The Archaeology of Shamanism

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In this timely collection, Neil Price provides a general introduction to the archaeology of shamanism by bringing together recent archaeological thought on the subject. Blending theoretical discussion with detailed case studies, the issues addressed include shamanic material culture, responses to dying and the dead, shamanic soundscapes, the use of ritual architecture and shamanism in the context of other belief systems such as totemism. Following an intial orientation reviewing shamanism as an anthropological construct, the volume focuses on the Northern hemisphere with case studies from Greenland to Nepal, Siberia to Kazakhstan. The papers span a chronological range from Upper Palaeolithic to the present and explore such cross-cutting themes as gender and the body, identity, landscape, architecture, as well as shamanic interpretations of rock art and shamanism in the heritage and cultural identity of indigenous peoples. The volume also addresses the interpretation of shamanic beliefs in terms of cognitive neuroscience and the modern public perception of prehistoric shamanism.

Part One -- The archaeology of shamanism: Cognition, cosmology and world-view

1. An archaeology of altered states: Shamanism and material culture studies
Neil S. Price

2. Southern African shamanistic rock art in its social and cognitive contexts
J.D. Lewis-Williams

Part Two -- Siberia and Central Asia: The 'cradle of shamanism'

3. Rock art and the material culture of Siberian and Central Asian shamanism
Ekaterina Devlet

4. Shamans, heroes and ancestors in the bronze castings of western Siberia
Natalia Fedorova

5. Sun Gods or shamans? Interpreting the 'solar-headed' petroglyphs of Central Asia
Andrzej Rozwadowski

6. The materiality of shamanism as a 'world-view': Praxis, artefacts and landscape
Peter Jordan

7. The medium of the message: Shamanism as localised practice in the Nepal Himalayas
Damian Walter

Part Three -- North America and North Atlantic

8. The gendered peopling of North America: Addressing the antiquity of systems of multiple gender
Sandra E. Hollimon

9. Shamanism and the iconography of Palaeo-Eskimo art
Patricia D. Sutherland

10. Social bonding and shamanism among late Dorset groups in High Arctic Greenland
Hans Christian Gullov and Martin Appelt

Part Four -- Northern Europe

11. Special objects -- special creatures: Shamanistic imagery and the Aurignacian art of south-west Germany
Thomas A. Dowson and Martin Porr

12. The sounds of transformation: Accoustics, monuments and ritual in the British Neolithic
Aaron Watson

13. An ideology of transformation: Cremation rites and animal sacrifice in early Anglo-Saxon England
Howard Williams

14. Waking ancestor spirits: Neo-shamanic engagements with archaeology
Robert J. Wallis