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...
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...
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...
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....
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...