Abstract
My first concern with this otherwise interesting collective volume has to do with its misleading subtitle. The book is an excellent overview of different approaches to shamanism, centred on landscape archaeology with a special emphasis on rock art. However, the word “cosmology” in the subtitle might inspire expectances that will soon be disappointed.
This will especially be true for scholars interested in “astronomy in culture.” Only two of the twelve chapters of the volume deal with the sky and could be understood in light of ancient cosmologies or cosmogonies. Interestingly, it is in Chapter 7, by Emilia Pásztor, where the correct terminology for the book’s content, and perhaps subtitle, is mentioned, viz., “worldview.” Yet Pásztor’s chapter does not touch the sky but shows how ritual deposits help us understand how central European Bronze-Age people understood their world. Similar approaches to other topics can be found in several other chapters.
Chapters 1 and 8 treat, respectively, rock art of the Iberian Peninsula and the extensive Russian heartlands. Surprisingly, Ekaterina Devlet mentions the presence of rock art images of sun-faced creatures but does not consider their possible cosmological aspects, perhaps related to astral cults in which people gathered at rock art areas during special moments of the annual cycle possibly related to a lunar calendar. Chapter 3 is a well-developed essay on caves, interpreted as shamanic cultural landscapes, and has hardly anything to do with the sky. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss natural and human sounds, respectively. They introduce aurality as a useful way to consider worldviews of ancient societies. Chapters 9, 10 and 12 are methodological and discuss general aspects of shamanic studies.
Chapter 2 by Dragoş Gheorghiu deals with a place and topic that has interested this reviewer for years. This is Göbekli Tepe, the majestic pre-ceramic cyclopean site in upper Mesopotamia, here interpreted as a shamanic landscape related to huge flooding as depicted on certain megalithic pillars. I have read so many interpretations of the site – several of them propose astronomical or cosmological features, including our own hypothesis that certain images of a lion, a bull or a scorpion could be the ancestors of modern constellations – that I feel unable to judge this particular one. Göbekli Tepe is and unfortunately will remain the best example, worldwide, of the legal maxim “testis unus, testis nullus” applied to social sciences.
Chapters by Caroline Malim and Herman Bender are the only two that take an astronomical approach to shamanic landscapes. Malim speculatively considers a parish and pilgrimage area in south Wales, the site and church of Saint Melangell, as a place where Greek skylore is mixed with ancient Celtic and Christian traditions. Although she presents a nice story, a lack of references worries this reader. Bender discusses Native American earth mounds of the eastern United States, including the famous site of Newark, Ohio, as typical examples of astronomy in culture (not so much as ancient cosmologies), regardless of whether shamans were involved. A significant aspect of what Bender calls his “modern conjecture” has to do with lunar standstills, a controversial topic that this reviewer and several colleagues will address in a forthcoming article.
Land of the Shamans is a very nice book, treating many interesting aspects; yet I fear it does not reach the objective stated in its subtitle. The volume deals with archaeology, landscape archaeology, symbolism and worldviews of ancient people, but it sheds little light on the basic questions that humans, past and present, seek in cosmology.