Johannes Loubser

Neurognosis, the Development of Neural Models, and the Study of the Ancient Mind

Abstract Cognitive archaeology has made great strides over the past two decades in understanding the mind, experience, practices, and cultures of ancient peoples. Much of this development is due to theoretical orientations focused first upon sociocultural adaptation to ecological niches, and then upon the more symbolic aspects of material culture. Speculations about the universal attributes of the ancient mind may be grounded upon neuroscience and upon the concept of neurognosis, the inherited structures and processes mediating the structural properties of consciousness. The importance of simulacra is discussed relative to the evolution of iconography. Neurocognition is shown to be highly symbolic in its operations, and the symbolic brain is impelled to reify universal cosmologies that are at the core of each societys mythritual complex. It is only with an understanding of the structural foundations of human mentation that we may lay scientifically valid interpretations of ancient human cognition, imagination, activity, and culture.

Prefigured in the Human Mind and Body: Toward an Ethnographically Informed Cognitive Archaeology of Metaphor and Religion

Abstract This article proposes that the particular use and modification of landscapes—such as through the application of rock art and the construction of living spaces—are material projections of the shared spiritual and social experiences and beliefs of culturally related people. It is argued that people within nonindustrial cultures in particular believe that spirit beings cohabit their everyday world, largely due to the culturally agreed emphasis that these people place on altered states of consciousness, particularly dreaming and visions. Referring to the gathering and hunting San and the agriculturalist and pastoralist Zulu from southern Africa as primary ethnographic examples (with brief reference to the Blackfoot Indians of the western Prairies), ways of looking at physically bounded container-like areas and movements into and out of these contained spaces are explored in order to assist archaeological interpretations of the material record. The experiences of “soul loss” among San shamans are portrayed against rock surfaces from the perspective of the artist standing within a contained public living space looking outward, whereas the experiences of spirit-helper acquisition among Blackfoot warriors or soul possession among Zulu herders are portrayed against rock surfaces from the perspective of the artist standing outside a contained space looking inward. Among the Blackfoot the space is an isolated camp of spirit helpers, whereas among the Zulu it is the back of the inhabited hut where patrilineal ancestors reside. The metaphor Things Are Embodied Mindscapes applies to the ethnographic and archaeological examples, which include landscapes, settlements, habitation areas, and individual artifacts/motifs.

Bridging Realms: Towards Ethnographically Informed Methods to Identify Religious and Artistic Practices in Different Settings

Most religions involve communication between physical beings in this world and spiritual beings in a supernatural realm. This communication occurs across metaphorical bridges that connect the contrasting realms. Focusing on the hunter-gatherer San of southern Africa and the mixed agriculturalist and hunter Cherokees and Creeks of southeastern North America, this article shows that San painted in rock shelters and Cherokees and Creeks engraved open-air rock surfaces. In doing so, both communities juxtaposed and integrated entities from the material and spiritual realms. Ritual practitioners moved between realms and manifested this movement on the rock surfaces that bridged the realms. The cumulative effect of continually adding images was not, for the indigenous people, chaotic but rather the creation of a powerful, inter-realm construct. Ritual practitioners’ ability to cross the bridges between realms gave them an opportunity to further their own social standing and influence, as is indicated in the historical records of both societies.

A Holistic and Comparative Approach to Rock Art

Johannes (Jannie) Loubser is the archaeologist/rock art specialist at Stratum Unlimited LLC in Alpharetta, Georgia, USA, a research associate at Rock Art Research Institute, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and a co-editor of Time & Mind. He has worked on archaeological and rock art sites in southern and eastern Africa, Australia, South America, North America, Hawaii, and the Caribbean. jloubser@ stratumunlimited.com

The Ball-court Petroglyph Boulders at Jacaná, South-central Puerto Rico

actions actually shaped the world in which they lived. The late-fifteenth century accounts of Fray Ramon Pane (see both Alfonso de Ulloa’s and Pietro Martire d’Anghiera’s translated texts in Arrom & Griswold 1999) not only qualify as the earliest-known written ethnography of Native American Indians but also as the earliest mention of petroglyphs and pictographs in the New World. Together with the writings of Christopher Columbus and those of the sixteenth-century Fray Bartolome de las Casas, Pane documented both the production and use of Taino art. Viewed overall, the early Spanish accounts contain useful information on the acquisition of the imagery (the source of ideas/inspiration), the selection of raw material, the physical production of the art (unfortunately lacking details), and the interaction with the art. It is worth mentioning that Pane apparently made the majority of his observations concerning Taino religion among the Macorix, who did not speak the Taino language, so we cannot assume that the religious beliefs he described can be applied indiscriminately to the entire Caribbean (Antonio Curet, personal communication). Nonetheless, having visited many islands across the length and breadth of the Caribbean in the early sixteenth-century, Fray Las Casas remarked that ‘almost all those people had one kind of religion’ (Arrom & Griswold 1999, 4). The virtually pan-Caribbean nature of Indian religion as documented by Pane and Las Casas — including among groups that may not have shared Taino language or exact material culture — implies that it is valid to draw inferences from one area to another, bearing in mind regional idiosyncrasies. Until alternative interpretations can be forwarded that can account Background

From Boulder to Mountain and Back Again: Self-similarity between Landscape and Mindscape in Cherokee Thought, Speech, and Action as Expressed by the Judaculla Rock Petroglyphs

Abstract Located in the Balsam Mountains of west-central North Carolina in the southeastern United States, a prominent petroglyph boulder known as Judaculla Rock has featured prominently in the religious experiences, beliefs, and rituals of the Cherokee people since history was recorded for this part of the world in the nineteenth century. Archaeologically, stratigraphically, and ethno-historically, the pecked designs and cupules postdate and probably have very little to do with the Late Archaic soapstone quarrying of the boulder. By looking at Judaculla Rock in the context of the surrounding late prehistoric and protohistoric archaeological sites, landscape, and ethnographic setting, it is possible to develop new understandings concerning the late prehistory and early history of this portion of the Balsam Mountains.

Of rocks and water: towards an archaeology of place

the oratory of John VII, which was consecrated in 706. This information was turned into a 3D model and graphical presentation by an additional team and these images are employed to illustrate their argument. As the 3D representations successfully enhance our understanding of this building, a brief outline of the process would have been valuable. Colour images of surviving mosaic fragments would also have aided an appreciation of the interior of the building and would have been valuable given the limited amount of fabric that survives. The themes of continuity and tradition are most obvious in the modernisation of the basilica during the fifteenth century. The last three chapters cover this phase and suggest a century of renovations and restorations preceded the controversial decision to demolish the building. Richardson associates this period with the renewed importance and symbolic significance of St Peter’s Basilica following the Avignon exile, nicely fusing the physical, political and spiritual. Howmuch continuity was there, and howmuch invention of ecclesiastical traditions? Fletcher applies conceptual theory to her case study of the altar of Saint Maurice, and her review of the literature surrounding the invention of tradition is useful to any researcher dealing with this concept in other times and regions. Since few elements of the original basilica survive, it is fitting that a chapter should be devoted to one that does – the Porta Argentea. Glass considers the location and decoration of these magnificent doors in context, exploring their links to coronations of Holy Roman Emperors – another indicator of the relationship between imperial and papal power. The book also considers the basilica in its architectural context. Osborne’s chapter picks out the Vatican obelisk which now stands in St Peter’s square, using it to evoke sacred geographies, the political significance of the final part of the pilgrim’s journey, and the intertwining of ancient and Christian history. This remarkable building deserves to be more widely known. It must have been a grand and impressive structure, similar to Haghia Sophia in Istanbul. Its survival through tumultuous times is astonishing; the basilica stood for well over a thousand years, in contrast to the modern building’s paltry 400-odd. Long faded from memory, it exists now in documentation, drawings and a handful of archaeological remains. This comprehensive book will ensure that this lost monument to power, politics and religion does not entirely disappear from history.

Cheryl Claassen, Beliefs and rituals in archaic Eastern North America: an interpretive guide

diversity could have been spread more generally throughout the book. Hunter’s chapter on dance as a method for landscape exploration may be hard to understand but it is one of the most methodologically fascinating papers in the whole book. It is so clear about its central concepts that even readers who are unfamiliar with academic approaches to dance will find it powerful. Being Heideggerian in school it is theoretically dense and at times abstruse, so it requires concentration and a little critical unpicking to disentangle fancy words from solid concepts. Norman’s paper on listening is another reflection on personal practice, lyrical but clear, an invigorating and restorative paper which enables the reader to plough through to the end. The final chapter, by Keating and Porter, re-emphasises that ‘gentle politics’ which was espoused at the start of the book. It gets closest to the landscape, for here walking, not books or a camera lens, is the affective medium through which the encounter is performed. Walking is a cultural act, embodied through various different abilities and disabilities: the variety of means by which humans can encounter a landscape is nowhere more visible than here. But it is David Crouch’s Afterword which is perhaps the most powerful part of the book. Reflective and theoretical, it abstracts all the practical, physical examples offered in earlier papers. Affect, landscape and experience are all woven together in a piece which is intellectually reverberative and, well, affective. A wonderful way to end. Though you could pick and choose which chapters to read – all would be valuable read on their own – it is the combination of them, their affective arrangement together, which makes this book. It is not without its problems in the image quality, lack of a conceptual historicity, and, more importantly, Eurocentrism. An equally wellconstructed volume on the same theme with a worldwide remit would open up fascinating ground in the exploration of affect. So, admirable as this book may be, it remains only one, limited, opening, in a world which we are just beginning to explore.