Whither Paleolithic Art: Reconsiderations and Re-castings of Traditional Research - Essay Example

Whither Paleolithic Art: Reconsiderations and Re-castings of Traditional Research The illimitable interpretations available to us in the analysis of any visual phenomena, especially those phenomena mediated by artistic endeavors, coupled with the swell of centuries that wash us on distant shores from our primordial cousins, places special difficulties in the analysis of Paleolithic art. Not only are we faced with trying to transcend our own cultural screens; but also, to what degree our cognitive capacities and development have outpaced those of our ancestors, if at all, is an unknown. Attempts at reigning in the meanings and messages of the signs that are placed on caves in Lascaux or the Venus figurines are rife with tendentious pitfalls, which might turn ostensible rigorous scholarship into little more than plausible fiction. The deployment of psychoanalytical and neurophysiological models of understanding in conjunction with the rise of alterity discourse in academic has questioned long held presuppositions and created new lines of inquiry beyond the traditional categories of analysis. Specifically these suppositions include the regnant status of religion and/or magic in the creation and perception of the art, and the presumption that women were merely passive participants in the production of artwork as traditional scholarship as traditional scholarship presumed Paleolithic aesthetics revolved around the hunter-fertility axis within those cultures. Other suppositions that have been challenged include the notion that what is referred to as "behaviorally modernity" only exists within the anatomical identity of homo sapiens, this is in part based on radiocarbon dating techniques though advancements in this process might shed new light on this issue. This paper will briefly review a segment of the literature that engages some of these methodologies and their respective findings and through this review suggest that an abandonment of ethnological analogies to modern hunter-gatherer cultures be undertaken coupled with an integrationist approach regarding the usage of other methodologies and an increasing awareness of missing perspectives. E.B. Tylor's assessment of the dominant role of magic and animism in primal culture has dominated interpretations of the art from prehistoric man (Leroi-Gourhan and Michelson 5). Though some hesitation has always remained as regards attaching specific signifiers to the signs on the walls of caves; the standard bearers of academia have always asserted that they were expressions of a deeply animistic and exceptionally "enchanted world-perspective."1 Leroi-Gourhan and Michelson suggest that it is impossible to reconstruct the crucial elements of prehistoric thinking in such a way as to decipher the messages of these drawings and figurines. Tylor believed that primitive man had all the cognitive tools at his disposal as modern man despite the primal stage of social evolutionary development. However, there is little to suggest that it would be possible to transpose our thought processes and bring them to bear on the remains of Paleolithic art that we have before us, "understanding the thought of even living Australian primitives involves great effort on our part. How much greater, then, are the risks involved in the reconstruction of the beliefs of men who lived thousands of years before the appearance of writing" (Leroi-Gourhan and Michelson 5). As such, there are a number of other obstacles that impede in the extraction of "the Paleolithic message." One of the more pressing is what first level syntactic hermeneutical strategy is to be employed in order to parse a message from a series of cave drawings, as an example. There are three possible strategies: 1)mythographically, as a figures centered around a singular figure or sign, 2)pictographically, as a as an articulated chronological line of images, or 3)or hieroglyphically, where the images themselves represent linguistic units (Leroi-Gourhan and Michelson 10). According to Leroi-Gourhan and Michelson, the sorts of studies that inquire into the graphically structures of the cave paintings at Lascaux reveal a statistically significant covariance of certain pairs of presumably oppositional figures namely, woman/man and bovine/horse. Fruitful analyses of this statistical phenomenon and other such phenomena impute a psychoanalytical methodology in order to encapsulate properly the significance of these pairs, rather than a religious historical inquiry. J.D. Lewis Williams and T.A. Dowson et al., also recognizing the logical impossibility of inducing meaning from Paleolithic art without directly available and relevant ethnological data, approach the task of exposing signification from signs through a neurophysiological inquiry. Their research into entopic phenomena, i.e. the sort of subjective visual events engendered by altered states consciousness, is useful in uncovering the shamanistic symbolism evidenced at particular sites that have escaped traditional archeological investigation (Lewis-Williams, Dowson and Bahn 201). That investigation invoked ethnological analogies to modern indigenous cultures to associate signs with recapitulations or shrines of hunts and festivals in a spiritualistic fashion. The next stage is the sort of internal and numerical analysis reviewed by the previous article. The authors recognize the valuable and occasionally provocative possibilities of such an analysis and while it is useful in aggregating and consolidating what we have present-at-hand when it comes to prehistoric art; they are more skeptical in its ability to induce meaning, as it again must rely on some form of ethnographic data. The authors contend that neurophysiological research can transcend the "ethnographic despair" suffered by many a dolorous anthropological archeologist (Lewis-Williams, Dowson and Bahn 202). The strategic advantage is presented insofar that while the sociological and cultural factors that inform the aesthetics of any period are permanently disabled from access, the physiological and neurological components should remain more or less the same across the human species since its final evolutionary step into Homo sapiens. Conservatively, their analysis is restricted to that portion of visual phenomena when subjected to the chemically similar hallucinogens that would have available and likely known to prehistoric peoples. This determination is not without its own complications, exactly what hallucinogens were utilized and in what dosage can be an archeologically sticky proposition, but there are some broad pharmacological agents that can be established. The types of events that seem more directly regulated by neurophysiological processes are geometric visualizations versus iconic hallucinations, which are fettered culturally and socially. These entopic phenomena can therefore be investigated in modern humans. Those investigations have been split into three general categories of analysis: 1) the basic geometric forms that are manifested, 2) the transformations and operating principles of hallucinogenic perceptions, i.e. how those forms become distorted and replicated in the visual field, and 3) the stages of mental development in reaction to hallucinatory stimuli (Lewis-Williams, Dowson and Bahn 203). By applying this three dimensional matrix of categorization, the authors show that the seeming chaotic, fragmented, distorted and reduplicated rock-art depictions across various sites of different primitive groups reveal a pattern that is informed by the neuropsychological response to chemically altered states of consciousness (Lewis-Williams, Dowson and Bahn 213). The association thus with entopic phenomena to iconic hallucinations developed as the "afterimages" of these shamanistic experiments remained with the early Upper Paleolithic artists, in all likelihood the two dimensional phenomena became intrinsically related to the three-dimensional perceptions of the world. A key argument in their analysis of entopic phenomena is that this transition from purely entopic, shamanistic activity translated into iconic depictions, hallucinatory or not, of the world around them expressed aesthetically. Those who would contest this supposition point to evidence of regions where the rock-art never manifested itself as iconic imagery (Lewis-Williams, Dowson and Bahn 218). Nevertheless, the compelling nature of their analysis and their inventive approach entreats a deployment of an ever-expanding set of methodological tools to be utilized in order to circumvent the "ethnographic despair" that besets archeologists. "L'art pour L'art," a phrase adopted at the end of the 19th century to express a bohemian commitment to the intrinsic value of artistic expression is an unusual rhetorical strategy to apply to the artwork of the Paleolithic strategy. The history of "art" is typically conceived as a evolutionary process where markings on media are initially perceived by the culture as fulfilling some purely didactic, utilitarian, or moral purpose to finally being recognized as intrinsically valuable as art per se. Though much artwork before the adoption of the "art for art's sake" mentality was aesthetically refined and subjectively beautiful, it has usually been suggested that the advancement to such a mentality required beauty to be seen as valuable characteristic independent of what in the world itself was beautiful. This is also coupled with some sense of the artist's own labor and attendant skill as creative and self-generating rather than purely mimetic or representational. These requirements assume a high degree of cultural sophistication to be attained. To parse this distinction between beauty and what is beautiful is something of a philosophical subtlety thought unavailable to the primitive or even ancient and medieval cultures, though this last caveat is certainly debatable. Halverson puts forth a radical thesis, which offers that the artistic expressions of the Paleolithic represent in a technical sense "art for art's sake." This technical sense is supported by the claim that art in the Paleolithic may not "represent" or mean anything in and of itself, or at least not in the way that hunter-magical explanations import meaning, but they are the free play of signs that are the "ejecta" of an earlier stage of cognitive development of prehistoric man (Halverson, Abrahamian and Adams 63). Paleolithic art as sui generis as a theory, as mentioned by the author, is perceived as wildly unpopular by most scholars, mostly because of the conversation ending, theoretically "poor" consequences of such a view. The concern remains however that the evidence of a sympathetic magical explanation of prehistoric art is wholly dependent on modern hunter-gatherer cultures, which to do not sufficiently constitute Paleolithic culture. If in the absence of any reliable evidence that may definitively attach religious-mythical-magical reference the theory still remains that the art was created for art's sake. Though as the author notes in order to disconnect any sense of "fin-de-sicle decadence and aestheticism" from the theory, the better and more accurate reformulation should read, "representation for representation's sake" (Halverson, Abrahamian and Adams 63). The arguments levied in support of this theory begin with a number of deductions about the origins and nature of representational creation. Namely, the level of cognitive level of abstraction required to realize that stereo-optic phenomena could be transposed onto two-dimensional surfaces and recognizable as a representation of a three-dimensional existent is a significant enough development as to have possibly engendered a level of random experimentation. That is, that the rock-art and other art forms that have been carried to us as artifacts are indeed artifacts from a time where this spatial abstraction was just being realized, and literally "played" with. The novelty of such a discovery demanded its frequent repetition. Leveraging the work of Ernst Cassirer, the author marks the differentiation of consciousness from the milieu of the swirling subjective experiences around it at the instant that the acquisition of the sign occurs (Halverson, Abrahamian and Adams 68). Once representation in the mind is acknowledged as a representation of the mind, then the first tentative steps of the independence of consciousness are taken. These transitory steps are marked by the "markings" on the walls of the caves of the Paleolithic. The supposition is criticized that the Venus figures are manifestations of fertility propitiation or sex objects as depicted from the male point of view. Instead, McCoid and McDermott not unlike the previous article suggest that are actually self-representations the product of a woman's vision of the Upper Paleolithic. The failure to recognize that these figurines are these sorts of representations is due to the patriarchical and masculinist discourse prevalent in archeology and anthropology. The evidence rallied in support of this claim is based on a topographical analysis of the so-called Venus figures. The stylistic variations through the periods of their construction belie a great deal of figural similarity (McCoid and McDermott 320). Specifically, the stylistic and anatomical deformations are all of a similar kind: the "lozenge" composition. The features of the lozenge composition include an abnormally small upper torso, arms that disappear into the center of the body, the large pendulous breasts coupled with the callipygian buttocks and short tapering legs coupled with a usually faceless and downturned head appear almost universally throughout the Venus figures, though with decidedly different proportions. The uniformity of this composition makes little sense unless they are depictions of women looking down at themselves (McCoid and McDermott 320). From this standpoint, the general features come alive as stunningly plausible. Similar optical perceptions reveal that this foreshortening is quite obvious from the right perspective. Though, McCoid and McDermott do not explicitly suggest that some sort of anti-feminist conspiracy has dominated the fields of archeology and anthropology, but the failure to recognize the very possibility that these forms are self-representational in nature suggest that it was presumed from the beginning that women served only as passive spectators in the production of prehistoric culture. Further investigations into the Dawn of Art reveal that the art-making capacity as a feature of cogntive development, specifically as a feature of human behaviorally modernity, possibly underdetermines the mental abilities of other hominid species. Suggesting, that such behaviors which typify behaviorally modernity did not take an evolutionary leap during in the development of homo sapiens. In the analysis of burial and fossilization sites, known as taphomony, an analysis of art-like works found at these sites challenge the notion that modern behavior is concomitant with modern anatomy (Nowell and d'Errico 1). This was initially challenged by the fact that modern behaviors, such as language, art and the establishment of trade-networks were thought to have coincided with the appearance of anatomically modern humans in Europe 40,000 years ago, yet the appearance of modern humans was discovered in Africa more than 100,000 BP (Before Present). Furthermore, indications of modern behavior were being discovered in those places such as the use of pigment, regionalized artifact styles, and burial rites 70,000 BP (Nowell and d'Errico 2). These types of behavior also fall under the category of "symboling" behavior, and has been previously discussed the neurophysiological processes involved in abstraction a fundamental element of symbolism requires a fairly advanced cognitive capacity, or so was traditionally thought. Despite clear evidence which shows even if there were incremental steps towards behavioral modernism prior to 35,000 BP there was clear leap in the amount and variation of that behavior after that point in time, and thus the gap remains a lacuna in the interpretation of the archeological record. One way in which to approach these issues and the questions that arise in attempting to explicate this gap between anatomical development and behavioral development require an analysis of art prior to the transition Upper Paleolithic art, and the artifacts of other non-sapiens during this period in time. An analysis of the Middle Paleolithic Neanderthal open-air site of Moldova I, Layer IV reveals some equivocal evidence as to the existence of sufficiently symbolic behavior indicative of behavioral modernism. Layer IV is most recognized for its concentric ring-like structures of mammoth bones seeming arranged in a centrifugal arrangement (Nowell and d'Errico 3). The thought it is that the arrangement belies some symbolic order that is over and above purely survival in nature, or merely conforming to the natural terrain. Though this thesis is challenged by Stringer and Gamble who suggest that the ring-like structures is merely a byproduct of the Neanderthal population "pushing" out to the edge of debris and is indicative of a constantly modified and thus haphazard organizational structure. Other evidence rallied in support of Pre-Upper Paleolithic symboling behavior is the presence of scoring or cut-marks found on a large number of the bones collected from that site. On some of the bones there is are appearances of anthropomorphic figures, suggesting again artistic abstraction, though there is further equivocation on whether not these cut marks were made systematically. One reason for this concern is evidence suggesting that there was significant excavation induced trauma on many of the pieces possibly skewing the results. Yet, the microscope analysis and other taphomonic techniques reveal that many of the markings were made with tools available at the time. Further evidence shows, that there is an organizational pattern in many of the markings that reveal a concept of time, and one of decoration. One counter explanation for these findings suggest that the arrival of sapiens in the region resulted in a mimicking behavior by the Neanderthal's and thus did not utilize any of these artifacts in a socially, culturally or artistically meaningful way (Nowell and d'Errico 22) . Regardless, the possibility of symboling behavior among non-sapiens is an exciting and interesting prospect that changes our conception of behavioral modernity and species exceptionalism. One of the primary scientific issues surrounding the analysis of Paleolithic art is the dating techniques utilized to analyze rock art and pigment samples. The establishment of an accurate chronology is crucial if we intend to map correctly the trajectory of the creation of Paleolithic art, not only to determine how and why such art was created, but also to have some understanding of the mental and cognitive capacities that make us human. There are a number of direct and indirect techniques that assist researchers in attempting to locate in time the creation of a piece of art. They each have their advantages and disadvantages. Initially, since the 1990's the only major technical improvements have focused on the pretreatment and measurement of small samples in carbon dating methods (Pettitt and Pike 43). Technical improvements are only as good as the context of methodological application and development that they are placed in. Much of this data is bolstered or corroborated by utilizing indirect methods of dating that ties the results with other forms of dating chronologies some physical and others social. The corroboration with dendorchronological results serves as important marker for establishing correct chronologies. In addition, the use of relative dating techniques that are non-chronometric in nature such as the deployment of stylistic trends in association with radiocarbon dating techniques to establish a more confident chronology. Other indirect methods include strategically linking the stratifications that occur co-topologically with the work of art being analyzed. The difficulty in this strategy lays primarily in the fact that the ability to account for the lapse in time between the occurrence of the art piece and the layering of the stratification remains difficult if not impossible. The fundamental assumption in direct dating techniques assumes that the charcoal used, the primary pigment involved in Paleolithic rock art, corresponds closely with its usage in the piece (Pettitt and Pike 29). Radiocarbon dating takes advantage of the decay rate of carbon, which is known exactly, to determine when the organic material, i.e. the wood in the charcoal died and began the decay process. If there is no systematic way to determine the gap in time between the beginning of the decay in wood and the implementation of the charcoal in the drawing, then these dating techniques must be generally called into question. Furthermore, it is known that because of various environmental factors, the amount of carbon found in the atmosphere and in the substance can change significantly enough to alter the precision of the dating. Therefore, such techniques must be calibrated to take account for these changes. It has been suggested that these calibration techniques have not been implemented in the analysis of rock art drawings thus raising concerns about the accuracy and precision of commonly used dates (Pettitt and Pike 43). Finally, some concerns are raised about the uniformity of application throughout the professional ranks of these dating techniques. The absence of multiple and blind tests on samples, the lack of universal protocols for the pre-treatment, presentation and analysis of data, regardless of its seeming success or failure lead to very tendentious conclusions to archeological research. If indeed we are to utilize these traditional techniques in order to analyze Paleolithic art, then it is clear that many of these issues will have to be solved, or it will lead to a general failure and exhaustion of this field of inquiry along these lines of discovery. Much of the previous discussion regarding the veracity of radiocarbon dating techniques and the establishment of behavioral modernism in hominid species deals directly with the Kulturpumpe theory. Developed by Conard and Bolus, it is a concerted attempt to answer an important question of archeology, which is, when, how, and where did anatomically modern humans make the mental leap to true modernity The answer according to the theory is Swabia around 40,000 years ago. The general structure of the theory suggests that the area acted as an incubator of artistic and other types of modern behavior and then as a piston driving the flowering of artistic expression (Curry 29). This theory is controversial because one it goes against conventional wisdom that suggests such behavior developed incrementally throughout the world, rather than basically at once and in one rather concentrated area. This theory is reminiscent of the punctuated-equilibrium theory of genetic evolution coined by Steven Jay Gould and Niles Eldridge that suggested evolution occurred not gradually but in radical singular events. The singular event that occurred in Swabia after the retraction of the last glacier caused this blooming of modernity to occur four to six thousand years earlier than the rest of Europe. This is likely the most controversial aspect of Conard's theory and it is the hardest to justify because it requires heavily reliance on a pretty narrow gap in the radiocarbon results to establish the titular pump action that theory supposes. It is possible, as some critics have suggested, that other carnivores such as prehistoric bears, who were also in the area, dug up some of these artifacts and we just found them in the wrong place in the chronological record. The most impressive find from the site in Swabia known as, Geienklsterle, found three ivory figurines, of a horse head, a bird, and a humanoid figure, all palm sized and all claimed to be at least 30,00 years old if not older (Curry 30). Also, in a nearby cave, Conard's team uncovered a mammoth-ivory flute nearly seven inches in length with three holes-a discovery that constitutes the oldest musical instrument ever found. Much of our discussion of paleolithic art has focused on visual or architectural works of art. While recognizing sounds, and even making songs is practiced among many other animal species, the construction of a designed musical instrument represents a number of degrees of advancement, symbolic abstraction, and technical skill that would shift the arrival of human-like behavior on our globe back thousands of years. It is clear that ongoing research to endeavor to discover the processes and events that triggered the development of modern behavior, that is, to discover when did a species develop on this planet that was recognizably human, is essential to learning about what makes humanity what is today. If it is possible to articulate a snapshot of the earliest form of legitimate human behavior might give us a clue to how to resolve our current issues, before advent of history forever affected our self-identity, it is a hunt for the non-historical human, what makes us human independent of our history. As shown, some of the traditional methods of scientific and Eurocentric analysis are controversial, and though they continue to deserve our attention; it is clear that the development of new methodologies and new movements in gender discourse will continue to uncover new illimitable interpretations available to the limited signs we have from our prehistoric past. Bibliography Curry, Andrew. "The Dawn of Art." Archaeology 60.5 (2007): 28-33. Halverson, John, et al. "Art for Art's Sake in the Paleolithic [and Comments and Reply]." Current Anthropology 28.1 (1987): 63-89. Leroi-Gourhan, Andre and Annette Michelson. "The Religion of the Caves: Magic or Metaphysics" October (1986): 6-17. Lewis-Williams, J.D,, et al. "The Signs of All Times: Entopic Phenomena in Upper Paleolithic Art [and Comments and Reply]." Current Anthropology 29.2 (1988): 201-245. McCoid, Catherine Hodge and Leroy D McDermott. "Toward Decolonizing Gender: Female Vision in the Upper Paleolithic." American Anthropologist 98.2 (1996): 319-326. Nowell, April and Francesco d'Errico. "The Art of Taphonomy and the Taphomony of Art: Layer IV, Moldova I, Ukraine." Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 14.1 (2007): 1-26. Pettitt, Paul and Alistair Pike. "Dating European Palaeolithic Cave Art: Progress, Prospects, Problems." Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 14.1 (2007): 28-47. Read More