ROCK ART AND PRE-HISTORIC RITUAL BEHAVIOUR: A LANDSCAPE AND ACOUSTIC APPROACH

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ROCK ART AND PRE-HISTORIC RITUAL BEHAVIOUR: A LANDSCAPE AND ACOUSTIC APPROACH

This research project examines the relationship between the rock art of Colorado’s Uncompahgre Plateau (U.S.A.) and the seven characteristics of human ritual behaviour as defined by Roy Rappaport and reinterpreted by Ross and Davidson. It employs a landscape approach in an effort to interpret rock art in both a physical and cultural context. The project is exploratory and narrows a long list of potential variables to a much shorter list, including echoes, which potentially associate rock art with pre-Historic ritual behaviour. It suggests that the boundary of a rock art site does not ‘end’ when the pecking or incising on a cliff face or boulder stops. From an acoustical perspective rock art appears to be part of a larger natural and cultural landscape that includes nearby reflective surfaces (such as large undecorated boulders and nearby ridges) because these landforms provide the surface area necessary for an echo to occur. It has direct implications for recording, documenting and managing this type of cultural resource. Introduction This research project is about the link between rock art and pre-Historic ritual human behaviour. It employs a landscape perspective and builds on the work of previous archaeologists and anthropologists with an interest in ritual activity, such as Bell (1997), Bradley (2002), Rappaport (1999) and Turner (1969). The study area is the Uncompahgre Plateau of westcentral Colorado (U.S.A.), yet the potential applications are geographically broad in scope. The focus is on open-air rock art sites although it has possible utility in other settings as well. It demonstrates new ways that the boundaries of rock art locations can be perceived to extend beyond the limits of the pecked or painted images and it identifies several discrete variables that can be associated with different characteristics of ritual activities. As such it is very much a contextual approach to rock art research with an emphasis on human social behaviour (Ross and Davidson 2006: 309). It is, to some degree, about the multi-sensory experience of rock art locations and not only about the visual identification and subsequent interpretation of the iconography and images. In this regard it will help researchers address the often unsubstantiated claim that any archaeological evidence that cannot be placed into functional categories such as subsistence, warfare or trade can be classified as ‘ritual’ (Howey and O’Shea 2006: 21). It can help archaeologists be more precise when addressing ritual behaviour and rock art, regardless of the particularities of relatively unique study areas. This paper also addresses the creation of special places in a physical landscape imbued with cultural meaning. There is a difference between a space and a place (Crumley and Marquardt 1990: 78) and while individual rock art sites are important; this research is largely about a landscape approach that involves multiple sites and multiple meanings (Hodder 1982: 217). These are all characteristics of the human cognitive experience. Cultural anthropologist Roy Rappaport identified seven characteristics of ritual behaviour (invariance, repetition, special time, stylised form, performance, canonical messaging and special place), which were the focus of this study (Rappaport 1999). They will be discussed in more detail later. Rappaport’s seven characteristics of ritual as applied in this research project were supported by two, and often more, variables that were recorded in the field at various locations within the study area. Eighteen variables were measured at twenty-two rock art panel locations (see Table 1). For the purposes of this research project it was not important to identify any specific ‘type’ of ritual activity, to interpret the iconography of the images, or to provide a temporal context linking the rock art stylistic traditions to a specific time period or pre-Historic cultural group, although the sites in the sample included rock art purportedly dating from the late Archaic to proto-Historic, a timespan that Rock Art Research 2012 Volume 29, Number 1, pp. 35-46. G. E. WILLIAMS 36 approximately covers the last 2000 years. Instead, the project focused on Rappaport’s emphasis on the ‘structure’ of ritual behaviour. ‘It is this concern with the structure of ritual rather than with the content of the individual rituals that makes his [Rappaport’s] research so pertinent to archaeological investigation’ (Ross and Davidson 2006: 311, emphasis theirs). This supports the idea that the relationship between rock art and the rest of the landscape may likely be as important as the rock art itself. Rock art is by definition the imagery that is painted, pecked, incised or scratched on a cliff face, in an overhang or cave, or on a boulder, but these locations must be viewed in a cultural context. Rock art is part of a larger landscape and viewshed and is tied to several variables, including the acoustic features of the nearby environment. This suggests to cultural resource managers that there is more to objectively defining a rock art site than documenting the extent of the images and that natural local landforms (and even minor anthropogenic modifications to local landforms) need to be taken into account as well. For some this is a profound revelation; for others it is a mundane platitude (Gusterson 1996). The advantage for both is that this formal approach (Whitley 2011: 151) provides a fairly objective framework for analysis that captures both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of rock art sites. Ritual behaviour Before searching for clues concerning ritual activity it is helpful to establish a useful working definition of ritual behaviour. As noted earlier Howey and O’Shea observed, ‘when archaeologists encounter patterns in their data that cannot be easily attributed to such factors as subsistence, warfare, or trade the “reflexive explanation” is to call it ritual activity’. This ‘evergreen truism’ (2006: 261) is most often attributed to rock art and monumental structures without much justification or supporting evidence. This project seeks to ameliorate that situation by turning to Rappaport and Turner, although clearly many others have contributed extensively to this topic, for a working definition of ‘ritual’. Rappaport’s definitions are explored in more detail below. Turner, for example, argues that it is the whole person who is engaged in ritual performance; not simply the subject’s physical being or the subject’s mental state (Turner 2009[1969]: 43). According to Rappaport and Turner, then, ritual is in the doing. It is something that is participated in, not merely observed. There is generally not a passive audience in a ritual ceremony but instead there are active participants and it is a multi-sensory (not just visual) experience. The active nature of ritual provides a theoretical framework suggesting that associated landforms and related phenomena (such as the acoustical properties of a small area) can be identified, measured and tested in order to establish a link between the rock art and the physical landscape associated with the rock art images. It does not suggest that all rock art is ritual in nature. It does suggest that there are attributes and characteristics of rock art sites that extend beyond the images of the art that are important when ritual may have been involved. In our minds ritual is often associated with religion, the sacred and the supernatural; not so much with the mundane or the material. This view is reminiscent of Durkheim’s dualistic approach that essentially saw religion as the bridge between the sacred and the profane (Durkheim 1995[1912]) and is also addressed by Bhaskar’s more recent critique of dichotomies and dualisms (Bhaskar1998: xiii). We often look to images for ritual inspiration and therefore often overlook the material setting. While immensely understandable, this approach embodies a Western ‘Cartesian dualism’ (Damasio 1994: 124) that is still largely reflected in modern science. It is a useful approach but it is not the only viable approach to rock art and it is possible that it is one that was not shared by the original creators, whose worldview in all likelihood was not a Western one that separated the sacred and the profane. The archaeology of rock art presents a classic anthropological challenge in terms of emic and etic perspectives. By applying the Western ‘occularcentric’ or vision-based epistemology (Pallasmaa 1996: 10; Rifkin 2009: 585), by a Westerner, to a Western audience, in order to attempt to understand something that is by its very existence is non-Western it is possible, and arguably probable, that our research questions may sometimes be focused on artificial typologies, assemblages and culture histories that we construct as archaeologists (Renfrew and Bahn 2007: 94) while unintentionally overlooking other valid data based on a landscape analysis. A research avenue that includes a landscape approach (including acoustics) expands our understanding and appreciation of rock art and its place in the spatial and cognitive landscape of human activity (Loendorf 2008: 231) and helps explain why it is not randomly distributed over the terrain in which we find it (Schaafsma 1988: 1). Using acoustics is an example. It is worth noting that recent advances in neuroscience have helped expand our understanding of the cognitive aspects of many of the variables which affect the human experience; one such variable is sound. According to archaeologist Steven Mithen, ‘[m]usic induces emotional states both in those who perform and in those who simply listen’ (Mithen 2006: 94). The human body itself (feet, hands and voice) is the most ancient sound-producer of all (Scarre 2005: viii). The sound component of the human lived experience is clearly fundamental to ritual.

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