00:00.00 Alan Welcome back you rock art podcasters this is Dr Alan Garfinkel with the rock art episode 70 we've got professor John Hoops and he's talking about his adventure and journeys. With the the central latin America the the area of Far South america and the farthest central america archaeological studies relating to some of the ceremonial and ritual artifacts and also the indigenous. Theology and with that we can kick this off john how are you? Yeah tell us a bit about this journey of yours and I saw that and I looked through the syllabus on shamanism and it was fabulous. What. 00:46.91 John Hoopes I'm I'm I'm good allen. 00:59.70 Alan Quite a tour de force and I'm sure that your your work on the subject of ah yeah, please tell us a bit about. 01:00.94 John Hoopes Well thank you,? It's a course that I really enjoy teaching. And of course, um. 01:14.80 Alan Go ahead John soki. 01:14.27 John Hoopes Of course shamanism is about magic and magical objects and magical thoughts and magical activities. Um, you know you sort of have to believe in magic if you want to get into it but there are different ways to look at it of course as anthropologists we we talk about both emic and etic. Ways of looking at things emic being an insider's view as as 1 might have from a magical practitioner an edic being more of an objective outsider's view and I really try to understand both of those in my in my pursuit of trying to understand. Understand shamans and shamanism I I am not a shaman and never have been I don't even play one on tv um I've never practiced shamanism myself nor do I aspire to? um, but it's something I've come to to to know and and respect and also to consider to be a useful way of. Of gaining insight into these objects. Um for which we don't have written records. We don't have unlike as with the mayas or or historical records. We don't have anybody writing about these objects to tell us what they are and how they were used. We really have to come at it from ah from the. From the perspective of archaeology. Um, but also and I think aicio naos of rock art will appreciate this. Um, we really have to stretch ourselves in terms of creative thinking as to what all of the possibilities are in terms of how one goes from. Human thought processes and human experiences um to something that's actually a material object that you can literally put your hands on and and and feel an experience. Um, and that communicated that tactile material experience to others. 03:05.68 Alan Absolutely so tell us a bit about these objects maybe paint us word pictures and then give us a sense of some of the challenges that you've dealt with and the discoveries you've made in working with archeology. And trying to perhaps I would call it reconstruct maybe indigenous theology and both from a contemporary standpoint and going back in time. How's that that's quite a a mouthful. Don't you think John. 03:36.91 John Hoopes Yes, but we we tackle these big things every once in a while and I certainly have thought about them quite a lot in this work that I've been doing on the collections of Dumbarton Oaks which are basically I mean this is a program about rock art and what we're talking about are ah rocks. 03:54.35 Alan Oh yeah. 03:56.25 John Hoopes They're there. They're there. They're special rocks? Um, but Jadedi um is ah is a rock um and this may sound kind of odd to people but it's also true gold is a kind of rock when it occurs in plaster deposits and and um, you know it it. It. it's it's um it's a mineral rocks and minerals. But it's a natural object. It's something that people encountered in stream beds. They encountered it in ah erosional deposits they they were able to pan for it and collect it that way. But we're really talking about rocks and minerals here and among the things that make jadite and gold. Interesting for ancient peoples as well as for us is this quality of shininess. Um, they they capture light and reflect it in really interesting ways. Um, and there are lots of things that do that of course ah shiny surfaces of the water. Ah, shiny. Um, um, shells of insects a whole host of things are very bright, but these are things that are consistently bright and shiny and that reflect the sun and the sunlight so it really kind of boils down to being interested in shiny rocks. And how it was that people people looked at them. Um, and this is something that if you think about it can help you get into the the emic perspective the minds of the people who are making and utilizing these materials. Um, and that is that humans have the capability. Increasing the shininess of something um and that sounds like a ah kind of a basic concept. But I think that that was a ah, very big part of what was being done in the working of objects made out of jadite and the working of objects that were made out of gold. Ah, both of which were very highly valued um in in Mesoerica and in this part of the Americas where I work which I refer to as the ismo colombian area. Um, as you probably know for the aztecs jadite was the most precious material um, much more precious than gold. Which which the um the the aztecs themselves referred to as shit of the gods that was literally how they referred to it gold was gold was the excrement of the gods. Um, and and um, but jadi was what they really most most valued and and decorated their. 06:08.29 Alan Ah I did not know the oh my word. Okay. 06:22.40 John Hoopes Ah, their they're statues with um, but in thinking about polished jadite and the polishing of stones I feel like I've gained some insights into how it was that the indigenous people of of the isma colombian area fought and that was that increasing shininess and increasing. Smoothness um, imbued a material object with a greater amount of um of of power if if we want to use a term like mana or something like that. Um, and I think that what they were doing is that they observed natural processes. Such as in Costa Rica for example you have ah rivers that flow down from the sides of volcanoes and if you're familiar with volcanic rocks. They're incredibly coarse and rough you don't ever want to be walking barefoot across lava it will cut your feet apart. But when those same lava rocks are tumbled. In a high velocity river they become rolled and they become smooth and ah eventually they'll become almost shiny depending on how polished they get and quite frankly that is the accumulation of the energy of the water and the earth. And of motion and of gravity and all of those types of things that are resulting in something that's very smooth. Um, and I think that when people picked up pieces of jadite and continued to polish and smooth them. They saw themselves as extending this same. Natural magical transformational process so that a polished Jdi Cel Ah especially if worn as a pendant was representative of the the accumulation of all of these actions but also displayed this this accumulated. Power something that had intensified this object over time. Um, and that may have been one of the things that gave jadi. Its its tremendous value is that it could take a polish and it could could become very very shiny and then it retained that because it's such a hard material. On the most scale between 7 and 8 um that you could do a lot of stuff with it and it would still contain that brightness that shininess. In fact, that's one of the wonderful things about jadi artifacts is you can bury them and bury them in the ground for centuries and they're very bright. When you excavate them. They're very smooth. They retain that quality and of course gold is that same way gold is is a non-reactive relatively non-reactive metal. So it retains its brightness and its shyness over time and I really think that this is one of those qualities that helps us to understand why these particular materials. 09:13.70 John Hoopes Were so important in the context of um of of cultures in which ah shamanism and the manipulation of um of objects and of light and of other types of qualities was was so important. 09:25.86 Alan Um, well that's fascinating I I hadn't thought about that way of of thinking about the manipulation and the sort of development and the technological realm for both gold and jdite. 09:38.15 John Hoopes Well one of the um among the objects that I'm especially fascinated by that that that many of your listeners may be familiar with are are these colossal stone spheres of Costa Rica do you know what? I'm talking about. Um, they're huge. 09:44.23 Alan But I um. 09:51.22 Alan Okay I think I do indeed? yes. 09:57.41 John Hoopes Gabro ah boulders that have been shaped into almost perfectly spherical form. They were probably very highly polished in in when they were complete and there are about 300 of them or more that are known from from Costa Rica and I was part of a Unesco. Ah. 10:03.21 Alan I've saved them. Yes. Ah, m. 10:17.10 John Hoopes Team that evaluated sites with stone spheres and in 2 14 they actually were were listed on on the Unesco World heritage site and um, you know we spent a lot of time talking about these spheres and I realized that a so polished sphere. 10:22.35 Alan Right. 10:34.32 John Hoopes Is is almost like the the the most logical outcome that one could have from continuously shaping and polishing a hard stone you ultimately arrive at a polished sphere and I sort of realized that there was a continuity ah between the polished jadi cells. And the polished stone spheres that they represented this long long tradition of working and polishing shiny stones. Um, and then of course gold objects which are shiny and reflective are are an extension of that so we can really think about all of these things in. Ah, a very similar category. Yes, they have very different qualities but but this this quality of of of ah being able to be polished and to retain the the sort of the cultural re to do of that polishing that that essence of that polishing is one of the things that makes them such. 11:21.26 Alan So the lubanescence. Yeah yeah. 11:29.83 John Hoopes Such amazing objects which we not even being in that culture can look at today and be impressed by. 11:34.80 Alan Or if we appreciate their aesthetically pleasing and as you're probing the sort of the theological meaning of these I'm beginning to get a sense of sort of this capture of power but this capture of light this and this tremendous effort. At sort of producing something that's aesthetically pleasing but also engaged in some sort of a tremendous religiosity but also powerfulness almost like you know when we think about water moving and how it. 12:12.85 John Hoopes Yes I think that's right and and and it's not true. 12:13.50 Alan As you were saying how it rounds and scours Rs and scours and flutes. Yes, go ahead. 12:19.30 John Hoopes Yes, well and but but something else to think about I mean and yes, the water the water does that and and it's possible to observe that especially season after season but something else that is part of and a native perspective. Um is that the repetition of something. Intensifies it? Um, for example, if you're listening to drumming um the more drumming happens and it can off a drum session can go in some cases for hours the the more repetitive activity that takes place the greater The amount of accumulated power that has occurred. More often. A chant is repeated or the more often that dance steps are taken this notion of repetition being equivalent to intensification is something that can be captured in a material object when what's repetitive is the shaping and the polishing of something. So that you see that cumulation. Ah that literally accumulation of of energy in the object from that repeated. Um that repeated activity and for me one of the best analogies for this. Um is is the chanting of a mantra by a. 13:26.51 Alan That's fascinating. Yeah. 13:35.93 John Hoopes By a buddhist monk um, you know the the mullah or the the sometimes referred to as a rosary which has hundred and eight beads on it for the repetition of a mantra like o Monday Pat me home and then doing that the more you do that and actually these mullahs. Ah, ah. 13:40.92 Alan Right? right. 13:48.14 Alan Okay. 13:55.27 John Hoopes Have have counters on them so you do it 108 times and you count. Okay, that's 1 cycle. You do it again. You do it again and then soon you have 108 cycles of 108 mantras and and the more you have chanted this mantra the more you've said it over and over again. Um. The the more that power of meditation has has has increased in merit. Um, and and I think that might be an analogy to what's going on in terms of working and polishing these these stones. Um and of course this same type of working and polishing and shaping. Ah happens. Um in in the realm of rock art as well. Now. Um I don't know whether rock art specialists would look at these colossal stone spears as rock art. But but it's sort of what happens when every inch of the surface of a boulder. 14:32.44 Alan Um, absolutely yeah I'm thinking I'm thinking about the yes. 14:48.80 John Hoopes Um, has been has been smoothed and shaped in in into completion. 14:51.86 Alan No, it's it's it's Fascinating. It makes me think about a lot of the rock guard I've seen the ancient Rock guard and the the more recent rock guard as Well. That has been repacked or in sizeed very heavily and the repetition. That incising or that almost almost it gets a sculptural kind of a sense and you'll see that and it it is reinaugurating the power but it's also working the stone and in in that repetition in that effort. In that rounding or grinding away producing something that is analogous to the kind of etiology the kind of theology that you you're alluding to and the metaphor embedded in the action. Correct. 15:46.35 John Hoopes Well and in our own culture think about think about the power of visiting a medieval Cathedral where you can see when you look down the middle of those marble steps that lead up to the sanctuary that they have been worn and and and are scalloped from the footsteps of. 15:52.89 Alan Okay, so. 16:06.23 John Hoopes Thousands and thousands and thousands of of ah visitors. Um that that's the kind of accumulation that um that I'm talking about when you look at that and you say oh man somebody didn't polish these steps to make those those those scallops those are those are from people walking. 16:24.59 Alan Exactly And if you get I I think they do if you go to a particular Canyon that I've been studying. It's a public Canyon It's called little Petlift Canyon in the coso range. 16:25.69 John Hoopes Over and over and over and over and over and over again and I think that native people perceived that and and and revered that. 16:43.86 Alan There is thousands and thousands of images in about a mile period and it's in a conduit. It's in a canyon so it's hidden and that kind of replication that kind of activity concentrated activity in one particular area. I would think creates this power this theological vortex or nexus that we're talking about doesn't it. 17:11.49 John Hoopes I Think it very much does and I think sacred places are recognized for having that quality. 17:17.24 Alan Well I think we'll stop here and talk about some of those theological issues in the final segment. Thanks Gang see in the flip-flop. 17:35.24 Alan Nice job.