David Lewis-Williams (2002) The Mind in the Cave: consciousness and the origins of

art. London: Thames and Hudson. 320pp, index, figures, illustrations in black and white,
and colour.

The mind in the cave presents a readable account of arguments that Lewis-Williams has
steadfastly advocated for some years, and adds a new theory about the origin of rock art
in Western Europe. The book provides a clear discussion of method. Lewis-Williams
posits a ubiquitous condition among hunter-gatherer communities (culturally patterned
altered states of consciousness) and uses selected ethnographic examples to discover how
these states are expressed in rock art. The Upper Palaeolithic communities of Europe
were hunter-gatherers and their brains were fully modern. One can therefore suspect, he
argues, some form of shamanism in the Upper Palaeolithic.

Lewis-Williams gives a good account of the strengths and weaknesses of Structuralism

and a useful review of the evidence for the slow development of traits characteristic of
modern human cognitive capacities among anatomically modern humans in Africa. The
grounds for art had already been laid before modern humans arrived in Europe. He argues
contact with Neanderthals triggered the origin of image making. It was a signal of social
and intellectual differentiation. Lewis-Williams admits this hypothesis would not explain
the origin of rock art in Australia or South Africa.

Lewis-Williams dismisses a variety of unnamed archaeologists who hold contrary

positions to his own: many researchers are afraid of theories, some researchers think of
portable art as being secular, most accounts of the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition
treat art briefly and as if it were of no consequence. Some important counter-arguments
are missing. Neither Guenther’s argument that a significant proportion of South African
rock art depicts everyday hunting and gathering, nor Parkington and Manhire’s argument
that the eland is primarily an image of San rites de passage, are cited. Solomon’s proposal
that San mythology helps discriminate between art that refers to shamans and that which
does not, is not noted. De Beaune’s work on Upper Palaeolithic lamps is cited, but not her
critique of shamanic interpretations of Upper Palaeolithic art.

If his method is to develop a general theory, and then test it through ethnographic cases,
counter cases need to be assessed as well. But Australian rock art, much of which is
demonstrably secular or totemic, is not discussed. Lewis-Williams’ ethnographic
evidence comes almost entirely from the rock art of the San and of Southern California.
These two cases have been Lewis-Williams’ mainstays since the 1988 Current
Anthropology paper co-authored with Dowson. Lewis-Williams rejects an association
between hunting magic and rock art in North America. Keyser and Whitley found almost
thirty references to rock art, the vision quest and shamanism on the Columbia Plateau.
True enough, but in 1918 Teit recorded several other contexts for rock art on the Plateau.
Some paintings were made to ward off disaster foreseen in a dream. Guardian spirits were
painted near camps or overlooking walking routes to deflect enemies or evil. Some
paintings were historical records at, for example, sites of battles. Keyser has also shown
there are scenes of hunting and corralling on the Columbia Plateau. Annie York explained
one composition to Daly and Arnett as follows: the line from the goat to the grizzly paw,
and the headless goat, shows the hunter dreaming of using goat meat to lure the grizzly
into a trap. This is not hunting magic in Frazer’s sense, since it depends on the
intervention of the hunter’s guardian spirit. But it is about hunting success. Images of
arrows fired at game animals cannot be assumed to be metaphors for the sensation of
trance.

Lewis-Williams concedes that during the Upper Palaeolithic, a pendant of a horse may
not have encoded the same segment of that species’ range of meanings as did a painting
of a horse in a deep cavern. He suggests that does not matter, because shamanism will
always be in the background. Can the hypothesis really be tested, if the absence of
diagnostic traits merely shows shamanism was backgrounded rather than foregrounded?
The lack of entoptic-like forms in Upper Palaeolithic art, except as part of animal or
human figures, is similarly argued to show the artists were less interested in stage one of
trance than in stage three.

Lewis-Williams (like Chippindale and Taçon) relies on Wylie’s notion of ‘cabling’. Art,
ethnography, neuropsychology and social theory combine to provide a coherent
explanation. He has in fact carried out a different kind of ‘cabling’. Aspects of
shamanism from different cultures: entoptics from the Tukano, the vision quest from
Western North America, the rock surface as a veil (deduced by Lewis-Williams from
traits in South Africa rock art) are cabled into a template for the Upper Palaeolithic. This
method assumes rather than tests the uniformity of shamanic rock art. The mind in the
cave is stimulating but not conclusive.

Robert Layton,
University of Durham.