Introduction to Rock Art Research by David Whitley

Author:David Whitley [Whitley, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Archaeology
ISBN: 9781315425993
Google: fakYDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-09-16T04:30:20+00:00

FUNCTIONAL ANALOGIES

Functional analogies are based on determining structures, as discussed by David Lewis-Williams with respect to his neuropsychological model (Lewis-Williams 1991; Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988) and outlined below. They provide testable scientific models and are a form of strong analogy that can result in true scientific explanation.

Functional analogies, based on uniformitarian principles, are the ideal but, unfortunately, are very rare. More commonly, we are faced with the possibility of applying an ethnographic analogy or its analytical cousin, the direct historical approach, to our data in the absence of true, directly relevant ethnographic data about our art. Yet even the applicability of the direct historical approach is limited to regions of the world where long-term cultural change was relatively minimal and where rock art continued to be made into the recent past—which is to say the Americas, Australia, and parts of Asia and Africa.

Ultimately, we confront this question when considering truly prehistoric corpora of art: Is an interpretation of this art more likely correct if based on (a) comparisons with the origin and function of similar art in other non-Western cultures—that is, on ethnographic analogies; or (b) on economic and political models that are commonly used in Western academia—that is, on supposedly universal characteristics of human behavior such as economic rationality? It is critical to recognize that most of these putatively universal characteristics of human behavior are themselves little more than assumptions of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century theories about specifically Western economies and psychology (Midgley 2001, 2003). That is, they are unproved assumptions about modern Western cultural behavior, not universal characteristics of (and thus uniformitarian attributes of) the way that humans act—especially humans living in small-scale, non-Western cultures.

In this case, the archaeologist’s logical conclusion is obvious. The use of careful ethnographic analogy, at least in the sense of providing a probable range of variation that explains the origin, function, and meaning of prehistoric rock art, is far better than the mechanistic application of models intended to explain modern Western economic behavior.

Symbolic and ethnographic interpretations are important approaches to rock art research, even though traditionally ignored (or misused) by archaeologists. As noted earlier, some archaeologists’ literalist readings of the ethnography have been problematic, resulting in markedly Eurocentric, empiricist interpretations that confused rather than explicated the art and, as often as not, effectively stripped indigenous peoples from their patrimony. Conkey (2001:277) has sagely noted in this regard, “The literalness of a reading must now be shown rather than assumed.” Equally problematic, as Jannie Loubser (2008) observed, are catastrophist views of time. These assume that a massive cultural disjunction necessarily exists between the prehistoric and the recent pasts and, for this reason, ethnography has little to offer us in interpreting prehistory.

While cultural contact with the Western world has ultimately been catastrophic for many traditional societies, it is nonetheless true that religion and belief are commonly the most conservative aspects of cultures. Despite many obvious cultural changes, traditional beliefs and practices often continued (or, at least, knowledge of them was retained) even into the recent past.

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