Becoming Human: Innovation in Prehistoric Material and Spiritual Culture

by Edited by Colin Renfrew , Iain Morley

• ISBN13: 9780521876544
• ISBN10: 0521876540
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-03-23
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The Upper Palaeolithic era of Europe has left an abundance of evidence for symbolic activities, such as direct representations of animals and other features of the natural world, personal adornments, and elaborate burials, as well as other vestiges that are more abstract and cryptic. These behaviours are also exhibited by populations throughout the world, from the prehistoric period through to the present day. How can we interpret these activities? What do they tell us about the beliefs and priorities of the people who carried them out? How do these behaviours relate to ideologies, cosmology, and understanding of the world? What can they tell us about the emergence of ritual and religious thought? And how do the activities of humans in prehistoric Europe compare with those of their predecessors there and elsewhere? In this volume, fifteen internationally renowned scholars contribute essays that explore the relationship between symbolism, spirituality, and humanity in the prehistoric societies of Europe and traditional societies elsewhere. The volume is richly illustrated with 50 halftones and 24 color plates.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Plates	p. vii
Picture Acknowledgements	p. xi
Contributors	p. xiii
Foreword	p. xvii
Introduction - Becoming human: changing perspectives on the emergence of human values	p. 1
The emergence of symbolic thought: the principal steps of hominisation leading towards greater complexity	p. 10
African Origins, European Beginnings, and World Prehistory
The origins of symbolism, spirituality, and shamans: exploring Middle Stone Age material culture in South Africa	p. 29
Neanderthal symbolic behaviour?	p. 50
Identifying ancient religious thought and iconography: problems of definition, preservation, and interpretation	p. 61
Situating the creative explosion: universal or local?	p. 74
Approaches to 'Art and Religion'
The roots of art and religion in ancient material culture	p. 95
The archaeology of early religious practices: a plea for a hypothesis-testing approach	p. 104
Out of the mind: material culture and the supernatural	p. 123
Of people and pictures: the nexus of Upper Palaeolithic religion, social discrimination, and art	p. 135
Ritual and music: parallels and practice, and the Palaeolithic	p. 159
The European Experience
Materiality and meaning-making in the understanding of the Palaeolithic 'arts'	p. 179
Sticking bones into cracks in the Upper Palaeolithic	p. 195
Cognition and climate: why is Upper Palaeolithic cave art almost confined to the Franco-Cantabrian region?	p. 212
Reflections on the Origins of Spirituality
Interdisciplinary perspectives on human origins and religious awareness	p. 235
Innovation in material and spiritual culture: exploring conjectured relationships	p. 253
Index	p. 269
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