Man-made objects express the worldview of shamanistic society. While these might be considered as single elements in artefacts, it is their manifold integration within
individual units that highlights the overall pervasiveness of worldview. Chapman (2000a:5-6) noted three fundamental links between objects and people:
.
places in the landscape dwellings and particularly burial in houses andspecific places or community areas that connect with ancestral space; the
occupation of ancient places, such as tells; and the creation of a distinct mortuary domain as a counterpoint to the domestic domain;
.
distribution the development of social relations through the enchainment andaccumulation of personalised objects; the fragmentation of objects and human skeletal remains as an aspect of enchainment; and the creation of object sets as part of accumulation; and
.
deposition the retention of domestic objects near the living area during andafter their use; the structured deposition of objects, human remains or
burnt material in specific places; and the exchange of materials of the living with those of the ancestors through pit digging, and house burning, etc.
Chapman regarded enchainment and accumulation as practices that sustain social relations, noting that exchanges are potentially asymmetric with indebtedness and long- term dependence if constraints on accumulation are circumvented. They operate through the breaking of an object into the required number of parts to establish a relationship.
6.5.1 Constituent Parts and Associations
Objects made from an exotic material can take on special values, not only for the manufacturer and owner, and bring such sources into memory. Examples exist from many parts of the world: for the Irish Neolithic, Cooney (2000) has argued that temporality and spatiality are important in the exchange of polished stone axes.
Particular sources are distinguished by their colour, and the process of polishing serves to highlight this relationship to specific places, as with the Langdale quarries in Cumbria and those of Lambay Island, Ireland. It emphasises the significance of these places and those with access to them. As such, colour, place and identity are intertwined,
establishing a cognitive coherence between spatial distance, identity and the exchange and use of exotic items.
Dazzling costumes and jewellery incorporating shiny, iridescent objects, the use of certain colours, and particularly entopic motifs, make definitive statements of social prestige for the living, and figure prominently in symbolic representation of political power and elite status. Individuals with them are seen to control, wear and manipulate cosmic energy from whence political power flows (Blanton et al. 1993:220-222; Hoskins 1998:195; Saunders 1998:230).
6.5.3 Technology
Technological understanding is enveloped in ritual knowledge by selecting and mixing the cosmic energies embodied in raw materials. What might, from a Western
perspective, be viewed as the secular use of such objects is assessed by Pfaffenberger (1992:505) as “a design constituency (which) creates, appropriates, or modifies a technological production process, artefact, user activity, or system in such a way that some of its technical features embody a political aim”, with the intention of altering the allocation of power, prestige or wealth. In this sense, the process is clearly strategic.
The technological production of shiny and coloured items objectified a society’s valuation of these qualities which themselves were mediated by the sacred nature of technologies used to make them. Such processes are social and cultural choices whose practical consequences are valued, legitimated by and operated within the spheres of mythology, religion and ideology. In Amerindian worldviews, making such objects was an act of transformative creation, harnessing the social and mythical significances of light, colour and matter, and shaping synergy of myth, ritual knowledge and individual skill (Saunders 1999:24; 2002:215).
6.5.4 Settlement and Housing
In the ethnographic literature the cosmos is reflected at a range of scales: the landscape; the village; and the house and its contents, regardless of its form, four-cornered or circular (Rapoport 1969:49-50; Redfield 1958:87). One example is the Dogon of Mali in whose worldview, the body, behaviour and society conform to the patterns and processes of nature and the cosmos. Villages are built in pairs to represent heaven and earth, and laid out as parts of the body. Fields are cleared in spirals because of the way the world has been created. The house of the paramount chief is a model of the universe, while household objects and chairs have symbolic quality within it (Krupp 1997:161-16; Rapoport 1969:50-55).
REDACTIONS
Figure 6.1 Schematic rendering of the tiered cosmos with axis mundi shown in red
ref: Roe 1982:128
Figure 6.2 Tiered mythological Mesoamerican cosmos: the central tree, growing out of a mountain, links the upper world, the earth’s surface and the underworld; on the vertical plane, people distinguished quadrants like a four-petalled flower ref: Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2005:65
Figure 6.3 Cross-Pacific Polynesian vision of the cosmos with structural hierarchy ref: Krupp 1997:170
Figure 6.4 Mongolian ‘golden nail’, the Pole Star, considered to hold the sky in place and around which the northern stars rotated providing the highest power in heaven ref: Krupp 1997:189
Figure 6.5 Hawaiian engraving considered to represent shaman disarticulation
ref: https://amazing-1700-year-old-hawaiian-petroglyphs-done-in- lava-from-the -big-island.jpg Figure 6.6 Shaman transformation ref: Lewis and Pearce 2004:150, 130, 168
(a) Transformed shaman
(b) Shaman transformed into a bird (c) Shaman transformed into an antelope
Figure 6.7 Hallucinogen: San Pedro cactus (Trichocereus pachanoi) ref: Sharon 1978 (a) Chauvin stone carving of a mythical being holding a stalk (b) Moche ceramic bottle representing an owl-woman curer holding a slice (c) Chimu ceramic bottle representing a female curer holding the cactus
Figure 6.8 Ritual imbibition of hallucinogens: pottery assemblages ref: Sherratt 1991 (a) Probable supports for braziers used for opium (Chasséen period, Brittany) (b) Set of vessels for alcoholic beverages (TRB, Jutland) (c) Possible braziers for cannabis: (left) Mihailovka period, Ukraine; and (right)
Vucedol period, Jugoslavia (d) Elaborate pottery vessels for communal consumption of special food/substance
(Tustrup, Jutland); characteristic of TRB (MN), especially of such ritual sites
Figure 6.9 Lambayeque/Sican Brazier (Peru), decorated with three detailed and ornately attired shaman figures engaged in rain-bringing ceremony
Part A THE STUDY AND KEY ELEMENTS Return to Contents A2: SHAMANISM