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Hispana

1 paper in the library · 49 citations · publishing 1994

Papers

Rock art and ritual: Southern Africa and beyond

Hispana January 1, 1994 J. D. Lewis‐williams 49 citations

Southern African rock art provides a starting point for arguing that European Upper Palaeolithic parietal art had a shamanic character. The author identifies different stages in the production and consumption of rock-art depictions, all embedded in rituals that constituted, reproduced, and sometimes subverted power relations. Multiple ethnographic analogies are used to build an account of the changing association between art and ritual in the Upper Palaeolithic of Western Europe.