Of rock art, storytelling, food and sacred groves

Abstract

As autumn unfolds with all its colourful display, Time & Mind’s second issue for 2022 is ready to take you on an equally colourful journey through rock art, storytelling, cooking and sacred groves. Aptly defined as a global phenomenon that transcends time and space (Goldhahn 2019), rock art and its potential in conveying people’s worldviews is the common thread running through the first three papers in this volume. We start off in the Maloti Drakensberg mountains of southern Africa, where Andrew Skinner and Sam Challis discuss the vast repertoire of snake carvings in rock art, traditionally interpreted as a symbolic reference to cross-cultural encounters as forager societies started incorporating external elements into their communities. Based on historical and ethnographic sources, the authors investigate the role of snakes and similar monstrous figures in contemporary mythologies through the lens of language and regional idioms. The resulting picture reflects a symbolism coherent with that observed in earlier societies’ carved imagery, shedding light on the mutual agency and complex relationship between human and non-human actors. Max Carocci brings us to the Northern Plains region stretching from South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas to Minnesota and Iowa, where rock art imagery is abundantly documented over a long time span (from 1000 BCE to historical times). Within such a vast and diverse iconographic repertoire, Carocci’s account focuses on a specific theme, male genitalia, which appears to have been of special relevance to Plains Indian culture. In a similar vein to Skinner and Challis’ study of snake representations, Carocci integrates archaeological, historical and ethnographic materials to reassess the meaning of phallic imagery beyond the traditional interpretations revolving around shamanism and fertility. The many modes of representations and differing contexts illustrated by the author reveal a multiplicity of worldviews sedimented in one iconic symbol that expresses the multifaceted concept of masculinity in both the spiritual and secular domains of Plains Indian culture. The contribution by Marja Ahola and Katri Lassilla shifts from the formal attributes of rock art and their many symbolic meanings to the performative practices that infused life into those carved scenes. It is widely agreed that rock depictions provided a visual script to storytellers, who through the expert use of light and darkness, shadow play and sounds could animate static images and deliver a much more vivid narration. According to Ahola and Lassilla, material traces of such performative arts may be sought also outside the realm of rock TIME AND MIND 2022, VOL. 15, NO. 2, 97–99 https://doi.org/10.1080/1751696X.2022.2133817