Symbolism and becoming a hunter-gatherer

Abstract

From time to time, we all worry about the use of the word "art" in connection with what we study (see review in Bradley 2009, Ch. 1). The images on rock and other surfaces that concern us here have some visual similarity with some of what is called art in other contexts, particularly when they are of great beauty (e.g. Chauvet et al. 1995; Clottes 2001). Yet the associations of art -paintings, sculptures and other works- over the last six hundred years (see e.g. Gombrich 1995) (or perhaps only three hundred according to Shiner 2001), mean that it is highly unlikely that any paintings or engraved images on rocks or in caves relate to social, economic, and cultural circumstances similar in any way to those of art in the twenty-first century. Indeed it has been suggested that this problem, as it was manifest at the end of the nineteenth century, was part of the reason why it was so difficult for scholars of the Upper Palaeolithic to accept the prehistoric age of the cave paintings at Altamira (Moro Abadia 2006; Moro Abadia & Gonzales Morales 2005).