31 o MARGARET W.

CoNKEY

1993 The Raw and the Half-Baked: Structuralism and Archaeological Interpretation.
In Review Feature, Material Culture and Text: The Art of Ambiguity,
II
Cambridge Archaeological ]ournal3(l):ll8-21.
Ethnographic Study and
1994 Shamanism, Natural Modeling and the Rock Art of Far Western North
America. In Shamanism and Rock Art in North America, edited by S. Turpin,
pp. 1-43. Rock Art Foundation, San Antonio.
Symbolic Analysis
1998 Finding Rain in the Desert: Landscape, Gender and Far Western North
Robert Layton
American Rock Art. In The Archaeology ofRock-Art, edited by C. Chippindale
and P. S.C. Ta~on, pp. 11-29. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Whitley, D. S. (editor)
1998 Reader in Archaeological Theory: Post-Processual and Cognitive Approaches.
Routledge, London.

Whitley, D. S., and L. L. Loendorf (editors)

1994 New Light on Old Art: Recent Advances in Hunter-Gatherer Rock Art
Research. Monograph 36, Institute of Archaeology, University of California,
Los Angeles.
Wilson, M.
1998 Pacific Rock Art and Cultural Genesis: A Multivariate Exploration. In The
Archaeology of Rock-Art, edited by C. Chippindale and P. S. C. Ta~on, pp.
163-84. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Ethnography ("writing about a people") is the descriptive dimension of
anthropology, which documents peoples' culture and social organization. The
study of symbolism investigates the meaning of elements of culture. Rock art
has no natural place in a cultural tradition. In some cases, it may be central to a
people's religion, in others it may be mere doodling.

Wylie, A. FuNCTION AND MEANING

1982 Epistemological Issues Raised by a Structuralist Archaeology. In Symbolic and
Structural Archaeology, edited by I. Hodder, pp. 39-46. Cambridge University Anthropologists traditionally distinguish between the meaning and function of
Press, Cambridge. sociocultural traits. The function of a custom has been defined as the contribution
it makes to satisfying the individual's needs or to the organization of social relations
Zubrow, E., and C. Renfrew (editors) (Malinowski 1922:515-16, 1954:202; Radcliffe-Brown 1952:178-79). Not all
1994 The Ancient Mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. marks on rock have a symbolic value and may simply be the product of subsistence
activities. Axe- and seed-grinding hollows are well-documented in Australia,
while "cup marks" on rocks in Kenya may have been used to grind fruit, quartz,
or iron ore (Layton 1986:28-9, 1992a:3, 184-85; Odak 1989:161-63, 1992:69).
Andre Rosenfeld (developing an argument advanced by Anthony Forge) has
suggested further distinguishing "gestural markings" such as hand stencils, which
record a person's visit to or association with a place, from rock art in the strict
sense, which draws upon a body of regular motifs to express cultural constructs
(Forge 1991, Rosenfeld 1993). Rosenfeld terms the latter a referential tradition
although, for reasons given below, I prefer to use the term differently.
The distinction between purely instrumental and symbolic actions is not
clear-cut. Josephine Flood has shown that even instrumental actions may be
mediated by an unfamiliar theory of being. The Wardaman of Northern Australia
pound the edges of rock ledges in shelters to release the power in the rock, and
abrade gr ves "to make the rock bleed" during rainmaking rituals (Flood
1997:151- 5 ). H rm dsson d s rib s polish d aviti s t und at a numb r of

311
312 ROBERT lAYTON
rock art sites in Sweden and the Alps which may have been produced by grinding
cereal or sharpening swords. In several areas local tradition relates that the
hollows were created by barren women, who slid down the rocks in the hope of
becoming fertile (Hermodsson 1995).
I have argued elsewhere that art may be characterized in both aesthetic and
symbolic terms (Layton 1991:4-6) and will rely here on the minimal definition
adopted in my study of Australian rock art: "art consists of deliberate
communication through visual forms" (Layton 1992a:1). As Nancy Olsen puts
it, "rock art is that portion of a culture's visual communication system which is
painted and incised onto rock surfaces" (1989:427). David Whitley notes the
importance of distinguishing between literal and metaphorical readings of rock
art (1994a:3 56) . He traces the idea of reading rock art to Barthes' work on the
communicative dimension of material culture (Barthes 1967; but see also Mounin
1970).
Rock art is not necessarily profoundly symbolic. Melanie Blackmore found
that contemporary rock engravings near the Indian village of Budihal in north
Karnataka were largely made by herd boys passing the time while watching over
their livestock. The figures included snakes, game boards, and the hands and
feet of a local deity (Blackmore 1994). In Kenya, young Samburu warriors are
excluded from the family camp, and, when not defending the camp's herds against
raiding, spend much of their time in rockshelters roasting meat. They sometimes
paint pictures of everyday life on the walls of the shelters (Odak 1992:69).
Among the neighboring Masai slaughtering and eating meat in the open air is
forbidden, compelling men repeatedly to return to rockshelters where they paint
pictures of shields and cattle brands which the informed viewer can identify as
the property of particular clans (Hartley 1992:112-13, citing Gramley 1975).
Secular rock art is well-documented in Australia, where paintings have been
made to show others what horses looked like or to record a successful hunt
(Turner 1973; Mulvaney 1996). The "biographic" rock art of the Northern Plains
of North America, which builds motifs such as warriors, horses, and shields into
scenes depicting combat, horse-raiding, and sexual intercourse, occupies a rather
similar position in the native cultures of the Northern Plains (Keyser 1987;
Keyser and Cowdrey n.d.). Even secular art, however, resonates with a culture's
values. Australian paintings of horses or European ships are rooted in the
cataclysmic events of colonial domination. Horse-raiding and the humiliation
of rivals are symptomatic of the tensions that developed on the North American
Plains ahead of the encroaching colonial frontier.
RocK ART AND RELIGION
A broad distinction can be drawn among the types of religion expressed in rock
art, between those in which the right to paint or engrave motifs signals
membership of subgroups within the community (totemic traditions) and those
characterized by individual ownership of motifs achieved through spiritual
communion (shamanistic traditions).
ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY AND SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS 313
One of the best-documented traditions of totemic rock art is that of the
Kimberley region of northwest Australia (for a review of the extensive literature
on, and current indigenous knowledge of this tradition, see Layton 1992a:33-
47). In the Kimberley, each clan is associated with an ancestral being or
Wanlijina. Various artifacts and animals which the Wandjina used or encountered
during the creation period became the minor totems of the clan. Eventually
each Wandjina chose a territory ( damhina or dam hun), which he or she bestowed
upon the clan. Tiring of travelling, the Wandjina painted his or her image upon
the wall of a rockshelter within the territory, sometimes in quasi-human form,
sometimes in an animal transformation. The minor totems are often painted in
the same shelter. As Daisy Utemara, a senior woman from the region explains,
"When we wanted to have plenty yams or crocodiles, we would go back to that
place and paint them again" (Utemara with Vinnicombe 1992:25). People gi,
that is, follow or inherit their Wandjina (Layton 1992a:37, Utemara with
Vinnicombe 1992:25) and the act of repainting the ancestral figures i~ one
expression of this heritage. David Mowaljarlai identifies the rock upon which
the Wandjina are painted with rain-bearing clouds (Vinnicombe and Mowaljarlai
1995:234). The Wandjina also left the spirits of unborn children in pools of
water within the clan territory, which Mowaljarlai equates with the Wandjina's
reflection in the water, "generating, supplying kids from the same image coming
from the ... water" (ibid.:233). The best known case of totemic rock art in North
America is that of the Hopi (see below) .
The best recorded case of shamanistic rock art is that of the Columbia Plateau
of North America. The ethnographic record from the Columbia Plateau, like
that of the Australian Kimberleys, extends from first-person accounts given to
the earliest ethnographers to the recollections of elders who have provided
accounts based on their personal experience, in the 1990s. Not only is there
general information on the relationship between rock art, the quest for visions,
and shamanism, but also direct reference to actual figures, the majority of them
paintings. One ethnographer gives the word for pigment as nameeta, or "power"
(Barbeau 1960:207-9). Some pigment sources are still in use (see review in
Hann, Keyser, and Cash Cash n.d., on which the following summary is based).
Every known animal, together with artifacts, mythological figures, and heavenly
bodies figure in the Spirit Quest. People visited existing paintings either because
the paintings had been put there by someone .w ho went on to receive good
power, or because the spirits themselves were thought to have created the
paintings. Visions were induced by the fasting and strenuous activities undertaken
by those questing. Sometimes the very act of painting or engraving rock art
induced a vision although, more frequently, the art was a record of a vision
already achieved. Some rock art appears to have been created by professional
shamans as an advertisement for their powers but, since all adults with any
social standing had succeeded in the vision quest, rock art is widespread on the
plateau. Walker considers there are thousands of vision quest sites in the northern
Rocky Mountain region (Walker 1991:107, 110; see also Ray 1939 and Cline
1938; both cited in Hann, Keys r, and Cash Cash n.d.).
314 ROBERT LAYTON
There is also ethnographic evidence that elaborate scenes of corralling, snaring,
and spearing in the rock art of the Columbia Plateau are the product of hunting
magic (Teit 1906, cited in Hann, Keyser, and Cash Cash n.d.). Since one expected
success in hunting the species associated with one's guardian spirit, the two themes
are related. Annie York, a contemporary native expert, comments: "The things
that the hunter wants . . . that's the way you write it. It shows he has caught them
in his mind." York further explained a composite (therianthropic) human-animal
figure as the dream of a hunter visualizing his power (York, Daley, and Arnett
1993, cited in Hann, Keyser, and Cash Cash n.d.).
Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff documented shamanistic rock art in South
America, among the indigenous Tucano people of the Vaupes region of Colombia
(Reichel-Dolmatoff1967). Just as the southern Basarwa or San believed God to
have been upset by the killing of the first eland, so the Tucanoan peoples of the
northwestern Amazon believed game animals to be under the protection of a
being called the "Master of Animals." A shaman in trance can enter the hills
and negotiate the release of animals for his group to hunt, in exchange for the
souls of those who had broken the rules of good conduct while alive. Although
hunters avoid these hills, shamans visit them to paint in red the animals they
have asked the Master of Animals to release. Geometric motifs painted adjacent
to the animal figures represent fecundity. Rows of dots depict drops of semen,
and zigzag lines the succession of generations. Geometric shapes inside the bodies
of animal paintings denote the animals' fertility. Reichel-Dolmatoff was aware
that these forms were characteristic of human trance experience and regarded
them as directly induced by the human nervous system (Reichel-Dolmatoff1978),
a point later taken up by Lewis-Williams and Dowson in their study of Southern
San rock art (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988). Reichel-Dolmatoff considered
the accumulation of many superimposed paintings, the oldest much-faded, to be
evidence of the longevity of this tradition.
Whitley has reviewed the ethnographic documentation of shamanistic rock
art in the far west of North America. He finds good evidence for its production
and use in the recent past in south-central and southern California (Whitley
1992:91-95). Shamans painted their spirit helpers on the rock to let people see
what they had experienced. When in trance, shamans entered the rock itself,
were "drowned" in a pool of water, or "died." Caves were considered entrances
to the spirit world. Inside the rock one encountered spirit agencies embodied in
the grizzly bear or rattlesnake. The ability of lizards to dart in and out of cracks
in the rock made them emblems of trance experience (Whitley 1992:101).
WHAT CAN BE LEARNED FROM ETHNOGRAPHY?
Ethnographers frequently forget to record the kind of practical information which
archaeologists, confined to the material remains of a tradition, find useful. Ivan
Haskovec and Hillary Sullivan, however, calculated that a Western Arnhem
Land artist required seven hours to collect his pigments and fixatives, but only
fifteen to fifty minutes to paint a figure. They point out that pil:(ments and
fixatives would ftc n be collected in the cours' of f taRIOI:( (Hnskov und
f THNOGRAPHIC STUDY AND SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS 315
Sullivan 1989:70, see also Mulvaney 1996:15-17). Claire Smith has recorded a
video that shows the preparation of pigments and fixative in southern Arnhem
Land (Smith 1993 ).
Wherever the representational qualities of rock art can be identified, figures
can be said to point in two directions: outward, to a world of perceived experience
in which the researcher and artist may both participate, and inward, to a world
of culturally-constructed meanings that are more or less unique to the artist and
their community. It is here that most anthropological research has been
conducted. The outward links between the figure and what it represents can be
described as its referential qualities, and the inward evocation of meanings its
signification (cf. Quine 1960:17). Although references may be detected in art
without the help of an indigenous instructor, it is important to remember that
no style is transparently naturalistic, but rather selects certain culturally
significant aspects of the world to portray through regular forms. Through the
study of style, ethnography reveals the intimate connection between reference
and meaning in rock art.
Style can be characterized in terms of the distinctive forms from which its
motifs are constructed and the organizational principles through which composi-
tions are built up. Although archaeologists have tended to interpret style change as
evidence of a temporal sequence, anthropologists can demonstrate the expressive
functions of style. In Australia, totemic ancestors, sorcery figures, and secular
paintings, produced by members of a common culture, are frequently distin-
guished by different styles. Local people rely upon their knowledge of style to
recognize the theme signified by a particular figure (on the functions of style in
Australian rock art, see Layton 1992a, chaps. 2, 3). Whitley argues that the
three rock art styles identified in the Great Basin of California and Nevada may
not be chronologically distinct, but expressive of different stages in trance
experience (Whitley 1994b:87).
Each artistic tradition is also characterized by a particular iconography, an
ordered set of connections between particular forms and their meanings. A human
figure with fingers splayed on an enlarged left hand is a specific motif signifying
a shaman in Algonkian cultures (Snow 1977:47). Schaafsma identifies individual
Kachina in Pueblo rock art from such iconographic traits as a crooked mouth, a
beard and sharp teeth, star-shaped face, large horns, or a long beak (Schaafsma
1981:28).
The most difficult aspect of a living rock art tradition to describe
ethnographicially is its iconology. lconology is the study of the way in which an
artistic system is embedded in the theories of being held by those who produce
it. Recent philosophical writings have questioned whether complete translation
of another culture's theoretical sentences is possible (Derrida 1976, Putnam
1995, cf. Layton 1998). Historical sources record, for instance, that the Dakota
believed petroglyphs to have a supernatural origin, but this is not inconsistent,
in the indigenous theory of being, with the proposition that they were made by
a shaman in trance (Snow 1977:44). D ean Snow cites the case of John Neptune,
an Abenaki shaman who could take seven animal forms. The capacity of Abenaki
1 R ndary h lni(R to und r.:o ontinual transformation "muk"s shamhls of
316 ROBERT lAYTON
modem efforts to impose a rigid structure" upon the cosmology expressed in
folklore (ibid.:4 7) . The empiricist orientation of many North American
archaeologists has blinded them to the need to read early ethnographic
statements as metaphorical allusions to trance experience (Whitley 1992:98).
In Australia, indigenous statements that rock art was made during the Creation
Period, or that it was the work of non-human agencies, led some archaeologists
to conclude that the real circumstances of its production had been forgotten
(Layton 1992a:ll5-19).
The location of engravings or paintings in the cultural landscape may be critical
to their meaning. The rock art of the Columbia Plateau appears to be preferentially
located at two types of sites: places considered gateways to the spirit world and,
probably, graves. Many features of the landscape bearing rock art are the transformed
remains of the bodies and artifacts of heroic beings. In Australia, rock art at sacred
sites is typically regarded as the work of the ancestors who created the site. Totemic
rock art tends to have a different distribution pattern from that of secular art.
Michael Evans and his co-authors similarly report that both the geographical
location of the site and the position of an engraving within a group of petroglyphs
revealed the meaning of figures to contemporary Pueblo people, even though
"Pueblo consultants made a point of explaining that there is no one correct or
complete Pueblo interpretation for a petroglyph image. Each pueblo associates
symbols with its own stories" (Evans, Stoffle, and Pinel1993:39) .
Rock art may not hold the same interest for the community that produces it
as it does for the archaeologist. Field research should try to elucidate both aspects;
qualities such as symbolism, which will be difficult if not impossible to decode
archaeologically, and qualities such as style and geographical location that may
be detectable archaeologically.lt is the ethnographer's task to warn archaeologists
about research that would contravene the wishes of the indigenous community
(see Haetta 1995; Meehan 1995).
If the rock art researcher is fortunate, the art will be part of a living tradition
and the researcher can prepare his or her own ethnography. In less favorable
circumstances there may still be earlier ethnographic literature available. In
the least favorable circumstances, where no ethnographic information is
obtainable on local rock art, the researcher may wish to extrapolate from anthro-
pological information on other rock art traditions to elucidate the art which is
the object of their study. Use of such ethnographic parallels is the least
satisfactory. All three approaches benefit from an understanding of how
anthropological fieldwork is conducted.
Doing Your Own Fieldwork in a Living Tradition
In the ideal field situation, it is possible to interview artists or collect biographical
material shortly after their death (Haskovec and Sullivan 1989; Mulvaney 1996;
Turner 1973). Ivan Haskovec and Hilary Sullivan reconstructed the life of
Najombolmi, an artist of Western Amhem Land whose work was instrumental
in achieving World H eritage Status for the Kakadu N ational Park. They identified
604 paintings at 46 sites as his work. Interviews with other members f his
c mmunity made it clear that th conc~ pt f a skill d nrtlst xlst d In th lo al
ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY AND SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS 317
culture, and that most recent paintings were the work of a few such people, made
to record successful hunts and, more rarely, as part of an increase ceremony.
Najombolmi's compositions include so-called maternal scenes in which a larger
woman puts her arms protectively around a smaller male, records of sexual
relations between males and females, and domestic scenes of men and women
foraging. European contact is underrepresented in Najombolmi's work, although
otherwise common in the region. His work is not confined to his own clan estate.
If rock art is part of a living tradition, there should be a degree of inter-
subjective understanding between the artist and his or her indigenous audience.
Interviewing others is as important as seeking out the artist. Even if rock art is
no longer practiced, if it has contemporary significance this is of both academic
and practical interest (see Haetta 1995; Odak 1992). Downplaying the signi-
ficance of indigenous statements degrades the cultural value of sacred sites
(Meehan 1995; Whitley 1994b:92).
The archaeological urge to assume all rock art is prehistoric should be resisted
(Layton 1995:217; Walker 1991; Whitley 1992:96, 1994a:360ff). Whitley argues,
for example, that the failure of ethnography to match the archaeologists' hunting
magic hypothesis led to erroneous claims that all Coso Range art preceded
ethnographically-documented culture. Deward Walker refers to the "impressive,
ongoing revitalization of traditional non-Christian religions taking place among
American Indians .... This revitalization became widely noted in the 1930s and
its legitimacy and validity cannot be questioned" (Walker 1991:101).
Lack of detailed verbal explanations for the meaning of rock art is not
necessarily indicative of its insignificance; the particular place an artistic tradition
occupies in its cultural milieu will determine how much can be said about it
(see Layton 1992a:124-26). If access to information about the cultural
significance of rock art is restricted, that information should not be published.
Evans, Stoffle, and Pinel found, for example, that Pueblo consultants were
unwilling to share restricted knowledge unless it was absolutely necessary to
explain why a site needed protection, and the same has frequently been true in
Australia. Indigenous knowledge can be turned to practical effect if there is
scope for employing indigenous staff on rock art management projects, as is the
case in the Uluru and Kakadu National Parks of Australia. Evans, Stoffle, and
Pinel write: "Despite many Pueblo peoples' perception of harm done by past
research and journalistic studies, many communities took part (in their
survey) ... and made very practical recommendations for how the Monument
resources and their connections . . . could be both appreciated and protected"
(Evans, Stoffle, and Pinel1993:2).
The basic rules of anthropological fieldwork can be summarized as follows:
Do not rely exclusively on the first person to speak to you; they may be
marginal in their own community.
Conduct open-ended interviews and quote your instructors as fully as
possible, rather than paraphrasing (for excellent examples of co-authored
papers sec U tcmara with Vinnicombc 1992; Vinnicombe and Mowaljarlai
1995 ).
I,
318 RoBERT lAYTON
Variation in answers is acceptable and should be documented: do not
try to homogenize or construct the perfect or complete response (for
examples of such variation in the telling of legends associated with
Australian rock art, see Layton 1992a:40-44). Whitley writes that
"Numic religion (of the Coso Ranges of the Great Basin of the Southwest
United States) was highly individualistic and idiosyncratic, and a certain
degree of variability in the vision quest ritual should be expected in the
literature" (Whitley n.d.: 1).
Establish the cultural mechanisms which make it possible to monitor
and, if necessary, correct what individuals say. Discover whether age and
gender influence what a person can, or should, know. The gender of the
researcher should also be taken into account.
Let your indigenous instructors shape the progress of your research as far
as possible. Let them take you to rock art sites, rather than obliging them
to follow your decisions about when and where to go (for an example, see
Odak 1992:67).
Respect confidences, and do not publish them or reveal them through
public notices.
Establish the appropriate way to recompense your instructors. Pueblo
consultants, for example, consider that individuals should not be paid
for providing knowledge that was the property of a wider community.
Present the community with a plain-language report on your findings
when the project is complete and allow them to comment on it (e.g.
Evans, Stoffle, and Pinel1993; Meehan 1995; Michaelis 1981).
Critical Use of Earlier Ethnography
The most renowned use of early ethnography to elucidate rock art is David
Lewis-Williams' work on the rock art of the Drakensberg Mountains of South
Africa. When Patricia Vinnicombe wrote People ofthe Eland (Vinnicombe 197 5)
she had access to depressingly little direct information on the significance of the
art for the local San (Basarwa) people who had produced it, and her account of
their extermination by settlers during the nineteenth century suggested no new
data would become available. Six years later, Lewis-Williams presented quite a
different picture in his book on the same body of paintings (Lewis-Williams
1981). Lewis-Williams' transformation was achieved not, primarily, by the
discovery of new documents but through the systematic analysis of available
sources to argue for a common cultural foundation for the living !Kung (Ju/
'hoansi) culture of the Kalahari, the extinct but well-documented /Xam of the
Strandberg and Katkop regions two hundred miles north of Cape Town, and the
Maluti of the Drakensberg. Qing, the only Maluti to have been interviewed,
spoke to J. M. Orpen in 1873. Qing had not met a friendly White person before
and was said to have been the son of a leader whose tribe had been exterminated
(Lewis-Williams 1981:31). Lewis-Williams' analysis culminates in the reinterpre-
tation of the fragmentary, enigmatic statements f Qing. The /Xam ethnography
ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY AND SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS 319
was collected by a father and daughter team, Wilhelm and Dorothea Bleek,
between 1866 and 1884, with six principal instructors. Two belonged to a family
band which was still living a seminomadic existence.
Lewis-Williams' comparative analysis revealed a number of helpful parallels
in the rituals and cosmologies of the three cultures. Both the /Xam and Maluti
believed in a Creator Being called /Kaggen or Cagn, whose favored creation was
the eland. When the first Basarwa hunter killed the Eland, the Creator became
angry. Analysis of the frequency of motifs in the art of the Drakensberg shows a
predominance of antelope, of which between 50 and 60 percent are identifiable
as eland. Hunting scenes are rare in the Drakensberg, but numerous paintings
show eland juxtaposed with, or superimposed on, humans. One striking
composition shows two composite human figures with the feet of eland upon
which a group of eland have been painted, which Jufhoansi-consulted by Lewis-
Williams-identified as a mating herd; four males surrounding a female (Lewis-
Williams 1981:64-5 and fig. 15; compare Jean Clottes et al. on bison compositions
in the European Upper Palaeolithic [Clottes, Garner, and Maury 1994]).
All three Basarwa cultures practice(d) the seclusion of girls when they
reach(ed) puberty, either in the mother's hut or one specially constructed. The
Ju/'hoansi consider that if the girl behaves disrespectfully during her seclusion
she can spoil hunters' chances of catching an eland; the /Xam said the same of
the Springbok hunt. The Ju/'hoansi (and other living Basarwa communities)
perform a dance around the girl's hut called the Bull Eland Dance. Women
dance in the guise of female eland soliciting mating. Younger men withdraw
from camp, taking their hunting weapons, which would otherwise be defiled
(Lewis-Williams 1981:43-51). Lewis-Williams draws attention to a complex
scene painted at Fulton's Rock in the Drakensberg that probably depicts the
Bull Eland Dance. A figure covered by a cloak is framed in an arc that Lewis-
Williams identifies as the outline of the hut. Men and women dance in the
postures of the Ju/'hoansi dance, while other men watch from a distance. One
of the dancers has an antelope head (Lewis-Williams 1981:41-53 and fig. 10).
Among the Ju/'hoansi curing is effected during dances in which medicine
men enter trance, gaining access to the spiritual potency possessed by eland and
by girls at puberty (manifest in their underarm sweat). As they dance the men
gouge a circle in the ground with their heels. One medicine man is recorded as
suffering a nasal hemorrhage while in trance. During trance, the men dance in
a characteristic posture, torso bent forward and arms stretched out behind them.
Trance enables them to see the cause of the illness afflicting another member of
the band. The /Xam danced in a similar fashion, also gouging a circle in the
ground. An herb called buchu was used to cool those whose trance state became
too intense. Medicine men suffered nasal hemorrhages while drawing "sickness
objects" from patients. Some wore a distinctive cap made from a springbok
scalp or carried rattles (ibid.:76-81, 88). Hats and rattles similar to those worn
by the /Xam are seen in many of the Drakensberg paintings. Numerous paintings
show men, and sometimes women, with lines issuing from their armpits and
noses. Flecks around figures dancing with bent t rsos and arms thrown backward
320 RoBERT lAYTON
are construed by Lewis-Williams as manifestations of spiritual power. Some
paintings show dancers fallen to their knees; one apparently depicts two dancers
assisting another in a manner similar to the way Ju/'hoansi support each other
during trance (ibid.:fig. 21). Lewis-Williams interprets a complex painted
composition at Fetcani Bend as the depiction of a reclining patient surrounded
by dancers (ibid.:fig. 18).
Perhaps Lewis-Williams' greatest achievement was to elucidate Qing's
enigmatic explanation of a painting that depicts antelope-headed humans bent
forward at the waist, supporting themselves on sticks. Orpen quotes Qing's
statement that the men had "died and now lived in rivers, and were spoilt at the
same time as the elandsand by the dances of which you have seen the paintings"
(Orpen 1874:1, his emphasis; quoted in Lewis-Williams 1981:34 ). Dia!kwain, a
/Xam man shown Orpen's copy of this painting, said that the painting depicted
sorcerers. Lewis-Williams argues persuasively, in light of the ethnographic
material he assembles, that "living in the rivers" is a metaphor conveying the
sensation of being in trance, and that dance exploited the potency of the eland
as God's favored animal. Another composition, in which men carrying bunches
of leaves hold a string attached to the mouth of an animal, was explained by
Qing, and by Dia!kwain. Lewis-Williams paraphrases their accounts in the
following terms: "it depicted a rain-making rite. (Medicine) men had attached
a rope to the nose of the rain-animal and were leading it over the parched land
in an attempt to alleviate the drought." The men had charmed the animal with
the herb, buchu (Lewis-Williams 1981:34). Whether "rain animals" were, in
Western terms, real, or legendary, is unclear (ibid.:103-9).
Productive as Lewis-Williams' analysis has been, some cautions should be
noted. Antelope-headed humans may be construed either as men wearing caps
made from springbok scalps or as visual metaphors for shamans becoming eland
in trance. The semi-circle surrounding the "girl" in the Fulton's Rock scene is
construed as a hut; the semi-circle surrounding the "patient" in the painting at
Fetcani Bend is interpreted as the groove gouged by the dancers' heels. The
critical difference lies in the details of the paintings; in the first, two figures
appear to touch the "hut" with their hands; in the second, the feet of four dancers
are placed within the semi-circle. The women of the Fulton's Rock eland dance
(exposing their buttocks) adopt a very similar posture to figures at other locations
construed as men in trance. Retrospective exegesis can never be conclusive,
but will always depend on deriving the best available reading among several
possibilities.
David Whitley has carried out a similar re-analysis of rock art in the Coso
Range of the North American Great Basin. Dating evidence suggests that much
of the rock art, in which mountain sheep and male anthropomorphs are commonly
represented (51 percent and 13 percent, respectively), was produced after a shift
away from hunting toward the intensive exploitation of wild seeds at about A.D.
1200. Ethnographic accounts compiled earlier in the twentieth century (especially
Kelly 1936 and Steward 1941) recorded that rain-making shamans' ritual
equipment included hats and bullroarers made from the skin and horns of
ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY AND SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS 321
mountain sheep. A vision in which the shaman killed a mountain sheep indicated
success in attracting rain. Whitley argues, "the large proportion of Coso mountain
sheep engraving, including killed sheep and 'hunters' shooting sheep, thus, should
not be interpreted in a literal sense . . . (but as) graphic expressions of the visions
of rain shamans" (Whitley 1994a:363). Although the earlier Coso ethnography
is less ambiguous than that of the Drakensberg, Whitley notes the need to be
conscious while reading it of the theoretical paradigm within which it was
collected(ibid.:364-67). Whitley proposes that the rise of rain-seeking shamanism
coincides with the decline of hunting as a subsistence activity, offsetting the
lessening contribution of men to subsistence, and indicating that the shift was as
much cognitive as adaptive.
James Keyser and Mike Cowdrey are able to draw on the ledger art, which
developed out of the rock art tradition of the Northern Plains of North America
after the native peoples were confined to reservations, and which was documented
by contemporary collectors and observers (Keyser and Cowdrey n.d.). The
symbolic significance of motifs such as the dragonfly is also elucidated by compiling
generalized information from early ethnographies. Linea Sundstrom similarly
draws on ethnographically-documented shield designs from the northern Great
Plains to elucidate the region's late prehistoric and protohistoric rock art
(Sundstrom n.d.).
An awareness of the pitfalls of ethnographic fieldwork makes it possible to
evaluate earlier ethnography critically. All statements obtained in the field are
interpreted by the ethnographer, and all ethnography is written within a
theoretical framework, even if only unconsciously. According to Miles, a
nineteenth-century settler, an elderly Aboriginal woman told him that the
Sydney-Hawkesbury rock engravings were visited by "none but the priest or
conjurers ... except when mystic orgies were performed-dances, human
sacrifices, Paphian orgies and settlements for adjustments of disputed questions
among the tribes" (quoted in Elkin 1949:125). Clearly these were not the
woman's actual words, but Miles' paraphrasing filtered through ideas about the
debauchery of non-western culture. Nineteenth century accounts of rock art of
the Columbia Plateau of North America suffer from the same clumsy cultural
translation: "Minnie says they were made by doctors and mean nothing but to
inspire fear of the doctor's supernatural power" (Denison 1878, quoted in Hann,
Keyser, and Cash Cash, n.d.). The contrast between this paraphrase provided
by Denison in 1878 and the first-hand accounts of Baptiste Mathais and Lasso
Stasso recorded in Malouf and White (1953), both of which are quoted in Hann,
Keyser, and Cash Cash's (n.d.) study of rock art on the Columbian Plateau, is
striking. In studies of the cultures of the Great Basin of California and Nevada,
rock engravings were frequently reported by early ethnographers as the work of
a spirit called "rock baby," "water baby," or "mountain dwarf." Whitley concludes
that these were not, as the ethnographers often supposed, mere sprites, but
powerful spirits encountered by shamans in trance (Whitley 1992:97). The
inability of archaeologists in the past, both in Australia and North America, to
make sense of indigenous pc ples' statements led them to di scount their value
( Layton 1992a:116- 9; Whltl y 1992:107, l994b).
322 RoBERT lAYToN
ETHNOGRAPHY AND ARcHAEOLOGY
Cultural Continuity and Transformation
The meaning of an artistic tradition undergoes renegotiation through time.
Archaeologists are well equipped to collaborate with anthropologists in
reconstructing continuity and change in a cultural tradition. The best example
is probably that of research into the history of Pueblo rock art.
During a field trip conducted in 1933-34, Mischa Titiev related an account
of a salt-collecting trip his instructor had participated in, as a young man, in
1912 (Titiev 1937; see also Talayesva 1963). Although the 1912 party consisted
of only three men, Titiev considered that every household or clan in the village
would formerly have sent a representative. During their journey, the three men
stopped at a rock art site called Tutuveni ("Writing," in the place known to
Euro-Americans as "Willowsprings"). Each was expected to carve his clan emblem
upon a boulder. Those who had already made the expedition should carve the
same emblem, to the left of the original, on subsequent trips. Talasavuyauoma,
the senior participant, carved a coyote head at the left of a line of figures he had
started many years earlier. Duvenimptiwa, the narrator's father, did likewise,
engraving a sand hummock. Talayesva, the speaker, began a fresh row by carving
a sun shield (Hopi clans are matrilineal). During the late 1970s Helen Michaelis
made an extensive study of the site, finding a total of 2,178 figures, including
many arranged in rows where the same motif is repeated ten or more times
(Michaelis 1981). Michaelis compared the corpus of figures with the known
clan emblems of the Hopi. Up to ninety-four Hopi clans have been documented.
Michaelis found the symbols of forty of these among the Willowsprings carvings.
One Corn clansman appeared to have visited the site sixteen times; two others,
a Strap and a Lizard clansmen, had visited the site twelve times. The extinct
Rabbit Brush clan was represented by one figure (Rabbit Brush is a species of
plant). Michaelis found a tendency for members of the same clan to place their
symbols on the same rock. Oral tradition concerning the arrival of Hopi clans in
the region suggests the earliest engravings may date to about A.D. 1150 (Michaelis
1981:8). When Michaelis reported on her findings to the Board of the Hopi
Cultural Centre on Second Mesa, it became apparent to her that the salt quest
described to Titiev is still practiced.
Contemporary Pueblo people consider that engravings in the Petroglyph
National Monument area are linked with local volcanoes and spirit trails to
form "a communication nexus" giving access to the spirit world "that can be
used by living people to help their prayers and medicine" (Evans, Stoffle, and
Pinel1993:17). They pointed out that, as described in Titiev's record of the salt
quest, people journeying toward the Santa Fe and other mountains would have
stopped at places including rock art sites to leave offerings. If a place is associated
with a particular medicine society or clan and people stop using it, the clans
and the associated prayers and songs can be lost, although m mbers of tb wid r
Puebl community may draw on th ir cultural kn wldg t und 'rstand h
f THNOGRAPHIC STUDY AND SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS 323
significance of a site. Star-shaped motifs, similar to contemporary kiva paintings,
prompted their instructors to conclude that the rock engraving was associated
with the Bow Priest society. Their interpretations only partially coincided with
the views of archaeologists who had previously studied one of the sites and were
informed by the sacred geography of the area. The presence of water pools and
grinding hollows led modern Pueblo consultants further to infer that parties
had in the past paused here to replenish their food supply for the rest of the
journey (ibid.:20-23 ).
Nancy Olsen drew upon the extensive ethnographic record of Hopi and
Zuni culture, including indigenous autobiographies, to demonstrate the durability
of the contemporary system of matrilineal clans and their emblems in the face
of colonial domination. Like Michaelis, she investigated whether continuity in
the system could be traced further into the past through the archaeological
evidence. While the ethnography showed that animal representations frequently
figured among clan symbols, they could also be associated with ritual associations
or curing. Sixty percent of contemporary rock art motifs are clan symbols (Olsen
1989: 429). Olsen carried out statistical tests to see whether known clan emblems
tended to occur in certain types of location, such as kiva walls, house room
walls, or field boundaries and therefore, by inference, functioned as markers of
site ownership which might leave an identifiable archaeological trace. She could
only demonstrate a statistically-significant association in the case of kiva walls.
Although clan emblems have also been used to signal ownership of farm field
boundaries, this practice appeared to have originated during the twentieth
century. Olsen's study of art produced by the Anasazi farming culture after A.D.
500 showed that portable objects tended to carry geometric designs, while fixed
locations such as rock walls, boulders, and kiva walls bore animal and human
representations. Thirty-eight percent of the Anasazi vocabulary of animal motifs
were identical in form to modern clan emblems. Since they were non-randomly
distributed, Anasazi art provides good evidence for the antiquity of the clan
system and its expression in rock art. Olsen hypothesises both that other Anasazi
motifs may be lost clan emblems and that, since the Anasazi are only one of the
groups ancestral to the Hopi and Zuni, other groups may also have contributed
to the present body of emblems (Olsen 1989:430; compare Kate Kent's [1983]
parallel study of continuity and change in textile design among Pueblo cultures).
Polly Schaafsma similarly correlates changes in the rock art of the south-
western United States with changes in settlement pattern. After A.D. 1300 large
areas of the Colorado Plateau were abandoned, probably due to increasing aridity,
and populations gathered in the vicinity of the modern Hopi and Zuni
IICttlements in the Rio Grande valley. After about A.D. 1325 rock art changed in
hoth style and content. Figures resembling the Kachina, which are so important
In modern Hopi religion, proliferate. It is then, in Schaafsma's assessment, that
rhc motifs that belong to the principal Pueblo ritual associations also appear.
S haafsma concludes that contemporary Pueblo culture can validly be used to
lnt rprct r ck art fr m this timet rward (Schaafsma 1981:26- 7) . Schaafsma
rcll 'Son th distribution of motifs in rock art t trace the origin of the Kachi.na
ult t :> th MoKollan ulrur , ast of th Ri rand .
324 RoBERT LAYTON
Ralph Hartley has extended this approach to the Colorado Plateau. The
plateau was settled by Anasazi between A.D. 500-1300, although Hartley considers
it difficult to assign figures to any phase within this period. After probable
abandonment by Anasazi in about 1300, it was reoccupied by the Shoshonean
Ute and Paiute. Rock pictures of horses, often with riders, are attributed to this
latest phase (Hartley 1992:39-43). Hartley notes that different degrees of mobility
were demanded by the subsistence economies of the different periods. He argues
that, although "we will never know what 'meaning' was assigned to rock art by
prehistoric peoples in southeastern Utah . . . , the systematic relationships between
these peoples and their socio-physical environment is knowable" (Hartley
1992:64).
Hartley relies on the theory of economic defendability in territoriality to
construct a predictive model, and upon the work of Schaafsma and Olsen for
indications of how Hopi and Zuni rock art might express territoriality (Olsen
1985, Schaafsma 1980). He finds a greater variety of motifs on isolated boulders
and draws a parallel with Titiev' s account of the salt quest, where the engravings
on boulders record the visits of members of many clans to the same site (Hartley
1992:110). Rockshelters, on the other hand, were likely to have been reoccupied
on many occasions by generations of the same or related groups, and display
many repetitions of a more limited set of motifs. Hartley compares his findings
with Richard Gould's work in the Western Desert of Australia. Here there is a
relatively limited range of repeated rock art motifs close to water sources where
art announces restrictions on access by advertising the rights of the local group
bestowed on them by the totemic ancestors (Gould 1969:270-72).
Sudha Malaiya uses contemporary ethnography to interpret ancient Indian
rock art, relying on the hypothesis that the gestures of dances of modern Indian
tribal communities who lie outside the caste system have retained the same
meanings over a long period (Malaiya 1992).In this instance little independent
evidence of continuity is offered in support of the method.
Cross-Cultural Comparisons
Since every culture constructs a more or less unique system of meanings, the
extrapolation of ethnographic information on symbolism to historically unrelated
cultures can only be justified by appeal to human universals or specific common
features, such as mode of subsistence (see Layton 1992b).lt is also possible that
indigenous observers may be able to detect references to details of animal
behavior unfamiliar to the Western researcher (see the discussion of Lewis-
Williams 1981, and Clottes, Garner, and Maury 1994, above).
Hartley's reliance on the socioecological theory of territoriality in his study
of Anasazi rock art on the Colorado Plateau has been mentioned in the preceding
section. He uses "examples from both contemporary and aboriginal behavior to
demonstrate the socioeconomic utility of marking places" (Hartley 1992:64) .
Hartley draws a parallel with the East African rock paintings of shields and
cattle brands mentioned above to illustrate how the particularity of cultural
meanings is lost in the absence of a competent instructor. Brand designs ar
ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY AND SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS 325
inherited patrilineally, although they could be stolen if the victim of a cattle
raid were killed and his cattle taken (see evidence reviewed in Odak 1989:175,
1992:69). The informed Masai viewer could construe particular motifs as
signifying the work of different clans. The uninformed observer, however, would
recognize only the redundancy of repeated shapes symptomatic of the men's
need to return frequently to the shelters when they slaughtered livestock (Hartley
1992:112-31, citing Gramley 1975). Hartley argues that where the information
content in rockshelter art rises (i.e., where the variety of different motifs
increases), one may infer use of the rockshelters for different purposes by different
peoples over time (Hartley 1992:112).
Christian Dupuy argues that the various, historically unrelated cultures which
have enabled adaptation to the Sahara must have been subject to certain
common ecological constraints. The preponderance of male over female human
figures in several phases of the rock art is interpreted as an expression of the
male dominance characteristic of pastoral societies, which arises from the need
to protect one's flocks from raiding (Dupuy 1995, cf. Irons 1979).
Lewis-Williams' work on South African rock art assumed much greater cross-
cultural significance after the publication of a joint paper with Thomas Dowson,
in which it was argued that certain visual forms seen in Basarwa (San) rock art
are universally experienced during altered states of consciousness, which include
the preliminary stage of trance experience (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988;
see also Lewis-Williams, ch. 12, this volume). Several neuropsychological
researchers had independently established that these forms include grids, zigzags,
dots, spirals, and "catenary curves." Lewis-Williams and Dowson drew on
Whitley's then largely unpublished work on the Coso, and on the work of
numerous authors on the signs characteristic of Upper Paleolithic rock art in
France and Spain. They recognized the ambiguity of possible referents in Upper
Paleolithic rock art; a possible entoptic form might equally represent a weapon
or simplified human silhouette, but argued that the extent to which the range
of Paleolithic "signs" corresponded to entoptic forms gave strong support to the
validity of their hypothesis that at least some Upper Paleolithic rock art was
trance inspired. Whitley has since documented the convincing parallels, in both
the verbal imagery and rock art motifs of western North America, which support
the cross-cultural validity of Lewis-Williams and Dawson's model (Whitley 1992
and 1994b:85-7; see also the work of Reichel-Dolmatoff, cited above). Some
caution is nevertheless needed in the model's application to rock art traditions
which lack independent evidence of trance inspiration, since there may be other
motives for using the same forms (see Layton 1988). Spirals and concentric
lrcles are common in central Australian rock art, for example, where they
r present the power emanating from sacred sites created by the totemic ancestors
(Munn 1973:220-21).
I\ ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY AND SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS 327
326 RoBERT lAYTON

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