Cambridge Archaeological Journal
February 15, 2023
A. Navarro
This work aims to apply the theories of new materialities to the study of the material culture of the Formoso stilt village, a pre-colonial settlement from the ninth–tenth centuries ad, located in the Baixada Maranhense. Appliqués of the pottery bowls at this archaeological site present cosmological information regarding the transformation or metamorphosis of bodies, aspects that are fertile...
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
August 1, 2019
Véronique Bélisle
10 citations
This paper addresses the tension between élite-sponsored rituals in the context of state expansion and the persistence of rituals involving hallucinogens among communities that met with state colonists. It focuses on the consumption of hallucinogens inducing altered states of consciousness during the Peruvian Middle Horizon (ad 600–1000), a period characterized by the expansion of the Wari...
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
August 1, 2019
Melissa S. Cradic
Human use of psychoactive substances has a long and complex history that has been documented in the archaeological record from as early as the Neolithic period (Guerra-Doce 2015). This exciting new field of archaeological research has potential to shed light on many approaches to human behaviours in the past, particularly those focused on ritual practice, phenomenology and human–environment...
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
September 20, 2011
Erica Hill
158 citations
In this article, I discuss the ways in which animals act as ontological subjects — as other-than-human persons and as agents in myth and ritual. First I outline how humans conceive of and behave with animals and their remains in indigenous cosmologies using ethnographic and ethnohistoric examples from the Arctic, Subarctic and Amazonia. I then explore the archaeological evidence for indigenous...
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
February 1, 2006
Derek Hodgson
There has been much controversy recently regarding Lewis-Williams's assertion that altered states of consciousness and shamanism can explain Palaeolithic art. Evidence now seems to be accumulating that this account is unable to provide a sustainable explanation for Upper Palaeolithic depictions. This proposition will be explored and substantiated by examining further weaknesses contained...
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
April 1, 1996
Jeremy Dronfield
38 citations
This article examines the significance of the passage in Irish passage-tombs. An association between passages and concentric motifs in the engraved parietal art is analyzed, and interpreted in terms of the ‘tunnel experience’ often associated with altered states of consciousness as a means of access between ‘real’ and supernatural worlds. In addition, the implications of the coincidence of...
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
April 1, 1995
J. D. Lewis‐williams
41 citations
The construction of archaeological arguments is a continuing source of concern. In comparatively recent years archaeological data have come to be seen as a text that can in some sense be ‘read’. Rejecting this approach in favour of arguments constructed by the intertwining of disparate strands of evidence, this article explores the possible meanings of a southern African rock art motif....
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
April 1, 1992
David S. Whitley
79 citations
Ethnographic data on the production of rock art in far western North America - the historic hunter-gatherer cultures of California and the Great Basin - are reviewed and analyzed to identify widespread patterns in the origin and, in certain cases, symbolism of the late prehistoric/historical parietal art of this region. These data, collected in the first few decades of this century by a variety...