Heidelberg University Publishing

Abstract This contribution examines the multispecies matrix of parietal art-making in early human evolution. I draw on New Materialism and Human-Animal Studies and deploy the archaeological evidence from Upper Palaeolithic Franco-Cantabria and Late Pleistocene and Holocene rock art of South America to argue that our understanding of the origin, assembly and motivational background of this imagery can be enhanced if we begin to explore the active involvement of rock formations and nonhuman animals. Building on the­oretical insights from Jane Bennett and others, I suggest ar­chaeological evidence for parietal art-making supports the view that rock art is often a hybrid phenomenon and its genesis linked to shifting human-nonhuman assemblages and their varying ‘conactivisms’. Rock art frequently carries a triple inheritance – human, mineral and animal – and as such delineates a human-fashioned synthesis of nature and culture, where natural potentialities and agencies meet situated human behavioural and cognitive horizons. This alternative apprehension of early rock art has important consequences for the evolutionary status of human art-making. Rather than signifying a fundamental withdrawal from nature as encapsulated by the traditional image of the Homo pictor, image-making emerges as a powerful eco­logical practice with the potential to re-configure human-nature relations and to re-insert ‘nature’ into ‘culture’.

Keywords Palaeolithic imagery, parietal art, human-nature relations, nonhuman turn, multispecies archaeology, ma­teriality, geopoiesis, conactivity, rocks, animals, ecological humanities, natureculture, Homo pictor