00:00.00 archpodnet Come. 00:00.43 alan Welcome back all you archeology podcasters to the rock art podcast we're in our second segment we're welcoming ah treham muahaba day talking about the archeology of emotions and its relationship to rock art. Tertha I wanted to mention something that I that that came to mind when we're talking about emotions and and the ah the group ceremonies. It appears to me that there's these aggregation events or aggregate events that occur for ah preliterate peoples and they try to time them. 00:27.82 TIRTHA So okay. 00:38.61 alan To the seasonal round when there's sufficient food to support. You know a group of people they would do a round a round dance as they call it and I think the women would be in in one area and the men would be in another and they would move around in a circle. 00:45.15 TIRTHA Right? yeah. 00:55.58 TIRTHA My hat. 00:57.69 alan And as they ah as they moved and they stopped with the ah drumming and the singing they would pound the ground with their feet and when asked by anthropologists why they did that they said we're waking up mother Earth and reminding her to replenish. The ah the needed foods both plants and animals and in turn provide the wherewithal that we need to sustain our lives. 01:30.29 TIRTHA That's a wonderful way of saying that in the religions of the end indigenous populations not just in the great basin instance that you give here. But everywhere I mean in the dance. The rhythmic performances of these animal festivities festivities of harvest spring. You know when mother mother earth is coming back to life and with. But or in the the promise of but abundance I mean including such living customs as that of Halloween for instance, you know and where. It's it's all connected to how the the the earth gets replenished for us that so we also offer not just to ourselves but to the spirits. So this is this is part of the ah you know that it's it's a very primitive belief that is still very active in our imaginations and we can only make a fallacy a categorical mistake. 02:58.10 TIRTHA If We consider this as superstition as a superstition of of people who have not invented a positivist scientific view of the world where nature is essentially dead. And in animate and and even in the literature of rock art. Um, there is this growing recognition of the need to to consider rock art. Ah that the ah to say that that the the only. Way of appreciating rock art is through an understanding of this kind of animistic lens. Ah where the conventional anthropological distinctions between between the subjects and inanimate objects. 03:52.66 TIRTHA Out there in nature will no longer hold water and that that that we have to set ourselves up as part of an active continuum and so the distinction that nature does not have life that that. The winds are not. You know the very movement of of the winds and they they're the the interactions of these natural forces with rocks the the sway of trees water these are these are living. Living things and they they have movement and you know so to speak even if if even if they do not manifest the sense the the characteristics of of biological life but they are part of of the of the foundation of of the of the Biome. Ah, which makes life to appear in the first place. 04:54.80 alan Well I always I always use this analogy and when ah when the anthropologists and the researchers went down to South America to ah identify. 04:55.17 TIRTHA Your hand. Okay. 05:05.70 TIRTHA Right. 05:10.24 alan Ah, psychotropic plants that were being used by shamans in terms of their ceremonies their religious and and their medical associations. They have an elaborate way of doing that they have to use a certain plant. It has to be only certain parts of that plant. It has to be acquired at a certain season. It has to be mixed up with other plants, etc, etc and it's it's Elaborate. It's Complex. It's something that would not be easily discerned and the scientists and the medical professionals who are down there asked these native people. The heck did you ever get to an understanding of how to employ these plants in such a way to use them medicinally and also to develop these ah altered states of consciousness and enter into this connection with the ethereal plane. 05:50.57 TIRTHA Yeah. 06:07.90 alan And they had a very simple answer. They says well we we talk to the to the plants and they tell us and and I know that I know that's that's that's a bit you know, Ah, how would you put this maybe tongue in cheek but it's not these are. 06:15.12 TIRTHA And. 06:24.16 TIRTHA A. 06:27.35 alan These are entities that have agency and have life in them and we may not understand that from a Cartesian or a western understanding but somehow or other this knowledge. 06:41.11 TIRTHA Correct. 06:47.11 alan Has been discerned by the shamans and the ritual adepts to garner it from the natural world. 06:58.48 TIRTHA Yes, this what this was okay this um this this notion or we we can call it ah a worldview and and an attitude. 07:14.34 TIRTHA Ah Behavior which is ingrained in us this this tendency to ascribe Anthropomorphic Characteristics human-like agencies to objects to to the plants. This. Is part of that continuum of not just ah, plants of natural natural Phenomena or plants or animals but also a chain which. Continues through the through the ministrations of the human being and connects us to the the the invisible of this Plenum of god's. Spirits Demons spirit Beings Soldiers Animal Masters you know, ah and and whenever humanity was portraying itself on the Rocks. Ah. This story this this. Ah, it's an it's a neon narrativeative. It's ah it's a narrative of the invisible. Ah, Ah, what?? what is more interesting in this narrative because because all these depictions represent. 08:51.29 TIRTHA Something ah moving forward. Ah there. It's ah you know that word which is used in film film criticism and film and anthropology the Meta Cinema The Meta Cinema of images you just. 09:07.84 alan Um, ah. 09:11.56 TIRTHA Yeah, ah, it's not what you see that tells us the story. But Also what you don't see in the in the in this in the shot or on the screen but something which you already know the references. That are already implicit in the sequence of images which is the total experience of ah of watching a movie or or participating in a ritual performance of the kind that you mentioned beating the Earth. So to wake it up to make it sentient I Guess this this ah this kind of this kind of attitude of the religious believers is reflected in the in the depictions and. In their in their perception of nature and this could or should give us ah the the right kind of instruments for looking not just at. Rock art but also considering what we are. What is our portrait because the rock art divinities. The deities are also ah portraits self-portraits made by humanity yet. 10:47.87 TIRTHA Ah, they are a portrait of a different self that is within within us within humanity and a self which is endowed with power with control as a self which is. 11:06.96 TIRTHA Comforting reassuring a self which has given us a symbol of all the benedictions of all the benefits and and the abundance and fertility of life and the Great. Reassurance or comfort that that despite the way generations are cut down in time and that we die and we ah that the loved ones depart. 11:43.94 TIRTHA And pass on to the other side there is yet this this. 11:51.11 alan There's a there's a continuity. There's a continuum. There's a there's sort of ah an ethereal thread of life and life and life and and life and life is there emblazoned on the rocks when you see a emblazoned. 11:57.79 TIRTHA Um, just just that happiness. 12:07.48 alan And an upturn bloated bighorn sheep with ah with a um bridge you know, ah some sort of a dart in its belly and then the next image but below it being a mother bighorn sheep with a ah a a small little infant sheep. 12:14.45 TIRTHA Yes I have. 12:26.28 alan It's the same binary opposition the same thread the same message the same instantaneous communication of life and death sustainability. Ah again, um, some sort of reverence for the. Ah. 12:29.89 TIRTHA Great. 12:45.66 alan Dilemma We have of dealing with our you know our our brief passage on the planet and the ah passage of time and the loss of life and the loss of loved ones. 12:59.61 TIRTHA This is so but something which has been pointed out by by many many philosophers and thinkers and traditions and different cultures and religions isn't it and that that. The the human being ah has a tendency to um, you know to to anchor or latch onto something which may be a figment of the imagination or or a fantasy but. Yeah, at the same time.. It's It's very emotionally it. It is very.. It is very true. It is ah it is an authentic human experience and the way. Ah for us going forward as as humanity. As prosocial animals as being there together and dancing to the rhythm of of the life that comes from nature and and that connects us to the to the cosmodome at the same time. 14:13.26 alan And and it and and isn't this all sort of encircling or ah sort of referencing the origin of religion. 14:21.71 TIRTHA Yes, of course and so the the point that we return to here is that it's this emotional emotive experiences at the base of all our religious and artistic expressions that that matters. And that we begin to see them in the rock art and that is what rock art teaches us what? rock? Ah, what teaches us rock art is what we are as humans and if the the shamans did not have any other message. They at least tried to remind us after several centuries this great span of time they they have tried to show us that that this that there is reason for us to. To be comforted and to be in the company of of these gods and goddesses who who are a reflection of our more. Refined and superior more harmonious selves. 15:42.77 alan Absolutely well. That's the second segment see on the flip flop gang. 15:47.10 TIRTHA Okay.