The Archaeology of Shamanism

by Neil Price (Editor)

In this timely collection, Neil Price provides a general introduction to the archaeology of shamanism by bringing together recent archaeological thought on the subject. Blending theoretical discussion with detailed case studies, the issues addressed include shamanic material culture, responses to dying and the dead, shamanic soundscapes, the use of ritual architecture and shamanism in the context of other belief systems such as totemism. Following an intial orientation reviewing shamanism as an anthropological construct, the volume focuses on the Northern hemisphere with case studies from Greenland to Nepal, Siberia to Kazakhstan. The papers span a chronological range from Upper Palaeolithic to the present and explore such cross-cutting themes as gender and the body, identity, landscape, architecture, as well as shamanic interpretations of rock art and shamanism in the heritage and cultural identity of indigenous peoples. The volume also addresses the interpretation of shamanic beliefs in terms of cognitive neuroscience and the modern public perception of prehistoric shamanism.

Part One -- The archaeology of shamanism: Cognition, cosmology and world-view

1. An archaeology of altered states: Shamanism and material culture studies
Neil S. Price

2. Southern African shamanistic rock art in its social and cognitive contexts
J.D. Lewis-Williams

Part Two -- Siberia and Central Asia: The 'cradle of shamanism'

3. Rock art and the material culture of Siberian and Central Asian shamanism
Ekaterina Devlet

4. Shamans, heroes and ancestors in the bronze castings of western Siberia
Natalia Fedorova

5. Sun Gods or shamans? Interpreting the 'solar-headed' petroglyphs of Central Asia
Andrzej Rozwadowski

6. The materiality of shamanism as a 'world-view': Praxis, artefacts and landscape
Peter Jordan

7. The medium of the message: Shamanism as localised practice in the Nepal Himalayas
Damian Walter

Part Three -- North America and North Atlantic

8. The gendered peopling of North America: Addressing the antiquity of systems of multiple gender
Sandra E. Hollimon

9. Shamanism and the iconography of Palaeo-Eskimo art
Patricia D. Sutherland

10. Social bonding and shamanism among late Dorset groups in High Arctic Greenland
Hans Christian Gullov and Martin Appelt

Part Four -- Northern Europe

11. Special objects -- special creatures: Shamanistic imagery and the Aurignacian art of south-west Germany
Thomas A. Dowson and Martin Porr

12. The sounds of transformation: Accoustics, monuments and ritual in the British Neolithic
Aaron Watson

13. An ideology of transformation: Cremation rites and animal sacrifice in early Anglo-Saxon England
Howard Williams

14. Waking ancestor spirits: Neo-shamanic engagements with archaeology
Robert J. Wallis

Genres: History, Anthropology, Nonfiction, Archaeology, Mythology, Prehistory, Religion

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Neil Price is an English archaeologist specialising in the study of Viking Age Scandinavia and the archaeology of shamanism. He is currently a professor in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Born in south-west London, Price went on to gain a BA in Archaeology at the University of London, before writing his first book, The Vikings in Brittany, which was published in 1989. He undertook his doctoral research from 1988 through to 1992 at the University of York, before moving to Sweden, where he completed his PhD at the University of Uppsala in 2002. In 2001, he edited an anthology entitled The Archaeology of Shamanism for Routledge, and the following year published and defended his doctoral thesis, The Viking Way. The Viking Way would be critically appraised as one of the most important studies of the Viking Age and pre-Christian religion by other archaeologists like Matthew Townend and Martin Carver.

Reviews

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Illustrations are poor (and crucial to interpretations) but you can search for what you need on the internet. Archaeology has often been reluctant to see shamanist experiences in art and iconography. These papers are from archaeologists with knowledge of early religions. Neil Price places the book within an 'archaeology of the mind' that searches for cognitive experience, 'these elusive mentalities' from the archaeological record.

It's an open-minded book and includes a piece on the troubled relations between archaeologists, indigenous peoples and neo-pagans or neo-shamans.

I'll follow Neil Price into other work -- I think I liked his introduction the most.


Here's the contents:

Part One -- The archaeology of shamanism: Cognition, cosmology and world-view

1. An archaeology of altered states: Shamanism and material culture studies
Neil S. Price

2. Southern African shamanistic rock art in its social and cognitive contexts
J.D. Lewis-Williams

Part Two -- Siberia and Central Asia: The 'cradle of shamanism'

3. Rock art and the material culture of Siberian and Central Asian shamanism
Ekaterina Devlet

4. Shamans, heroes and ancestors in the bronze castings of western Siberia
Natalia Fedorova

5. Sun Gods or shamans? Interpreting the 'solar-headed' petroglyphs of Central Asia
Andrzej Rozwadowski

6. The materiality of shamanism as a 'world-view': Praxis, artefacts and landscape
Peter Jordan

7. The medium of the message: Shamanism as localised practice in the Nepal Himalayas
Damian Walter

Part Three -- North America and North Atlantic

8. The gendered peopling of North America: Addressing the antiquity of systems of multiple gender
Sandra E. Hollimon

9. Shamanism and the iconography of Palaeo-Eskimo art
Patricia D. Sutherland

10. Social bonding and shamanism among late Dorset groups in High Arctic Greenland
Hans Christian Gullov and Martin Appelt

Part Four -- Northern Europe

11. Special objects -- special creatures: Shamanistic imagery and the Aurignacian art of south-west Germany
Thomas A. Dowson and Martin Porr

12. The sounds of transformation: Accoustics, monuments and ritual in the British Neolithic
Aaron Watson

13. An ideology of transformation: Cremation rites and animal sacrifice in early Anglo-Saxon England
Howard Williams

14. Waking ancestor spirits: Neo-shamanic engagements with archaeology
Robert J. Wallis

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know of Neil Price through his earlier work The Viking Way: Religion and War in Iron Age Scandinavia, and suffice it to say that I am a huge fan. The Archaeology of Shamanism is an entirely different project, yet it demonstrates what seems to be a characteristic desire of Price’s to be inclusive and interdisciplinary, to bring many angles to bear on a given subject.

This collection of articles attempts to address the question “how far is it possible to talk of shamanism in the pre-historic past?” The answer, Price asserts, “can only be sought in studies of material culture and, thus, archaeology.” These papers, other than one about San rock painting in southern Africa, focus on the circumpolar region. They present archaeological studies of portable objects (i.e. amulets and the like), of the landscape, of rock art, of Neolithic monuments, and of animal sacrifice in cremation graves, and describe what might be evidence of the existence of shamanism or related actions/beliefs in the originating culture of each.

As in his earlier work, Price acknowledges people besides academics who have an interest in some of these archaeological finds and the ideas they might generate - namely, practitioners of neo-shamanism and indigenous peoples whose ancestors are/might be the subjects of the excavations and/or studies. Unfortunately, (as far as I can tell) the collection doesn’t have a statement from the latter point of view, but there is an article by a trained archaeologist with a personal involvement in neo-shamanism.

All in all, I enjoyed and learned a lot from this collection.