SHAMANISM IN WALES: A HISTORICAL APPROACH THROUGH ETHNOGRAPHY, FOLKLORE AND ARCHAEOLOGY

Stone engraving or carving also known as petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving or abrading, as a form of rock art. In the engraving, animals, men, ornaments, instruments, weapons and so on have been depicted which is the material culture of the Zo tribes. This article attempts to give a brief account of the living rock art tradition of the Zo people in the transborder area of Indo-Myanmar. The culture extended to Chin Hills and Mizoram who are the same group of southern Manipur. The periodisation of the studied rock art is beyond the understanding of a mere scholar without the help of experts. This article deals only with the petroglyph or rock art irrespective of megalith, monolith, dolmens or menhir. Efforts have been made to explore how these diverse tendencies can be beneficial within the study of rock art and history.

Handbook of Rock Art Research. DAVID S. WHITLEY (ed.). AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA, 2001. 863 pp., 250 figures, tables, biblio., index, glossary. $99.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-7425-0256-2. This remarkable book represents the first comprehensive overview of world rock art ever published. It is ambitious in its goals, encyclopedic in its coverage (more than 800 pages long), and mostly successful in presenting what we know right now about how to study prehistoric rock art, how to give it meaning in both specific and general contexts, and how it looks to us in its varied forms around the world. There is very little in this book about southeastern North America (and what there is isn't very good), but that should not detract from its value as a resource to the readers of this journal. Handbook of Rock Art Research will be rewarding to specialists in rock art study, resource managers, and who are interested in the theories and methods at large in the discipline today. For those not current with the topic, rock art studies today are a microcosm of archaeology as a whole, and this book provides a fine, detailed overview of the field. David Whitley opens the volume with a long introduction that ranges widely over the history of rock art studies in North America, its place in the modern world of American archaeology, and current issues and problems in the study of rock art sites. I found his presentation insightful for the most part, illuminating central problems with chronology, constituency, and interpretation, though it was obviously written by an American from an American point of view and doesn't reflect much of an international perspective. 1 don't ' agree with Whitley's presumption, running through much of his discussion, that there continues to be an opposition between scientific archaeologists and some other, presumably nonscientific, at the root of modern intellectual debate; this is a straw man that obscures, in my view, fundamental issues in basic rock art archaeology. In the end, though, I agree that rock art research cannot be divorced from archaeology more generally in theoretical or methodological realms. I have long held rock art to be an archaeological problem first and foremost, to be addressed with proper archaeological methods and techniques. After the introduction, the Handbook is divided into three coherent sections. The first, perhaps the most useful to a general audience, deals with Analytic and Management Methods. Larry Loendorf offers a cookbook on recording and documentation techniques that both encompasses the meager available literature on rock art recordation and provides useful insights from Loendorf's own considerable experience in the field. Johannes Loubser gives his view of management and conservation. James Keyser considers relative dating techniques, including the stylistic and stratigraphie methods that have always been the core of rock art chronology; like Loendorf's paper, this is a fine reference for general techniques employed by rock art students. The next two chapters deal with absolute dating of rock art. Marvin Rowe gives a complete and authoritative overview of direct ^sup 14^C age determination of organics in pigments by AMS, a discussion that will be of use to all concerned with understanding the requirements, strengths, and weaknesses of the method, not just rock art scholars. Ronald Dorn presents an honest appraisal of the various techniques heretofore proposed to provide absolute ages for engraved petroglyphs. As Dorn, who developed some of the methods, freely admits, most of these techniques are problematic at best; he concludes his review with pessimism for the current state of the art and optimism for the potential of future technologies. Marvin Rowe returns with another encyclopedic chapter, this time to review physical and chemical techniques for analyzing production and taphonomic histories of rock art. …

Most researchers today focus on rock art in a small section of a single country and usually on hunter-gatherer, pastoralist, or agriculturist rock art. This tightening of focus reflects more than research practicalities, underlying it are fundamental paradigm shifts in the ways in which people work with rock art. In the late 1960s, rock art research lay at the periphery of African archaeology. The last fifty years has seen a transformation in the application of both method and theory in rock art studies and this has allowed for reintegration within mainstream archaeology. Problems of dating rock art remain, but this has not stopped the development of historically particular and regionally specific contextual understandings of the role and symbolism of rock art in many parts of Africa. Rock art studies now have a central place in the study of cognition, hermeneutics, and identity formation throughout Africa.

A Companion to Rock Art Edited by Jo McDonald and Peter Veth Wiley Blackwell, 2012 ISBN 978-1-4443-3424-1. Pp. xxxiv+680. 133.30 [pounds sterling]. This international volume on rock art provides a complete, comprehensive and up-to-date overview of most of the main research theories and methods used, and the research questions addressed, in current archaeological debates on rock art, be they global or regional. It was conceived by the editors as a tool teaching the next generation of rock art researchers in a 13-week semester cycle. But this volume is more than a collection of educational materials. It gathers research papers addressing some key topics in rock-art studies, and thus becomes essential reading for anyone interested and/or conducting rock-art research today. The 37 contributions by 57 international scholars from five continents are structured into 11 meaningful sections, with two to four papers per section. While the chapters in each section are intended to address a specific issue, well defined by the section headings (I. Explanatory frameworks; II. Inscribed landscapes; III. Rock art at the regional level; IV. Engendered approaches; V. Form, style and aesthetics; VI. Contextual rock art; VII. The mediating role of rock art; VIII. Rock art, identity and indigeneity; IX. Rock art management and interpretation, X. Dating rock art, XI. Rock art in the digital age), some key questions are explored recursively across the volume. This shows their significance for achieving a more complete understanding of rock art, as a tool for exploring past and present human behaviour and cultural practices. Questions of time (relative or chronometric), place, past and present as well as individual and group identities, function and/or meaning are explored through the systematic deconstruction and analysis of the motifs, themes and panels, their patterns of variation, the context and/or the landscapes, from a variety of international perspectives and backgrounds. Case studies from Australia and the Pacific, Northern and Southern America, Siberia, Europe, Africa and India, and a wide range of periods, from the European Upper Palaeolithic to current Australian rock art, fully illustrate these questions. All these studies remind us once more that rock art is not only about the decoration of passive surfaces with beautiful images, as emphasised by Blinkhorn et al. in chapter 11. Rock art is an alternative source of information about human behaviour and practices, and can be used to explore continuities and discontinuities, human interaction, past territoriality, group mobility, symbolic behaviour and so forth. The large number of chapters prevents us from briefly summarising each of them, but some key issues for current debates are worth mentioning. Of special interest for interpretative approaches is Lewis-Williams' reflective contribution (chapter 2) on the misinterpretation and misuse of his concept of to universally interpret rock art. As he states, shamanism is only one of the many potential interpretations of rock art, and thus it cannot be systematically used to interpret past arts. While past interpretative trends used to emphasise a unique function for Pleistocene art (for a brief summary of past interpretative schools, see Moro and Gonzalez, chapter 15), current studies recognise the multiple functions of past and present imagery and the variety of social contexts (religious, social and political) in which art operates. Take as an example the multiple functions of Western Desert People's rock art, summarised by McDonald and Veth (chapter 6: 96), which includes marking place and individual's affiliation, storytelling or instructive purposes, initiation ceremonies, visual representation of an ancestral being or event, and so forth. It is fully accepted throughout the volume that only through a thoughtful analysis and understanding of the context of rock art (the walls, the surrounding archaeological site, the geographical context, the acoustic or other sensorial properties, etc. …

Change to rock art has been treated as an unforgiveable act in many contemporary cases; however, rock art in many parts of the world was most likely not created with the intention that it would endure for eternity unaltered. This paper highlights three ways in which the rock art creation process has been ‘replicated’ in the past and present. These forms of replication behaviours—of form, place, and action—are identified in the case study of the rock art of the Bronze Age and Iron Age Mongolian Altai. Additionally, examples of modern imagery that represent continuity of tradition are also presented. I argue that the cognitive processes suggested by these forms of replication have been influential in forming the rock art record, and they can be used to explore contemporary, regional worldviews. In eastern Eurasia, replication behaviours in rock art reference place-making strategies and regional cosmological traditions that see the landscape as occupied by non-human beings. The goal is to provide a constructive framework by which alteration and change can be considered innate aspects of the archaeological record, as opposed to mere vandalism, in our interpretation of prehistoric rock art.

While the study of rock art has been conventionally the concern of prehistory, much of its content in the Northern Vindhyas, India, is in the historical period and requires a historical interrogation. While the early Holocene rock art here is contextually associated with non or semi-geometric microliths and can be regarded as Upper Palaeolithic, the more emphatic, extensive, and skilled rock art exposition is during the Mesolithic. Mesolithic North Vindhyan rock art also has more geometric microliths, large numbers of shelter-dwellings, prepared stone-floors, human and faunal remains, corded incised handmade mesolithic pottery, grinding stones and occasional and Iron Age tools. On the scarps, paintings of large antelopes, cattle, buffalo, elephants, rhinos, turtles, varanus, and smaller deer species dominate the Mesolithic, while neolithic-chalcolithic and Iron Age depictions contain more human figures, domesticated cattle, buffalo, sheep, goat, and greater dress, hair-style, self-images, palm-prints, iron tools, three-dimensional perspectives, landscape simulations, superimpositions and narrative structure. Paintings show cognitively advanced choices in surface selection, the use of templates like three dimensionality, perspective, and movement, in the selection and narrative rendering of historically oriented themes. Inter-group, identity-based differences between the several groups inhabiting the uplands and their conflicts are also represented. Historically structured materials like pastoral corrals, stelae, memorial stones, historical sculpture, and Brahmi inscriptions contextual to rock art, are found in the valleys and the foothills. Early historic trans-Indian trade routes occur in the Vindhyas and these routes are dotted with early historic inscriptions in the Brahmi script and its variants like Mauryan, Siddhamatrika, Shankha, proto-Nagari and Nagari. Their symbolic unity and continuity with upland symbolic traditions are many. Distinctly medieval rock art includes themes like soldiers, flag marches, hunting, and elephant capture by feudal lords. The final period of north Vindhyan rock art is colonial when paintings made by indigenes of the area depict the looting of colonial horse-carts and buggies after which rock art declines and disappears.

This article reviews recent ontological debates in archaeology and examines how ontology has been discussed in rock art studies. It questions the prevailing symbolic analysis of rock art and critically questions the epistemological foundations of “informed” and “formal” approaches to rock art. The article evaluates ontological debates within rock art studies and argues for a committed approach to ontology that uses anthropological understandings of ontology as an analytical tool and a method for generating fresh concepts. The article then reviews the ontological dimensions of a series of aspects of rock art studies, including the production of rock art images, their placement on the rock surface, their position in the landscape, and their relationship to formation processes. The article concludes by arguing that ontological questions not only relate to the interpretation of rock art images, but touch on all aspects of rock art.

Cupule petroglyph occurrences in the American West, E.B. Parkman cup-and-ring petroglyphs in northern California, R. Mark and E. Newman line convention in rock art of North America, D.W. Ritter and E.W. Ritter the line, tree and circle in rock art and pictography, G. Granzberg and J. Steinbring petroglyph research in the western Great Basin of North America, K, M. Nissen Hohokam rock art of southern Arizona, D.L. Hammann prehistoric rock art of the San Rafael Swell, E.C. Dorman Central American rock art, C.W. Meighan a summer solstice petroglyph site, R.E. Connick and F. Connick colonial rock art in Bolivia, R.Q. Lewis et al rock art sites of southeastern South America, M. Consens approaches to Argentinean Puna rock art, M.M. Podesta Bolivian rock art, R.Q. Lewis.

ABSTRACTThis paper provides a complete overview of all the known rock art sites to demonstrate the variation in motifs and techniques used in the Philippines, outline the indigenous associations, and highlight issues for conservation. In addition, new findings are introduced that include a second rock art site in Alab and previously unnoticed styles of rock art in Peñablanca. In recent years, the study of Philippine rock art has also yielded valuable contributions for archaeology both in methods and theory. Recording the rock art in challenging contexts necessitated the development of several pioneering digital methods, some low‐cost, to see obfuscated rock art and expedite inventories that can be used worldwide. After reviewing the rock art in the Philippines, it is clear that the much‐debated Austronesian rock art theories do not apply to these sites. A comparison of similar motifs and their contexts found in Southeast Asia and Micronesia is a starting point for developing new rock art theories in the region.

Rock art is one of the richest cultural resources in the world which depicts the earliest expression of human beliefs and ideas. It is a form of visual non-verbal communication. Rock art is broadly divided into two categories: (a) Pictograph or the pigmented art (b) Petroglyph or extractive art. In Baluchistan both Pictograph and Petroglyph have been identified in great numbers but rock art studies in Baluchistan have been received little attention. The main purpose of this paper is to introduce rock art of Saravan as a rich cultural heritage which needs systematic and scientific study and protection. Protection of rock art sites is itself an important task and proper conservation through technical discipline is most essential. Rock arts are fragile resources of cultural property and it must be conserved, studied and protect and familiarize the general public with the importance of them to be saved and enjoyed for a long time.

Marginalized by the mainstream Archaeology, rock art studies is currently an embarrassing discipline in China. As the cultural heritage produced by the early human, however, rock art possesses research values and realistic signifi cance of paramount importance. In the contemporary context of inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural research, to refl ect the disciplinary hedges by integrating the academic perspectives as well as cutting-edge ideas of anthropological holism is conducive to eliminate the superfi cial mystery of rock art, to restore its authenticity of humanistic spirit, to conduct theoretical and applied research with both feet on the ground, to construct the academic idea of Anthropology of Rock Art and to re-shape the humanistic care which rock art heritage exerts on the contemporary society.

Over the course of the past millennia, pastoral nomads migrated from the Arabian Peninsula and neighbouring regions into the Negev desert. Particularly with the last major wave of Bedouin migration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these groups introduced the 'Bedouin Phase' into Negev rock art, a tradition that was central to the Negev Bedouin culture up until the mid to late twentieth century. The 'Bedouin Phase' is mostly made up of combinations of abstract marks, many of which signify tribal affiliations, and a limited number of Arabic inscriptions. Frequently engraved near earlier motifs, the Bedouin tribal markings formed a link with the past while also indicating to their intended audience landownership rights and resource-use entitlement. Rapid and broad changes took place in Bedouin society and culture as it transformed from being semi-nomadic and pastoral-based to being more dependent on agriculture and finally to a broad-based wage labour economy. The article describes how the placement of rock art within the landscape and the function it played for the Bedouin in the region reflects these changes. In the absence of official documentation, the study of Bedouin rock art is of special interest, since these engravings enable a fresh perspective on current-day Bedouin claims to ancestral or historical land ownership rights.

Four centuries of rock art exploration and research in Siberia resulted in considerable achievements in documentation, cultural and chronological attributions of style and traditions and learning about ancient ritual practices related to rock art. However, the range of interpretational frameworks has remained rather limited, and the active role rock art played in prehistoric ethno-cultural processes has been overlooked. Rock art motifs and styles have been by default considered as mere markers of ethno-cultural groupings and migrations. This thesis continues a long-established Soviet/Russian tradition of considering rock art sites in their archaeological context but poses and answers new questions which are relevant not only for Siberian but also global rock art research, namely, why rock art was created, why specific styles emerged and why changes in rock art production occurred. These questions are explored through anthropological perspectives on ethnicity, identity, community and symbolism. Aiming to answer these questions, macro ethno-cultural and social processes that took place in East Siberia in the prehistoric period are reconsidered through the development of rock art styles and traditions. Importantly, this PhD is primarily fieldwork based because publications available for the rock art of East Siberia contain only black-and-white drawings and few low-quality black-and-white photographs. This research is focused on East Siberia which lies east of the Yenisey River, and specifically deals with the following regions: 1) Cis-Baikal, an area to the west from Lake Baikal; 2) Trans-Baikal, an area to the east from Lake Baikal which includes Zabaykalsky Krai and Buryatia; and 3) Sakha Republic (Yakutia). This project’s fieldwork was carried out in Sakha Republic (Yakutia) and Trans-Baikal. In total, 108 rock art sites with more than 6,000 designs were recorded. In addition, rock art sites in the Lower Amur River basin and Tomskaya Pisanitsa in West Siberia were surveyed during this fieldwork. Prior to this PhD project, rock art sites of the Upper Lena River in Cis-Baikal were visited by the author to gain better understanding of the area’s rock art. This thesis is focused on three chronological rock art groups: 1) the earliest, possibly Paleolithic rock art, 2) Neolithic rock art, and 3) Bronze Age rock art styles and traditions. The concept of style is employed as an analytical tool to investigate diachronic and spatial patterns. Several rock art styles and traditions, such as Amur, Angara, Selenga and Kyakhta, were better defined, and their chronology was elaborated based on the archaeological record and analogues in art objects from archaeological contexts. Such an accurate placement of rock art in time and space allowed the exploration of the role rock art played in constructing and reconstructing ethno-cultural identities, which contributes to the wider field of archaeology and cultural anthropology. The most important observation made in this research addresses the questions of why rock art is created, why specific styles and traditions emerge and why changes in rock art occur. Rock art sites create and maintain a strong connection between people, their past and their land. Rock art does not just reflect group or individual identities but helps construct them through powerful emotional attachments. The emergence or change of rock art styles occurs in a situation of major cultural changes, the reasons and dynamics of which may vary. The important factor is that people had to protect their tradition, culture and well-being in a situation of threat to their ethno-cultural continuity. In protecting continuity, it is inevitable changes in a rock art tradition occur. It becomes highly important to mark rocks with symbols of now ‘hot’ identity thus expressing belongingness, and those marks remain there for millennia continuing to structure identities of those who claim their belongingness to these places afterward. Specific styles and motifs become these symbols which need to be threefold – exhibiting the connection with the past, expressing a new identity and being perceived by an outsider. Therefore, a rock art tradition/style simultaneously features continuity, change and similarity to other synchronous traditions/styles which is a shared field of interaction. This view explains why rock art styles do not fit into neat culture-historical frameworks and do not have clear-cut temporal and spatial limits. This explanatory framework can be applied elsewhere in any other study on rock art and identity. This PhD thesis not only contributes to Siberian rock art research in a major new way but also shows many new directions for future rock art research globally.

This article explores the potential of social media in disseminating and communicating archaeological knowledge and the ways in which their impact on the public can be enhanced through marketing plans. It examines the implementation of such a plan in the context of the Facebook page of the ERC Advanced Grant project “The sound of special places: exploring rock art soundscapes and the sacred” (acronym: Artsoundscapes). Using quantitative and qualitative data provided by the Facebook Insights altmetrics tool, the article evaluates the general performance of the Artsoundscapes page and measures the effectiveness of the marketing plan. It discusses the components of marketing plans with emphasis on a carefully designed content strategy that, in the case of the Artsoundscapes Facebook page, in only 19 months of existence has resulted in the organic development of an active online community of 757 fans and 787 followers from 45 countries. The marketing plan has contributed to raising awareness of the Artsoundscapes project and an emerging, highly specialized and little-known branch of archaeology – the archaeoacoustics of rock art sites. It rapidly and engagingly disseminates the project’s activities and outcomes among both specialist and non-specialist audiences, and informs the non-specialist public about relevant advances in the multiple fields – rock art studies, acoustics, music archaeology and ethnomusicology – that intersect in it. The article concludes that social media are effective means for archaeologists and archaeological organizations and projects to reach various audiences, and that marketing plans significantly augment this process.

The aim of this article is to comprehend the significance of superimpositions as social practices and processes and to deconstruct how notions of superimpositions and vandalism have been used in rock art studies. Although attempts in the past have been made to determine why certain motifs were intentionally placed on top of other images, superimposition and vandalism/iconoclasm are often – and unhelpfully – used interchangeably in rock art literature. Interpretations have mostly lingered on the negative connotations of superimpositions, such as the “defacement” of previous motifs. Here, we argue that uncritically categorising certain practices as vandalism – often from the perspective of a Western knowledge system – has a negative influence on interpretations of traditional art systems. Instead, by recognising the active role that past depictions played – and, in some places, continue to play – within contemporary Indigenous communities, we hope to clarify and expand conceptualisations of superimpositions in rock art research. Our case study focusses on superimpositioning in the Kimberley region of Australia.