Chapter 7

About

PERFORMING IN THE PALEOLITHIC

The caves of Europe and, Indonesia -- and possibly a “python rock” in Botswana and a rock face in Australia -- contain the oldest known human art. We cannot be certain what the art signified or what its functions were, but we can speculate that even before 35,000 BP people were fascinated, terrified, or pleased enough by what they experienced in their lives to make representations of the world they lived in and the world they imagined. Even earlier, modern humans and Neandertals made hand stencils and abstract patterns, personalized signs of human presence and kind of proto-writing.

Almost certainly there were performances in at least some of the caves. This theory is supported by patterned footprints in the caves and the discovery of flutes and drumsticks in or near the caves. Because performances vanish once they are over, we have cannot be sure of what people did. But we can speculate that singing, dancing, and story-telling either in themselves or as part of initiation rites, shamanic vision-quests, healings, and/or hunting-magic took place in the caves. Performances as well as visual arts are part of the heritage of the caves. At least some of places in some of the caves were "paleotheatres."

Classroom Activities

PERFORM

  1. Sensorially deprive yourself by being in a dark room, or by wearing a blindfold, no sounds, nothing to eat or drink but water (no drugs!). If you have visions, try to remember them so when the experiment is over you can describe your experience. Ditto for songs that come to you, or dances. Your experiment must be monitored. The monitor should keep the space, and the vision-questers, safe.
  2. Practice your own action painting.
  3. Find a communal site in your school or city. Devise a site-specific performance that builds from the architecture or landscape as you found it.
  4. Create a mural that represents or creates the way that human and animal realms overlap in your life.

WRITE ABOUT

  1. Research a contemporary religious ritual through secondary sources and write a description of the event. Then, attend the ritual in person. What did you get right, and what did you get wrong? How can we best try to understand historical rituals and performances only through historical artifacts?
  2. Should Paleolithic art be understood through the lens “is” performance or “as” performance? Why?
  3. Research a specific site of Paleolithic art, including all that scholars have surmised about what kind of ritual or performance might have happened there. Then, write a dramatic script as a blueprint for imagining what you have found.

 

Sample Discussion Questions

TALK ABOUT

  1. 1.   Has art evolved in the same way as science and technology? If so, show how; if not, why not?
  2. Do you think that the paleolithic "art" should be considered art in quotation marks or is the art like the art made today?
  3. There are differing ideas about what kinds of practices took place in the caves, such as David Lewis-Williams’s theory of the shamanic vision-quests and Yann-Pierre Montelle’s theory of paleotheatre. What is their evidence? Are you convinced by one or both theories? Why or why not?
  4. Many scholars have come to argue that women were actually creating the majority of hand stencils. How does this discovery change our understanding of the art and its function in its community? Are there other theories about historical art and artifacts that you think need to be reassessed?
  5. In a group, explore the online tour of Lascaux cave. Then choose one image or section to focus on. On your own, describe what you see in writing. Then, share your  descriptions with each other. Are they similar? If they are different, why do you think this occurred? What kind of contextual information do you think would be helpful to understand the image?
Chapter 8