The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves

Beautifully illustrated brief book for a public audience outlining Clottes’ belief in a shamanistic explanation for parietal art.

The authors review previous theories (art for art’s sake, totemism, sympathetic magic and structuralism) gauging how these theories helped or hindered our current understanding of prehistoric cave art. Examples are mostly drawn from southern Europe, but ethnographic comparisons are global. Late 20C neuropsychological research into the unity of hallucinogenic experience (3 stages of the trance state) is used as a springboard for interpretating ubiquitous symbols and construction methods across multiple locations and time periods.

Well written but occasionally appears sentences were muddled in translation show more from the French. The arguments build nicely up to the last chapter; at that point, where it does become more hypothetical, I did not always follow the argument. To keep the book shorter, I think some connecting thoughts and explanations may have been lost. A very good introduction to the cave art itself (although more images from other parts of the world would have been very helpful in seeing connections) and a solid foundation for proposing a shamanistic interpretation. show less