeah. Close to the beach, actually. It's not a bad little place.
Speaker: Yeah, that's good to have you at least within shouting distance. There's been a lot of stuff going on in my mind lately, and I'm writing a rather important article that sort of is derivative from a book that we recently published. But part of that
Speaker: relates to sort of the evolution of the character, the development of indigenous religion, believe it or not, hunter -gatherer religion, and how you might be able to perceive that in the world of rock art. And I know that's a little far out there, but believe it or not, there is another archaeologist or two who have done some deep, deep thinking on this exact matter and have come to a sort of a similar conclusion as the one that I have
Speaker: in another publication and so I think we can kind of begin to sort of stir the
Speaker: you know, stir the brew and talk about this thing. It comes down to sort of an understanding as one of the basic and biggest controversies that we have about rock art and that what is the function of rock art and who are the artisans of rock art. And that was something that we were mired in for, I would say decades in some very, very hot and very deep and contested elements. And I think the upshot was
Speaker: we began to understand or at least have a general tendency that we believe that it was shamans, it was medicine persons who were principally the artisans who sketched much of rock art. And so we finally deferred to that particular posture. But I think that that is probably an accurate one
Speaker: to some extent, but as one goes back in time to earlier strata of cultural developments, and I'm talking about five, six, seven, eight, nine thousand years ago, or more for that matter, there may have been an earlier expression of religion that we would call pre -shamanic.
Speaker: And that was originally mentioned to me by a colleague and I read her book and I thought it was really rather well done and well expressed, but I know it was very, very controversial. Her name is Esther Jacobson Tepfer and studied the rock art in the Altai, the home of shamanism itself.
Speaker: And what she ended up finding was some of the oldest rock art that she was able to examine was of a whole different kind of character. It seemed to be less in the realm of shamanic rock art and more about
Speaker: reproductive symbolism. How about that? There's a good one for you. I wrote a book about that. It's not a book. I wrote an article about reproductive symbolism and talked about that concept. But certainly some of the rock art that we see is principally about the concept of fertility. You see it in the images. You see it in the way in which these animals are rendered.
Speaker: And you see it in the kinds of subject matter that are arrayed on the rock canvas. And you may have seen that yourself. Do you understand what I'm saying?
Speaker: Oh yeah, for sure. I've seen lots of rock art and it's definitely a lot of times, especially some of the, some of the later stuff seems to have, you know, a consistent theme, you know, animals and, and people and like we looked at not long ago and on an episode, a few episodes back, there was definitely a lot of that kind of symbolism on there that you're talking about right now. Right. And we see the animals and we see the symbolism and we see hunting as, as sort of a, you know, a highly
Speaker: a hallmark activity, certainly, and certainly animals as being a central element. But besides that, in certain circumstances, we get a taste. More than a taste, we even sometimes get an expression, a dominant expression
Speaker: of what we might call pre -shamanism, and ethnographically in the Altai, this relates to, you could call it a cult, almost a totemic cult, or an increased totemism, where we are worshipping perhaps
Speaker: an animal spirit or a god or a goddess and this particular being could be an animal human or a feminine animal human is a
Speaker: primary divinity, a deity, that is responsible for protecting or guarding or supplying the needs of the indigenous population. Does that make any sense? So in other words, when they're praying or supplicating or sort of entreating
Speaker: these particular entities, they're asking for longevity, they're asking for healthy children, they're asking for rain, they're asking for continued availability of plants and animals that they're relying on, that we can live and that we can reside and that we can flourish as a people.
Speaker: And so that is a very different concept, a very different tradition than examining the rock art from a shamanic standpoint. How much of this interpretation is, you know, somewhat conjecture based on... Grounded. Grounded. Yeah. Yeah. How much of that is and how much of it's based on, say, ethnographic evidence and discussions with Native American groups over the last few hundred years?
Speaker: Well, that's a great question. An example of an ethnographically derived site that has an analog for this comes out of Australia. What we look at is the particular
Speaker: figural entities of bighorn sheep that existed throughout the far west and these are those bent little figures that are made of the willow or other plant matter and they bend them into shape and then they are expressed in caves, okay? And these particular figures
Speaker: have been shown to be associated with magical properties and with particular historic activities where Australian groups worship or believe they are descended from an animal human person.
Speaker: They're totems, but they're more than totems, they're what they call increased totems. So these totems, you fashion a figure, and then you pray to it, and then you dance in a fashion that those animals move, and you pray to this totem, because this is considered to be a supernatural deity, and you ask for a guardian,
Speaker: to bless your group, your entity, your tribe, if you will, with a flourishing life, be it rain, be it seeds, et cetera. It's called increased totemism.
Speaker: We have a great ethnographic example in several places in Australia, historically, contemporary ethnographically. And we have an analog in eastern California with a place we call Newberry Cave. Now in Newberry Cave, we have these animals that are fashioned from bent pieces of vegetal matter.
Speaker: They are fashioned into representations of bighorn sheep. In this cave that was a dry cave, they found a dozen complete and a thousand fragmentary examples of these bighorn sheep. They also found magical artifacts where they had colorful painted examples of
Speaker: feathers and quartz crystals that were painted in multicolors. They were paintings on the walls of the shelter of this cave that were done in green, white, red, and black.
Speaker: of bighorn sheep, but also of abstract symbols. And there were also elements exclusively from men of a man's hunting society there. And there were no examples of any female -related artifacts. No metates, no manos, no mortars, no pestles, no baskets. Everything was relating to hunting.
Speaker: the hunting magic, the kinds of homeopathic or sympathetic magic that hunters might do to replicate the phenomenon of sort of divining where the animals would be, how to hunt them successfully. Now, in that cave also were the bones of megafauna, of huge animals
Speaker: that lived over 12 ,000 years ago. So there might have been some relationship there between the cave and the animals and that supernatural association of hoping that some sort of deity existed in that cave, and these were the bones of this
Speaker: you know, huge animal that somehow was a physical manifestation of some of the things they were praying for. Does that make any sense? It does. I've got some questions around that, but let's do that on the other side of the break in segment two. Back in a minute.
Speaker: Welcome back to the Rock Art Podcast, Episode 122, and we're talking about religion and the origins of religion and rock art. And you were mentioning at the end of the last segment, some of the artifacts associated with some rock art found, you know, discussing shamanism and religion and things like that, and how it's often hunting related. You mentioned no, like, so -called female artifacts relating to, you know, the processing of, you know, things that have been hunted and gathered, basically, right? Exactly, exactly.
Speaker: Here's a question. I wonder if this interpretation is being upended a little bit. There's been a lot of research come out in the last few years. We read articles like this on the archaeology show all the time, where assumptions about the roles of male and female is a little more blurry than we expected in the past. Female are doing
Speaker: certain things that we didn't expect them to do. Males are doing things we didn't expect them to do. Right, right. So that's the next thing I'm going to talk about. Believe it or not, the whole hubbub
Speaker: sort of around this a little bit, that sort of drugged me kicking and screaming into this center of this controversy, revolved around the second largest class of figures that appear in the koso range. And that's these decorated animal human figures. And exclusively, the archaeologists said they were all men and that these were shamans dressed in their, you know, coats, their colorful coats with fringe.
Speaker: So I said, that's interesting. That never sat right with me. Now, fast forward to my reading and my understanding of some of the material from Siberia and from the Altai. And they have a similar set, believe it or not, all the way over there, of female figures that have this fringe on them and have avian human qualities.
Speaker: So it's got that similar sort of tail feather, avian animal bird look. And again, those avian figures that are being depicted as the oldest figures, this pre -shamanic realm that our colleague Esther is telling us,
Speaker: are also associated with fertility symbols, reproductive elements, birthing, menstruation, some other kinds of manifestations that show there about that this particular cosmological nexus
Speaker: is about life and the creation of life and the renewal of life, if you get my drift. It's a much more feminine or a much more mattress centric kind of a flavor than it is this andero centric or male centered hunting element. Now, that being said, what's fascinating about it
Speaker: is as we've delved deeper and deeper and deeper into the cosome material, that's exactly what we're finding.
Speaker: There's a huge class of females that have anatomically distinct distinctions that show they are sexually females. They have hair whirls, which is an indication from the Hopi of coming of age for females at their first menses and shows that they are available for reproduction.
Speaker: Also, it shows these females menstruating, and so there's actual blood coming from the genitals of these females that are these figures. Now, on top of that, this class of figures is huge.
Speaker: It's not just a tiny little part of the inventory of COSO rock art. It's the second largest class of figures. There's probably 700 to 1 ,000 of these individual figures, and there's some of the largest figures that exist in the whole COSO assemblage, but they're old.
Speaker: When I say they're old, I mean they probably date to either the Little Lake or the early to middle Newberry period. We're talking about, let's say, I don't know, four to six or seven thousand years ago.
Speaker: And I'm rather confident of those ages because we have a means of dating them, multiple means of dating them, using portable XRF, using the depiction of what they're associated with a particular class of projectile points, these Elko Humboldts and
Speaker: and gypsum points that we know are of this middle archaic age. They also show that they're underlain or superimposed by later figures that we know date to the introduction of the bow and arrow and probably the fluorescence of the frequent
Speaker: expression of bighorn sheep populated or centralized dominant bighorn sheep, classic koso figures, that become a part of this inventory and dominate the iconographic portraits. How's that?
Speaker: So, it's a major shift. And Dave Whitley as well has remarked on this. He has told us that there is such a change, there's a shift to the male -centered from the female -centered.
Speaker: Yeah, it's interesting. Like you said, we've just seen so much research coming out about, you know, this, like I said, this blurring of the lines. And that being said though, you know, you see religions today, a lot of religions today, especially Middle Eastern religions, where
Speaker: women are flat out excluded from some of the ceremonies, right? I mean, we were actually just watching a travel show that was based around, you know, several middle Eastern countries and they were visited. And I mean, there were just, there were men, you know, in the streets celebrating this one day and the women were up in the balconies watching and, you know, doing their part from up there, but the men were down and doing that, doing that thing down there. So definitely is a sexual division of
Speaker: responsibility, so to speak, or participation in a lot of religions. And I just wonder, you know, how did that develop? When did that develop? And was that the same in the ancient world as it is, you know, in the history? One of the best preserved from archaic
Speaker: sort of cosmological, sacred narrative, religious expressions we have is with the Hopi. And the Hopi are a matrilineal clan, so the females there play a predominant and central political and kinship role in that culture.
Speaker: So, if that was some sort of an example of an ancient archetype of the socio -political or kinship organization of pre -shamanic cultures,
Speaker: that would be interesting. And so certainly things don't say the same. The only thing constant in life is change. But that being said, it would be interesting and certainly telling and would be almost not a revolutionary, but I would say a particularly important observation
Speaker: to then assess what this earliest sort of stratum of, if it is preshemonic, what that would mean. And if it was matricentric in having a set of female deities rather than male deities or male predominance, that would be interesting.
Speaker: The same thing goes for even the high cultures of Mexico, though. They were populated by both men and women, but there was a whole phenomenon of female deities that were some of the most prominent elements of their culture. Think of Coatlique, that was that 5 -10 ton statue that was found
Speaker: when they were digging up the subway in Mexico City, that was a moon goddess who had breasts and also was covered by snakes. And if I was birthing a snake at the same time,
Speaker: And there was associated with that moon goddess was many other female elements or female gods and goddesses that filled out the repertoire of the Aztec or Nahua culture. So obviously females were critically important to them as well in their cosmological inventory.
Speaker: Yeah, and this is something that I've never really intended to go there. It isn't something I have no dog in this fight. I really don't. I tend to go where the data goes and where the information sort of leads. And in talking to an ethnographer colleague, he keeps probing me and asking me about this because he sees these other elements
Speaker: in the ethnographic record for other indigenous California Indian cultures where he sees this division going on and there may be evidence for this shift in their kinship and socio -political organization. Okay. Well, no, that sounds like a good place to take a break and then wrap this topic up on the other side back in a minute.
Speaker: Welcome back to the rock art podcast episode one 22. And we're talking about the rock art of religion or the religion in rock art, however you want to look at it. And talking over the break, you had some, some pieces you want to read that are relevant to this topic. So go ahead.
Speaker: Yeah, I want to give you a piece directly from some of the writings from Esther Jacobson Tepfer. Here she goes, she goes, pre -shamanic cults, cults which appear to have developed before shamanism emerged and point back to archaic beliefs and practices of an ancient social order.
Speaker: In general, these cults involve a belief in indwelling spirits of natural objects and forces. Cults were undertaken and maintained by individuals on behalf of their clan. Indeed, such cults tended to reinforce the idea of clan unity rather than the integrity of a nuclear family or tribe. The deities referred to in those cults were clearly indicative of an archaic belief in a clan mother.
Speaker: an earth mother or an animal mother of life and death. Within the ethnographic tradition, one frequently finds a combination of elements, but this deity, protectress of children and of the herd, et cetera, et cetera. Anyways, all of this just kind of shouts and sort of is analogous to some of the
Speaker: the epiphanies that we've had over the years, looking at the COSO material, and it has evolved from my initial understandings to where I'm at now, and I'm probably similar to what Esther has thought about over the years as well. This first came to my attention
Speaker: about the possibility of understanding these decorated animal human figures because of ethnographic work I was doing with the Kawaiasu. I was there for four years studying them. And finally I began to read the ethnography and not just the ethnography but talk to the people and then learn about their oral traditions and sacred narratives and their deities.
Speaker: And when I began to study those and read them, which is something that archaeologists typically don't do, I was struck by the parallels in the descriptions of a singular deity and the depictions on the rocks in the Kosos.
Speaker: And one of these was Yahuera, who was the animal mistress or animal master that exists in the Tehachapi Mountains, who would have dressed in a quail robe and would have, in fact, a hunted, acquired quail
Speaker: And then also was the author responsible for the revivification, the transmogrification, the bringing up of the dead and bringing them to life again of the animals after they passed on. Because they of course were eternal, who lived in the underworld and was seen as a animal human figure.
Speaker: And we have such a figure on rocks in paintings. We know of that figure. We can relate it to a very robust ethnographic record that explains what we're seeing in great detail. And that analog of an animal mother or an animal figure appears to be quite similar to what we're seeing on the rocks
Speaker: literally thousands of years ago earlier than the imagery that we see fashioned probably in the late prehistoric. Again, there was some reason that this particular element of their cosmology was preserved. Again, it's striking and surprising that we can see a detail
Speaker: of their probably very, very ancient activities that continued to be part and parcel of who they were and what they believed all the way into the ethnographic present.
Speaker: Amazing. Wow. Yeah. I know. I know. It's awesome how, I don't know, how, I guess, continuous and far back this kind of information stretches. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And I guess, I guess we, I guess we shouldn't be so surprised, you know, if you're, if you're Jewish, if you're Catholic, you've got a, you know, you've got a thousand multi -thousand year record. We've got 2000 years of continuous stuff from our
Speaker: you know, the Bible and what we know about our deities and our traditions. But it still is rather surprising about the resilience and continuity and the detailed characteristics that are part of these stories that can perhaps inform us
Speaker: about the archaeological record and give us glimpses of the past. So I really, I know that some people, this brings up a whole other topic, but I really do feel that Rockgard has also often short shrifted in the sense that I think it's one of the most informative and valuable of all data sets that archaeologists have.
Speaker: while other people have said, well, Alan, it's only rock art. But it's a data set. It's a data set that's no different from other data sets and can be analyzed and can be evaluated and can be cross -correlated with many other data sets and inform on such a variety of topics and have such a powerful understanding peering into the minds and hearts of people that lived literally hundreds and thousands of years ago.
Speaker: And my word, how can you, how can you possibly diminish? This is how they, this is how they communicated too, right? Like we often talk about, we often define prehistoric and prehistoric peoples as quote, pre -literate or pre -writing, right? Something like that.
Speaker: But they've been writing on the walls for, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40 ,000 years, depending on where you look at in the world. And we just don't understand it. We're getting to understanding, but language that we don't understand. And the funny thing is...
Speaker: the more we study them, the more we begin to understand or at least have glimpses of what they're talking about. And there are various ways and means of eliciting the details and the communications and the
Speaker: feelings and messages that are embedded in these images. It's not just graffiti. It's powerful messages and images, sometimes significant stories and sacred narratives that will educate people as to the valuable nature of who they are, what they are, and what they believe.
Speaker: It's an outdoor church, and so that's how I perceive it. And I think Native people also have that same sense. Do you agree, Chris? Yeah, I would tend to. Just the way you hear Native Americans discuss, even just
Speaker: outdoors and, and mountain ranges and things like that in different places that are sacred to them. It's definitely sacred spaces for sure. And things that we wouldn't necessarily consider that, you know, you're, you're typical Western person, but, but it's something, something that they definitely do. And it's a, it's a worldview that, um, that they have. And then they, they sketch that worldview onto the rocks, to be honest with you. And literally branding the places where that they deem sacred. So it's interesting.
Speaker: And when you begin understanding the nature of their thinking and how they view the world, it's not that they brand them, what would you call it? They don't do this casually. They perceive this as an energetic force that exists in the universe and
Speaker: Literally the landscape, the land, and the various elements of the land, including the rocks, speak to them and tell them which ones are the most important, what to write, where to write it, and how to grasp
Speaker: the internal dynamics of the universe as they are manifested there right ahead of them. It's done through cracks in the rocks. It's done through the form of the rocks, their sound, how the landscape is interconnected, how it's formed. All of that comes to play
Speaker: in the development of the location and the ensconcement of this rock art. And you know this, you've seen it. We know that split rocks are by their very nature, these are the portals, these are the places where individuals can somehow
Speaker: figuratively or empirically somehow access these other worlds. And so we get that from them, and that's part of the reason they'll embellish certain rocks. And other ones look like they're great canvases, they're perfect places, and yet they're not predisposed to use those.
Speaker: because they don't have the power to structure the elements that are required for them to fashion the images. So all of that and much more. So I think there's a lot more to this than meets the eye. And I think the more we begin to think about it,
Speaker: and study things in greater detail, I think rock art will become more and more informative for us.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. That's my story. I'm sticking to it. Nice, nice. Yeah, I mean, the my real takeaway on this and the real interesting thing about it is there is definitely some rock art that we will never truly know the nature of. You know, we can guess, we can infer based on, you know, based on some of the things that we do know and through excavation and things like that. But there's definitely some rock art, especially really, really old stuff that
Speaker: there's really no way that we can tell what was going through the mind of somebody 30 ,000 years ago that was sketching something on a wall. No, we remain enigmatic forever.
Speaker: it's still really interesting. And I think we can walk back what we think, we can walk that back to that time period from the current time period, using archaeological interpretation and the artifacts that we find and other sites that we find and just understanding more and more about native and prehistoric peoples. And the more we build that puzzle, the more we put that puzzle together and build that picture,
Speaker: the more we can understand deeper into time. So because I don't think we'll ever get fully understanding. Yeah. And I think we're going to get some interesting glimpses that are going to give us revolutionary epiphanies to different ways of thinking about the nature of sociopolitical organization and kinship systems for ancient peoples that I think will eventually surprise us because it's already happening. It's already happening. Right.
Speaker: Okay. Well, with that, I think we'll end the show here. Thanks a lot, Alan. This was a fascinating topic. If you've got any questions for Alan, his contact info is in the show notes, please check that out at arcpodnet .com forward slash rock art. And we'll see you next week.
Speaker: Thanks for listening to the Rock Art Podcast with Dr. Alan Garfinkel and Chris Webster. Find show notes and contact information at www .arcpodnet .com forward slash rock art. Thanks for listening and thanks for sharing this podcast with your family and friends.
Speaker: This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www .archapodnet .com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork .com.
