Ritual ecstasy and the shamans of prehistory: an archaeological approach to the study of religion

This paper explicates an archaeological approach to the study of religion. I argue that the conceptualization and theorization of religion by archaeologists is an exceedingly valuable perspective in the search for the origins of religion. The archaeological interpretation of past religious beliefs and behavior has been neglected by scholars of religion for too long, and for this reason I seek to bridge the gap between archaeological theory and the interpretive frameworks guiding the field of religious studies. Using the cave paintings of Western Europe as my religious data, I will expound a theory of prehistoric religion: in the Upper Paleolithic, Homo sapiens developed a form of shamanism in which rituals of ecstasy, or trance, served to affirm a belief in the supernatural as well as strengthen the emotional and religious bonds of a community. Acting as intermediaries between the natural and spiritual realms of the tiered shamanic cosmos, cave shamans entered into and controlled altered states of consciousness on behalf of their social group. Archaeological evidence of these prehistoric ecstatic rituals is found in the content and context of the artwork. I will draw from David Lewis-Williams\u27 work on the neuropsychological model of shamanic experience, as well as archaeological inferences on religion and religious phenomena, to support claims of cave shamanism by scholars like Jean Clottes, Steven Mithen, and Brian Hayden. The paper concludes with a discussion of the archaeological indicators of ritual as they can be applied to theories of cave shamanism in the Upper Paleolithic