The Judaeo-christian Teleology and Rock Art Taxnomy

Summary: Rock art studies, to be fruitful, must move from exclusive, parochial, appropriative taxonomies to inclusive, comprehensive, participative approaches. Understanding of the shape and meaning of rock art can come only from a hermeneutic circular movement between past and present, regional and global, part and the whole, self and the other, surface and the context in the rock art traditions of the world. Such understanding cannot come from attempts to impose artificial order on data according to pre-conceived, uni-demensional models of the cognitive development of the human language, articulated through rock art.

Introduction

Rock art studies began with universal occumenical models given by the Judea-Christian tradition and have, over a period of time, swung to the extreme atomism of nuclear local models, generated by time and space specific ethnocentric perceptions. The universal model came in with Franco-Cantabrian diffusionism which assumed the beginning of rock art in the world as coincident with the beginning of Paleolithic art in Europe. With this began an attempt to master, subordinate and incorporate the rest of the rock art found in other parts of the world within the body of the European cave art tradition, as something that originated or deviated from the sophisticated, aesthetic or elastic and naturlistic European cave art tradition. This approach was part of the Hegelian dialectical and teleological view of history in which Europe, and specially the Judaeo-christian tradition, was seen as armed with a telos to understand, objectify and absorb the knowledge of the rest of the world after cleansing it of dross in terms of errors of conception and perception. Christ himself, an apotheosis of universal love and compassion, was harnessed by this tradition to colonial appropriations f territories and minds in a manner completely alien to the spirit of Christ. Positivist and empiricist assumptions about cognitive constants in styles, materials, techniques, tools, motifs and patterns in which European Paleolithic rock art remained at the head of all developments, have tended to reflect the assumption of historical entelechy by the Western or the Westernizing peddler of knowledge. The contrary 'indigenous' analysis of rock art has often suffered from a lack of objectivity, being an ethnocentric reaction against cognitive colonialism, and has swung to extreme postulates of poly-genetic relativism, stultifying research.

Physical Apropriation

The appropriation (by objectification) by the 'Christian' West of the rock art of non- European people, as part of the Hegelian logic of absorbing lower forms to move to higher creations, has often been a physical appropriation. Native figures have been eradicated by scratching them out in Piedmontese, especially the Pinerolese valleys of Italy. Christian crosses and calvaries have been found carved on or beside older pictures of pigeons supposedly designed to incite fecundity, well-being and bounty. The attempt to exorcise, neutralize, consecrate or convert animistic and Shamanistic images has been a tendency of the exclusive formal religions. Intentional destruction or alteration are evident in instances like on the silk Road of Western China by Islamic iconoclasm or in the conversion of the Bonist Shamanistic rock art plateau (Hui Sheng Tang 1989: 3-11) 500 years ago, orthodox monks in south Arctic Russia chiselled crosses, inscriptions and haloes on 5000 years old anthropomorphic demon figure at Basov Nos in karelia on the shore of lake Onegaa, Russia. Spanish conquistadors superimposed Christian crosses on anthropomorphous in older rock art by abrasion and impact marks at Pena Escrita, Central Bolivia. (Bednarik 1994b; 10, 11, fig. 5.1,2). a 1567 edit of the Provincial Council in what is now Lima. Peru decree prohibited religious ceremonies in Spanish caves with horse pictures (Kuhn 1971:14). Land owners in land claims. Individual rock art to subvert land claims. Individual rock art researches, prompted by a desire to obtain glory by their 'discoveries', have destroyed evidence by recording their individual signatures or arbitrary numbers or 'I was here' messages directly on the rock art, oblivious of artists who had created this art as a collective and unsigned corpus. Other researchers, in a rage of scientistic investigation, have destroyed evidence of the rock art by engaging in extractive collection of samples or copies or in imperfect and selective recordings and reporting techniques.

Universalizing sequential categories

The imposition of universalizing taxonomic categories by the West is seen most assemblages to define and divide the world in spatial and temporal nomenclatures like the Auringnacion, Perigordian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, Acheulian, Lavalloisian or the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic. Used as a clue to the sequence of rock art traditions all over the world, such artificial pigeonholes have tended to be misleading. The lack of definition of transitional phases from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic, or from pastoral to farming and metallurgical peoples, have been noticed. The different regional sequences have been suggested as being due more to variations of climate and natural conditions rather than to an irrevocable cycle of forms. These does not appear to have been a uniform pattern in the succession of technologies or in the graphic expression of ideas. While some regions were subject to chances, others retained their traditional ways with a certain consistency (Beltran 1995:105). Comparison of tool markings with tools shown in rock art or found in archaeological layers has been fraught with uncertainty because of lack of authentic data about the nature of the tools or about their association with the iconographic prototypes or activities shown in rock art. It has not been, for example, possible to use the sequence of motifs like boomerangs or hooks in the Kimberley art as a clue to chronology in the absence of direct dating. In fact, the different styles can be used by a similar group for diverse purposes. It has been difficult therefore, to connect the sequence of occupation episodes with the sequence of painting styles or superimposition. More often than not, the temporary occupiers have been different from the painters or engravers of the rock shelters and caves.

It follows from this that no succession of style can be posed on the basis of universal model of succession from hunter gatherer to pastoral and agricultural life styles. The rock art of the hunters and gatherings of the Bradshaw traditions in the Kimberley, Australia lack hunting and foraging scenes, while Neolithic rock art traditions of areas like Scandinavia, Karelia and Sahara are full of hunting motifs (Bednarik 1994a). The industrial phases of the upper Palaeolithic do not coincide with those proposed by Henri Breuil in his cycles or A.L. Gourhan in his four styles. The upper Palaeolithic people of Franco Cantabria have been seen as exemplifying complex hunter society. Within the Megdalenian sites, however, there are varying levels of artistic activity and complexity in the rock art. The presence or absence of cave or portable art in Dordogne and the presence of only portable art in Moravian Karst in the same cultural context (Jelinek 1993: 71) illustrate the situation. Though it may be true that human adoption and artistic creation cannot be separated, ecological interpretation using rock or cave art to suggest change in hunting strategies has run into trouble. In India, Cholanaickan hunter-gatherers of Kerala, Maria-Gond slash and burn agriculturists of Central India, Bhotiaya and Bavli pastoral nomads of the Himalayas and the Western Ghats and commercial agriculturists respectively of the Deccan and Sutlej - Godavari deltas coexist till today. In spite of parallels between primitive societies, modern primitive may not be anymore like their Palaeolithic or Neolithic ancestors than modern Europeans, and parallels exists between hunting-gathering and agricultural peoples also. Comparisons of peasant groups which are part of a larger literate culture but are not themselves literate may also be useful for comparison with non literate primitive groups (Ucko & Rosenfeld 1967:156-7). Ambiguity and polysemy characterize the living patterns of many extant tribal groups. The use of the iconography of the rock as a clue to successive patterns of living, migration, economic pursuits and age has turned out to be infeasible because of the simultaneous coexistence and sequential layering of cultural patterns in diverse combinations in close period. The use of the information exchange theory to see connections between stylistic and demographic contexts has not proved easy because of the lack of any easy correlation between social organization and its archaeological manifestation. Moreover, the oldest phases of rock art in Australia, South America, Africa, India and Pakistan negate the theory of the exclusive nature of Paleolithic naturalism in the Levantine or Christendom. (Beltran 1995:105). Paleolithic rock art of France and Spain appears today to be part of a much larger body of such art which is coming to sight in other parts of Europe or in rest of the world, the visible body of such art being again remnant of a much bigger corpus of such art destroyed by taphonomic changes. The human markings found on elephant bones in Thuringia, Rock crystal in Singi Talav, India, Panaramitee rock art in Australia, Baja, Central Arabia, Argentina and Chili, Mount Carmel caves in Israel or in ostrich shell fragments from Patne, India, antler fragment from china or a stone cobble from Urkan-e-Rub in Israel, disprove the assumption that prehistoric or non-iconic art was confined to south western Europe. Initially perceived as an art confined to European limestone caves, rock art has now been found in open air sites all over the world. Recognition of petroglyphs in sheer and hard rocks outside speleo-environment has been hindered due to their lack of depth and lamination by dark brown rock varnish. The lack of training of rock art investigators has also disabled them from distinguishing human markings caused by xenolithic inclusions, selective crystallization, weathering, exfoliation, plant-animal or utilitarian anthropic marks. Being caused, like the entire world, by non-random processes, the natural markings mimic artificial markings, and have been misread as intentional (Marshack 1992: 37-59); Lenssen Erz 1992:87-98; Bednarik 1994h:23-44).

Rock art studies have also suffered from the attempt to use the brightness, differential numerical combinations, or spatial distribution as clues to the style, sequence or meaning of rock art. Iron oxide in the red colour is a metastable mineral which may change in its reflective properties due to varying moisture regimes, solar exposure or the changing nature of rock support. Compared with red, white is even more transient, subject to the corrosive element of water seepage. The red might originally have been orange or yellow, while the white as changed to black or has disappeared altogether at different places in India. Africa or Australia, confusing the combination or the sequence (Neumayer 1993:28; Bednarik 1994a:70-71). A chromatic sequence is difficult to establish in view of the overlap of chromatic elements. The division of Kimberley rock art in Australia between the older classic Bradshaw monochrome and recent ploychrome Wandjina paintings has been questioned because of the insertion of a bichrome period (Welch 1990). There have also been abortive attempts to chart a sequence in rock art on abstract preconceptions of evolution from the non-iconic, geometric and non-anatomical to iconic, figural and anatomical or vice-versa. The predetermined sequences negate the history of the arts in which the simple and complex, rigorous and the free have always coexisted in the collective style as in the human language, accounting for a variety of elements from different historical phases in the same period. Cyclic biological patterns in the growth of forms are not paralleled by the history of creative human expression (Shapiro 1953). To offer an illustration, both silhouette-figurative and geometric- Panaramitee styles have an wider distribution in space and time than available ethnographic models suggest (Layton 1992). Similarly, abstraction and naturalism are not seen as mutually exclusive among Warlpiri artists who transform the physical environment by representing it as an abstraction and the spiritual environmental by giving it concreteness (Paul Faulstich 1992:21-22). In fact, motifs and patterns may often reflect the local ecology or contexts but the manner of making them may differ in different times and territories. Even there, in the making of such motifs, there may be archaisms, inconsistencies and timelags which may not be possible to distinguish. Hence, attempts to use apparent visual similarities between patterns on Megalithic or Chalcolithic ware found in archaeological contexts and patterns in rock art as chronological clues have come to grief. At the Xianzian petroglyph site in Fujian province in China, reading of similar motifs on Neolithic pottery or Shang and Zhou hieroglyphs has accounted for different attributions of age. (Tang Huisheng 1993:86). Use of depictions of man-animal relationships as stylistic and chronological markers in Saharan rock art has run into archaeological and palaeontological problems because variations in the evolution of domestic animals obscure their independent history in time and space and make it difficult to either link distant domestic populations genetically or derive trends (Gautier 1990;102). Assumptions of cupules as the most likely forms susceptible to reinvention or parallelism and of the priority of non-figurative forms in the chronology of rock art have been difficult to substantiate in view of the absence of viable dating of most of the markings identified as cupules and in view of researacher's inability to distinguish the geomorphologically induced, mechanical, chemical or natural markings from anthropic markings, Tripartite models of psychograms, Ideograms and pictograms for all rock art have also proved of doubtful validity in view of their anthropocentricity (Bednarik 1993a:70-71).

Bio-neurological absolutes

A further approach has been to project, recurrent entopic constants ass universal types generated bio-neurologically in rock-art by psychoactive hallucinogenic drugs and toxic pharmacological agents, and depicted as dots, zig-zags, arcs, grids, concentric circles, sets of meandering and parallel lines, ovals, triangles, nested, catenary curves and fantastic forms. The process of translation of such physical impulses into rock art has been suggested as a process of replication, fragmentation, integration, superimpostion, juxtaposition, reduplication and rotation of the same abstract patterns (Lewis Williams & Dowson 1988:203-4). Other non iconic elements of rock art have been as phosphene images revealed by flashes of light, colored spots, luminous points, stars and geometric forms corresponding to external objects and generated by retinal stimulation through certain disease processes (Emsley 1993:51-54). Even if human beings have similarly organized brains and related to similar anthropocentric constructs of reality, it is difficult to derive, as is done, on an assumption of bio- neurological constants, gathering of molluscs from patterns of dots, lines and geometric lattices or assume the use of narcotics from depiction of plants. Comparisons are made between of San rock art and Pech Merle horses to suggest use of geometric signs along with entoptic, therianthropic and other figurative representations, but other figurative representations, but such congregations of signs and images are found in modern Christianity and older mythology as part of normal imaginative responses without an altered state of mind.

The attribution of San rock art to states of consciousness altered by circumstances like isolation, hallucination, dehydration, deprivation of sleep, hypnagogic and hypnopompic states induced by self hypnosis, intense rhythmic movement and hyper ventilation (Ludwig 1968;69-95; Lee 1968:35-53) would suggest preconceptions about the rock art being generated by aberrant mental states rather than by normal response to the surrounding world. Such preconceptions assume non-verifiable prehistoric parallels of contemporary trance-dances of medicine-men in Namibia and Botswana to seek protection, help, rain, hunting success etc. through supernatural intervention.

Such parallels have been artificially extrapolated by relating small samples of rock art to excerpts of ethnological information selected from an wide variety of dress, ornament, equipment, gestures and postures used by trance-dances today. The suggestions of rock art being goal driven like contemporary trance-dance can hardly be based on such diverse, ambiguous and contradictory ethnographic data or assumptions of universal electrically induced physical variations (Pager 1994:88--100; Oster 1970:83-7). An altered state of mind alone cannot be considered as responsible for representation of hallucinogenic, people-mushroom in petroglyphs of Chukotsai peninsula (Jelinek 1993:74).

Postulates of the perpetual recurrence of biological or phylogenetic longevity or of phosphene types would appear to spring from the further assumption that human encephalization in terms of cortical hardware and neutral structure was completed about a hundred thousand years ago. However, even if one assumes a certain continuity of such human responses to the surrounding world, the surrounding world itself has changed in the hundred thousand years, much of the change being due to human activity over the past ten thousand years. In the last two hundred years, human beings have changed their environment faster than their ability to adapt themselves to such change and may rock art sites have been altered irrevocably in this period. Besides, if the markings made are constants, then there is no clue to their sequence. Though they accompany a body of changing iconographic types, reflecting changes in the application of tools, pigments, hand or in the use of line, volume, frame, ground or space, such changes, being caused at a varying place in the same period or territory, do not help in establishing a sequence.

Ethnographic inferences

The attempt to deduce behavior patterns and meaning of rock art from ethnographic parallels among contemporary communities has also been a trend in rock art research. Such attempt, to be fruitful, has to concentrate on identifying behavior or quantifiable archaeological data which have not been subjected to taphonomic changes, a nearly impossible venture. Just as organisms evolve to complexity before developing parts capable of fossilization, so human cultures develop cognition and communication systems of which no record is left (Layton 1987). In the absence of universal laws of human behavior or a constant and verifiable relation between the different behavioral processes and the changing material conditions, the process which has culminated in a contemporary ethnographic condition cannot be used to unlock and identify the process used in the prehistoric material conditions. Multi-valence and ambiguity characterize contemporary cultures like the San and Bush-men or their older ancestors. Similar patterns observed in the archaeological record associated with ethnographic record of rock art, need not to be the result of similar behavioral processes. Suggestion of constant rates of change to connect processes to material conditions of the past and the present cannot be tested by assuming a constant manner of styles and strokes and pressure of tools. Similarities of form in historic and prehistoric artifacts may well be produced by widely differing lithic reduction and shaping processes (Gould Watson 1982:371).

Much of the stylistic or ethnographic argument has been critical as confirmationist which identifies a conversion by assembling similar images and then asserts the convention to be statistically homogeneous. Conclusions about parallels between contemporary and older folk beliefs, dances, instruments, game-boards, totems, magical practices, exorcisms, rituals, incantations, and archaeological interpretation about material, techniques, names, types and distribution of rock art motifs have emerged from selective preservation or reporting and reflect scholarly predilections or theories which are not scientifically testable or falsifiable. The contemporary Australian, aboriginal concept of dreaming or gender or age taboos about access, secretiveness and sacredness of sites, traditions of retouch for remaking and making new, are not paralleled by similar concepts of spiritual geography in other areas like India where the continuity is broken. Within Australia itself, the renewal of sites as ritual occasions using art as process rather than product is seen variously as desecration f national heritage or as celebration of indigenous past (Ward 1992). While the oral aboriginal tradition like the Australian may often be more reliable than eurocentric Shamanistic mythology, even this may, in the absence of continuity, reflect contemporary rather than ancient community perception. Australian Aboriginal or Bushman art is full of human representations, but these are absent in Paleolithic parietal art and may not be seen as a general model in all rock art for rain making, reactivation or totemic magic. Totemic practices widely differ even among Australians and such heterogeneity can not be used as a common denominator (Ucko & Rosenfeld 1967: 191).

Interpretations about totemistic sharing of spirit by man or animal or about homeopathic or fetishistic magic as motivation in rock art, have arbitrarily tended to see iconic types like 'tectiforms', 'scutiforms' and 'pediforms' as actual objects with iconographic content. Suggestions, often based on such identifications, about binary divisions of animals in European Paleolithic rock art in terms of sexual differentiation and interaction, or about use of rock art for initiation inn ancestral ways or for boosting production of food and procreation of children, are not borne out by evidence. Since the body and foot size of Paleolithic man is unknown, attempt to use hand print to determine age and suggest initiation rituals for children is not viable. Gourhan, the exponent of the theory of sexual bifurcation of European cave art, undermines his own system of binary division by accepting correspondence, equivalence, interchangeability and complementarily between all representations. The interpretation of the depiction in European Paleolithic rock art of the symbolic killing of dangerous animals and of capturing or increasing food animals is negated by the fact that rain deer and Siga antelope are eaten in Paleolithic or Magdalenian period but are not found in this art, while birds, though not dangerous, are also shown. The art does not reflect the motif of increase of vegetation though fruits and berries are staple diet in this period, and shows dangerous animals which are not the easiest diet. The fertility theory is also controverted by the fact that modern hunting-gathering tribes, including Australian aborigines, are known to avoid the possibility of having large families (Ucko & Rosefield 1967:178, 182, 230, 234, 240).

It has been pointed out that ecological interpretation cannot also be used to prove the identity of objects by looking at the interplay of organism with environment in contemporary terms. To take the example of Australia again, regional differences in art, styles, techniques, motifs, ranges and contexts within Australia do not allow the superficial match of specific types of social organization, economy or ideology in the past or present (Morwood 1992:3). The coexistence of rock art styles associated with different functional contexts such as sorcery or ancestral cults in western Kimberly or secular and religious themes at Uluru, argues against the validity of simple, uni-linear evolutionary models with Australia itself.

Neurological bridges established between Holocene Shamanistic imaginings and upper Paleolithic rock art have proved to be fragile attempts to use a present process to explain a prehistoric material condition. Lewis Williams 1989:149-62). A similar criticism may be directed at the attribution of ritual ceremonial significance to the cicatrices depicted on anthropomorphs in the Laura region of North Queensland (Huchet 1989; Cameron 1993).

Extraneous spatial analysis in terms of determinative land features, classification of figures and designs on the basis of regional geographical categories, locational analysis for interpreting distribution or frequency of trade or artifact type, contextual analysis to locate the hierarchy of space use or areas of human or animal movements, may offer clues to the choice of rock art sites but not to their relation or to their movements, may offer clues to the choice of rock art sites but not their relation or to their history. The correlation of art and acoustics, association of animal hoof or pug marks with movement and silence, identification of cupules in South African or Western North American sites as fossils of acoustic events in Paleolithic art are also difficult to sustain because there is no evidence of any understanding among Paleolithic men of the nature of percussion or sound reflection. Use of geographical features and associated events for analysis is problematical because there has been considerable geomorphological change in the structure of Paleolithic rock shelters making the evidence about techniques or rock access to the shelters contradictory.

Zoological identification of species and ethological identification of their activity has also tended to be subjective and hence controversial. The recording of decorative, age, work or killing marks as visual notations for encoding information, solving problems and queuing strategies by scanning electronic microscopy may be useful to impose some order on the rock art data. However, this order is not numerically, arithmetically or astronomically precise and excludes non notational traditions or notations which look like notations but are not. In any case, no analysis of this kind can go beyond surface information to yield clue to any sequence or meaning (D'Errico 1991 and 1992).

An Art for Art's sake theory of the origin of rock art in hospitable environment does not also appear to be justified because, even in a continuing rock art tradition like the Australian, the aboriginal has been continuing to create in an inhospitable environment. A theory of a rock art sites as domains of hierophanies is, on the other hand, often a presumption obtained from practices in contemporary sites which are considered sacred. Exceptional insights into the cognitive realm of the maker of rock art through finger flutings, interpretative approach of stepping back to evoke the essential, unchanging nature of phenomenon preceding the development of the concept and to reveal meaning (Faulstich 1992:3, 10).

Delusions of Scientism

Considerations extrinsic to the object like stylistic correspondence, speculative association with dated sediments, deposit or sequence have thus failed to form the basis for ordering perceptions about the chronology of rock art. To that extent, use of features related to the rock art, which either date (e.g. pigment), predate (e.g. the rock art medium or surface) or post date it (e.g. later cracks dissecting a motif or precipitates deposited over it), have been chronology as more reliable clues to the chronology of the physical corpus. The scientific direct dating methods have, however, also run into the morass of selective use of data, confirming predetermined conceptions. Archaeology logs the archaeo, the old difficult to graph than space. Relative dating, to be given absolute validity, has to be reliably time dependent and constant in rate of change. Most of the dating methods use rate processes which are not constant and have to be calibrated by one another. The thermal history of archaeological deposits is never known with great accuracy. Even the isotopic dating which is a theoretical absolute, requires the finest conditions of recovery and collection (Chippendale 1993). Whether one uses for dating elements or ratios of carbon in rock painting or engravings on smooth patinated rocks, reliable time dependency is questionable. Moreover, a misapplication of valid techniques by their integration into archaeological confirmationism, without regard to statistical problems and laboratory limitations, many well run into grief. Finally, direct dating methods have also been seen as widening the gap between the scientific haves and have nots and accelerating the neo-colonialist hegemony of scientific progress.

Excavation at a nano-stratigraphic level of the minutest strata within the cave wall crust is being now combined with intrasite spatial analysis to do micro-nanostratigraphy (Campbell 1993). However, detached rock fragments stratified in datable segments of rock paintings are just not present and this makes such analysis difficult. The correlation of pigments stratified in the rock shelter floors with the stratigraphy of the painting in rock is not usually substantiated by convincing chemical data. The method of microerosion dating has been suggested as cost effective and field rather than laboratory oriented and related to the age of rock art rather than to the age of some physically related features. However, it has to be also calibrated by using it in geomorphologically diverse environments in tandem with other dating methods like AMS radio carbon dating of microscopic organic inclusions in rock varnish (Bednarik 1992a:64-66). Even direct radio carbon dating is possible only if organic material exists in sufficient quantity in the paint, has not been exchanged with older and younger carbon and can be extracted without contamination. Flecs AMS dating of rock paintings has been suggested as the method to achieve this (Watchman and Lessard 1993:74-77). In counting decay or the carbon, the older the date and the smaller the sample, the greater the possibility of contamination and error, and the result can not be trusted without careful, interdisciplinary team work in the collection of sample. Even when the collection is done properly, only the minimum and maximum date of the pigments is obtained, not the time of execution of the paintings, nor of the portion of the rock below or varnish above the engraving nor of the engraving itself. The radio carbon date provides date of charcoal which predates its use in pigment. It indicates the approximate time when the tree that supplied the carbonized wood lived and not the time when the painting was done. In the absence of the use of organic pigments or glue in many cases in rock art, or in view of the many complex geographical, Geo-chemical and Geo- morphological changes in the rocks, these studies offer a key to the date of the encrustations or modifications on or in the rock rather than to the date of the painting or the engraving itself.

Ethnocentric taxonomies

The attempt to order the world on analogical, psychological, logical, philosophical or scientific grounds on the basis of a limited corpus of European Paleolithic rock art without reference to direct analytical, comparative study of such art has, over the years, reflected the preconceptions of scholars and the temperament of the age. As Wolfflin pointed out, 'Beholding is just not a mirror, which always remains the same, but a living power of apprehension which has its own inner history and has passed through many stages. Also it is true, we only see what we look for, but we look for what we can see'. (Wolfflin: 1915, 1932:226, 230-31). The Art for Art's sake view of Paleolithic art as being disgned to only please, decorate or to while away time by 'idle doodling', without any significance, reflects the mid-19th century spirit of anti-clerical distrust of Paleolithic religion and the spirit of the age. The later suggestion about the rock art being a magical, totemistic, Shamanistic instrument to incite fertility, bounty or well being emerged from theories of sympathetic magic dominating late 19th early 20th century theories of utilitarian ethnography, the figures being seen as 'ongones', taking diverse forms to meditate between this world and the other (Glory 1968:37, 38, 57). It was easy to move from fertility imagery to wishful imaging of erotic activity in rock art which, beginning on a physical level, moved to a conceptual level of division of all animals into male and female categories. (Emperaire 1962; Gourhan 1972, 1982) This mirrored a new mood in an era of sexual emancipation and the psycho-analytical exploration of the universal sexual drive by Freud and Jung in the sixties. There was a further attempt to develop, from this male female dualism, a structural division of animals and signs on the basis of topographical distribution reflecting the structuralism of anthropologists like Levi Strauss (Gourhan 1984). Even though this kind of 'topographical determinism' sexing rock art sites by location, or categorizing rock art in terms of theme, focus or setting ran into criticism as being culturally ordered, it did try to look at the rock art itself and not at evidence external to such art. It remained confined, however, to surface appraisals and did not adapt internal, comparative, referential or contextual analysis (Marshack 1989:18).

The attempt to expand such surface studies into systematic, statistical studies of rock art as semantic and ethnographic data banks tended to reflect information processing theory based on a computational model of the brain, suggesting the influence of the space and information age in the late 20th century. Rock Art was read as notations about seasonal and population movements, economic changes or social responses; as mnemonic metaphors for initiation of the young or for building inter group networking, maintaining group identity and cohesion; as astronomical or mathematical formulae tabulated in terms of inter-periodicity and regularity (Bahn 1988:180-90). Neurology, cognitive and developmental psychology have also played a role to explain the non iconic imagery by hard wired excitation. Such perception has been seen as caused by enculturation of scholars through ethnographic experience and reading of entoptic literature (Marshack 1989:32). Reading of pre-writing, pre-arithmetic notational system as extraction and systematization of diverse referential categories can, on the same premise, be also seen as an artificial attempt to impose order on a complex world. A suggestion that this is an attempt to read origin and not meaning may not be valid because the origin and meaning can hardly be dissociated (William Dowson 1989:44). Regional cultural contexts and the potentially variable patterns of functional neurology suggest that there was no simple place, period, style or group that initiated the beginning of symbolizing (Marshack 1989).

Conclusion

To accept the impossibility of objective recognition of human creation inside the flawed subjectivism of the human cognitive system is, however, to confine oneself to dry as dust micro- chrono-stratigraphic studies of dating, which, as we have seen, are afflicted by possibilities of considerable contamination of data. The contamination of the data may not, in fact, be very much greater in the assessment of accretions of behavioral response to environmental changes. Even though changing responses may have been recorded in the changing shapes of rock art, the responses may not change essentially if suggestions of bio neurological constants come out to be true. Though the ontological and metaphysical constructs about the reality recorded in the rock art may have changed with the changing map of the reality itself, we may not abdicate our attempt to reconstruct the meaning of the shape in the rock art by a testable and verifiable process. Direct dates obtained from a few bone or charcoal pigments hardly yield evidence of the mutual relation of the motifs or the date of the total corpus of rock art. Ultimately, dating exercises, however refined and falsifiable they may become over time, cannot be a substitute for the understanding of the essence of the cognitive appreciation of the environment by the human mind.

Such an understanding is not easy to attain because, the cultural as well as technological behavior has survived only in deep lime stone caves of a particular lithology and speleo climate contributing to their preservation. Most of the evidence is lost due to taphonomic lag time. The extant distribution of the evidence does not match its former distribution due to climatic, geological, pedological changes, preservation states, pH conditions and changes in research intensities and speak more of where we look for the evidence rather than of where it can be found (Bednarik 1994a). the traditional uniformitarianism has been shown to be neither falsifiable nor scientific.

And yet, it has been suggested that such analysis may not be irrational because modern science is not irrational by abandoning a separation of rational intuitive, space-time, subject-object dichotomy. Formal arrangements of rock art may not be mere modes of representation, but also, expressively significant. Nor can be ideological in the prehistoric rock art tradition be dissociated from the phraseological. Moreover, a physical and mental reiteration of the rock art process to understand the product should help us at some stage to read meanings back into forms, left out of them because of lack of contemporary information and loss recollection.

In many analysis, a diversity rather than singleness of variables is useful for building up predictive heuristic region-specific models for reading prehistoric systems of notation. Systematic, in depth study of walls and sites may reveal changing fictions and uses. In Australian rock art, successive utilization show a change in the meaning of the same appreciation of indigenous or regional concepts of reality may correct the problems of human reaction to rock art (Bednarik 1994a:98; Lewis Williams 1993:45-50).

All attempts at archaeological analysis of rock art are ultimately reduced to the valueleden stylistic, cognitive, epistemic, cultural and political biases of archaeologists and is an oxymoron (Lewis Williams 1993). The taxonomic categories accentuate differences and similarities, being tied to tools rather than to the Palaeoart itself. The artifact cannot be used us culturally diagnostic in the absence of semiological markers which are undeniably associated with culturally mediated traces of behavior. Indeed the tools, considered as hallmarks of the Neolithic or Mesolithic period, are found in the other periods too. Replicative analogies based on assumed co occurence of archaeological phenomena at selected sites and adhoc model building, should now give way to comprehensive interpretation done metamorphologically after resolution of ranges of probabilities (Bednarik 1995b). The use of cultural rather than technological indices is necessary for correcting the subjective and untestable perception or style.

Ultimately, a search for order is inevitable and cannot be given up without risking ninhilistic sollipsm. Even god as chaotician is supposed to have imposed a pattern among apparently random events. Search for age and spatial relation of rock art is a search for its ethnic identity and connection with other Palaeoart, with a site and with each other. It is also search for release from the ineradicable sense of transience to which societies are often becoming 'psychologically and philosophically committed'. The task is not to stand over and objectify history but be borne by its movement, being subject and object at the same time, using, what Heidegger called, the hermeneutic circular movement, to move back and forth, from the part to the whole, from one's own tradition to that of the other, from the past to the present, to overcome the alienation from the immediacy of living in which rock art appears to have been at once man's way of experiencing and describing the reality. For retracing, recapitulating, reiterating the beginning, for understanding oneself by understanding the other, to repossess the common cultural landscape of mankind, the rock art interpreter will have to move from parochial and exclusive to consensual and inclusive approaches, and combine conceptual with pre- conceptual modes of investigation.

Dr. Kalyan Kuamr Chakravarty

Director,

Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya,

(National Museum of Man), P.O. Box - 2, Shamla Hills,

Bhopal-469 013, Madhya Pradesh, INDIA,

Ph: 91-755-545 458, 558678

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