Shamanism in Classical Scholarship: Where are We Now?

Summary

The idea of shamanism has attracted major classical scholars over the past century, but interest was confined to those engaged with anthropology and cross-cultural connections. This contribution reexamines the work of Diels, Meuli, Dodds, and Burkert to trace the historiography and identify problems in their proposals. It begins with the moment shamans became visible in Western Europe, clarifies how the concept entered classical scholarship, and uses recent dissertations to improve understanding of that milieu. The article examines Ginzburg's article, 19th-century scholars linking Greece to shamanism, the case of Aristeas of Proconnesus, and concludes with the current state of the question.

Study at a glance

Abstract

There can be no doubt that the idea of shamanism has had a powerful attraction for important and influential classical scholars in the last century. Yet this attention to shamanism was always limited to the small group of classicists that were interested in anthropology and the connections of the classical world with areas beyond the Mediterranean. In my contribution I intend to look again at the most interesting representatives of this interest – Diels, Meuli, Dodds, Burkert – in order to better trace the historiographical development but also note the problems that their proposed solutions raise and the answers that have been given so far. The end result should be a new determination of the status quaestionis today. As I look for the genealogies of the study of ancient shamanism, it might be useful to start with the moment when the shaman first became visible in Western Europe. What is the basis from which the classical scholars started to work? How did the concept of “shaman” find its way into classical scholarship? This problem has been treated by several scholars in the last two decades, but not without some confusion. Fortunately, two recent Groningen dissertations enable us to reach a better picture of the milieu in which Western Europeans became acquainted with the fascinating figure of the shaman.1 I will start by looking at a trail-blazing article of Carlo Ginzburg (§ 1), then analyse the classical scholars who have connected Greece with shamanism since the end of the 19th-century (§ 2), take a closer look at Aristeas of Proconnesus, one of the showpieces of the thesis of Greek shamanism (§ 3), and conclude with some considerations as to where we are now (§ 4).

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