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Insights from the San: A Role for San Aesthetics in the Archaeology of Art
Abstract The ‘shamanistic interpretation’ of ancestral San rock art, as spearheaded by the archaeologist Lewis-Williams, has featured significantly in discourse on Palaeolithic and Neolithic rock art across the world. Lewis-Williams has emphasised that there is no role for aesthetics within this shamanistic interpretation. An unfortunate consequence of this assertion, is a neglect of approaching San art from a San aesthetic perspective. By drawing on detailed San ethnography I argue that San rock art cannot be understood without factoring in a San way of being, in which aspects of aesthetics including inspiration, feeling, morality, beauty and care, cannot be disentangled from the everyday life that backgrounds the making of rock art. On this basis, I argue that aesthetics provides a valuable lens for interpreting San rock art. Furthermore, on the basis of shared common human biology and subsistence strategies, I argue for the value of aesthetics as an approach to the art of other ancient hunter-gatherers.
Keywords Ethnography, aesthetics, neuroscience, rock art
