Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Frontispiece
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Contributors
- PART 1 ON DOCUMENTING ROCK ART
- PART 2 ON UNDERSTANDING ROCK ART USING INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE
- Chapter 9 Politics, ethnography and prehistory: In search of an ‘informed’ approach to Finnish and Karelian rock art
- Chapter 10 Ethnography and history: The significance of social change in interpreting rock art
- Chapter 11 Symbols on stone: Following in the footsteps of the bear in Finnish antiquity
- Chapter 12 Animals and humans: Metaphors of representation in south-central African rock art
- Chapter 13 Ways of knowing and ways of seeing: Spiritual agents and the origins of Native American rock art
- Chapter 14 Rock art, shamanism and history: Implications from a central Asian case study
- PART 3 ON PRESENTING ROCK ART
- Index
Chapter 9 - Politics, ethnography and prehistory: In search of an ‘informed’ approach to Finnish and Karelian rock art
from PART 2 - ON UNDERSTANDING ROCK ART USING INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Frontispiece
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Contributors
- PART 1 ON DOCUMENTING ROCK ART
- PART 2 ON UNDERSTANDING ROCK ART USING INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE
- Chapter 9 Politics, ethnography and prehistory: In search of an ‘informed’ approach to Finnish and Karelian rock art
- Chapter 10 Ethnography and history: The significance of social change in interpreting rock art
- Chapter 11 Symbols on stone: Following in the footsteps of the bear in Finnish antiquity
- Chapter 12 Animals and humans: Metaphors of representation in south-central African rock art
- Chapter 13 Ways of knowing and ways of seeing: Spiritual agents and the origins of Native American rock art
- Chapter 14 Rock art, shamanism and history: Implications from a central Asian case study
- PART 3 ON PRESENTING ROCK ART
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
In a review of contemporary rock art research, Paul Tacon and Christopher Chippindale (1998) make a useful distinction between two fundamental approaches to the study of rock art: ‘formal methods’, which do not depend on any kind of ethnographic insight, and ‘informed methods’ which draw on
[…] some source of insight passed on directly or indirectly from those who made and used the rock-art – through ethnography, through ethnohistory, through the historical record, or through modern understanding known with good cause to perpetuate ancient knowledge (Tacon & Chippindale 1998: 6).
In our day, the production of rock art in traditional societies has come to an end almost universally. Access to a living tradition concerning the meaning of rock art has become exceedingly rare, although the Dogon rock paintings of Mali (Kleinitz & Dietz 2006) and some regions of Australia (Layton 1992) can be mentioned as cases where ‘inside information’ is still available. Somewhat more numerous – but nonetheless rare – are direct references to beliefs and practices related to rock art in ethnographic literature. With a few exceptions (such as Reichel-Dolmatoff 1967), such references are limited to short and obscure footnotes, as few early ethnographers or explorers have shown any great interest in studying the production and meaning of rock art. However, great advances in the study of rock art have been accomplished even with the aid of such fragmentary and elusive material, as exemplified by the work of David Lewis-Williams on the San rock paintings of South Africa (Lewis- Williams 2003; Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004) and David Whitley's studies on the rock art of the southwestern United States (Whitley 1998, 2000).
With the exception of Medieval graffiti, and other inscriptions of the historical period, this kind of ‘direct’ ethnographic information does not appear to be available for any corpus of rock art in Europe (Chippindale 2000: 70). However, in the definition quoted above, Tacon and Chippindale leave the door open for a third, more speculative kind of informed knowledge: insights gained through a “modern understanding known with good cause to perpetuate ancient knowledge”.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Working with Rock ArtRecording, Presenting and Understanding Rock Art Using Indigenous Knowledge, pp. 113 - 134Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2012