Emmanuel Guy writes: There is a discomfort in reading the most recent book by Jean Clottes - Pourquoi l’art préhistorique ? published by Gallimard (folio essais) 2011. Yet there’s nothing especially novel about the writing. For the most part, the author takes up his already published work on shamanism. But the particularity of the book and the awkwardness to which it gives rise comes from his bias of indiscriminately combining scientific hypotheses with anecdotes from his travels around the world. The author’s aim is clear: it involves both postulating the universality of his theory and assessing with all the weight of his long experience in the field in an attempt to have us more easily swallow the shamanic pill.
As a reminder: in the mid 1990s, Clottes and David Lewis-Williams updated for the times the hypothesis whereby Paleolithic art is considered shamanic. According to them, the Paleolithic people, like numerous hunter-gatherer populations, entered into caves and its shelter in order to come into contact with spirits. This mainly happened through trance (itself brought on by extended periods spent in the caves) during which the shaman’s spirit set out to encounter supernatural powers. The painted signs and animals are said to be the result of the visions obtained by the shamans during these “voyages.”
An unverifiable theory
Let me be clear, I am not strictly anti-shamanist. Clottes’ theory does not seem unlikely. Like others before, it is not the hypothesis that I am contesting, it is the method. In the absence of written or oral sources, an image can signify anything and everything. It is based on this lucid observation that the prehistorian André Leroi-Gourhan vowed to stick to the analysis of facts only when it came to interpretation (while giving himself permission, Clottes reminds us, to stray in a few cases).
As seductive as they sometimes are, Clottes’s predictions cannot, by definition, find any scientific validation. It can never be proven that the bone fragments found in the crevices of certain cavities did serve, like in practices elsewhere, to enter into contact with supernatural forces. In fact, if the shamanic explanation seems to the author not as easy to reject as other interpretations (art for art’s sake, the magic of hunting, etc.), it is because it remains on the level of generality and in such a way that it foils almost every contradiction. How can a trance and the artistic quality of prehistoric drawings be reconciled? Easy, the shaman painted once the trance was over. If the darkness of the caves played a primordial role in unleashing visions, how can one explain the existence of Paleolithic art outdoors? No problem, the shaman also had access to drugs or abstained from eating for several days, etc., etc.
Clottes’s approach is all the more surprising that he himself, indirectly, demonstrates the failure of any interpretative attempt by revealing, through pages and peregrinations, the polysemy that is hidden behind gestures, behaviors or apparently identical signs. For example, with regard to handprints painted in the shelters and caves throughout the world, Clottes reports that they may have served to enter into contact with a world beyond or, in other contexts, to express different social statuses between members of the group. Strangely, it is the first explanation that is retained by the author with respect to Paleolithic examples.
Read more at:
http://www.paleoesthetique.com/eng/cave-art-the-shamanic-impasse/
En Français :
http://www.paleoesthetique.com/grottes-ornees-limpasse-chamanique/
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