00:00.00 archpodnet All right? take it away on. 00:00.00 Alan Got it got it. Well hello out there in archeology podcast land this is your host Dr Alan Garfinkel for the eightieth episode. Can you imagine that we are blessed and gifted to have Don Lapony with us today. Dawn's ah, a noted scholar in rock art and in the study of shamanism in the relationship of shamanism as a modality as a reality in terms of its effectiveness in healing and other aspects of. 00:35.64 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Are. 00:36.75 Alan The religious metaphors not don are you where are you with us today. Wonderful! It's great. It's great to have you back I know you've been working very very hard for many many months on this very lengthy monograph. 00:39.95 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Um, I'm with you hi Allan. 00:56.35 Alan That will document some of the aspects of the interrelationships of shamanism and rock art and no, no please. Um where where should we start? What do you think is the best way to approach this subject. 01:01.29 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Well I'm sure you've heard this before. Go ahead. 01:14.80 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Ah, we could either start with a case study or we could start with the evolution of this paper sort of what do you think would be more interesting. 01:18.54 Alan Okay, okay, why don't we Well I I think we need a thumbnail for the evolution of the paper and then we should jump right on in for the balance with the case studies that you had alluded to. Showcase and demonstrate the direct interrelationship of shamanism in rock art and the utility and effectiveness of Shamanism. How's that. 01:45.84 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Um, but yeah, that sounds good. Um. 01:50.75 Alan So done. Okay, done give us a thumbnail of how we ever got into this thing. 01:56.60 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Okay, well as you know we did 2 books on the larumarosa tradition which is in Southern California northern baham Mexico and ah into Arizona about as far east as helaband. And up the Colorado into The Grand Canyon so I don't know if that makes it the largest tradition in Southern California but it's probably about four hundred plus miles long and two hundred miles wide so it's pretty big despite all of that territory. Before we started these books. There were maybe two dozen sites known in the United States and probably the same in Mexico by the time we were done twelve years later but we had a small army of native americans. Archaeologists and other scientists a lot of people from healthcare ah walked the desert for more than 10 years maybe up to about 15 years and we ended up with about 170 sites in the states I couldn't really get Mexico on board to do anything so it. Unfortunately could only be the states but hopefully one day they will inventory theirs. But so what happened because I think we have in terms of the United States you know nine tenths of this tradition. That's um, discoverable with destret and other techniques. So we have a pretty good idea about what was going on with their tradition. We. So yeah. 03:30.17 Alan And and so with these books um, tell us the direction. The research took post is book one and book 2 03:40.65 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Well these books the first 2 books were sort of maybe like college level general typical but good rock art surveys um, you know we had a lot of photos we had articles by experts. In Southern California and a couple in Arizona to help us. There's kind of a who's who of Southern California archeology like you're in them for example, but so are a lot of other people. Shackley comes to mind because we used to be neighbors but all the stars are in their Dennis Gallegos um David Whitley different people a bunch of San Diego people however we didn't really analyze la rumorosa per se and so I set out to do a paper on on la ruosa more of a scientific treatment and and did that ethnography. And some other tables about what was there and some of the metaphoric ah themes that we saw. However, it took a big turn because I started reading more just trying to get my handle on Lomarosa and to to me. It looked like rock art had been stuck since he mercialati came along. He always gets credit with 1962 but the book was written in the 40 s ah written in french in 1950 so it was already out there and to me the. boilerplate rock art article would do a survey would talk about a Lottie would bring in the neuropsychological model which came from data 1927 through 1940 and that's it and then oh they would close with my favorite line. Rock art is. Unknowable. That's not true, but within the the methodology that was being used. It was true because the native americans were excluded to a large degree from giving their opinion by nearly every author except 1 and that one was Richard sowel um, and I encourage the audience you can go to the Arizona University Of Arizona Repository and they have all of his articles plus hundreds of thousands of other articles and you can look at them all for free He's kind of been a model that you can do this and you can get native american input as to the significance of rock art and it's been a mystery to me why he's basically the only one doing that. Um, so anyway, that's. 06:29.30 Alan No words. 06:30.61 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ That's that was the beginning of looking under the rocks I Guess you'd say. 06:33.74 Alan So Don what makes Richard stofel so unique in his particular methodology in and his particular let's say theoretical theo or methodological perspective. Please. 06:40.20 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Okay, well. Yeah I Don't think he's too much of a theorist I think he he will pick an area like one one ah C Rm or that I I really like cultural resource management report which I almost never read because they're so dull. 07:00.32 Alan So. 07:05.22 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ And there isn't much to learn there. They're kind of like facts only and they are often etic in their nature. The native Americans are in there but only as um, not a token. They're fulfilling the law by having their input. 07:19.92 Alan Um, as ah, yeah, as a sidebar. Yeah sure. 07:24.43 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ But they're usually in some appendix of a thousand pages or something. No one's going to find them and that's for sure. But when Richard does something whether it's an article or a report they're right in there with him and even though. Native americans don't think that much of science. It's not just who was it vindeloria who didn't think that much of science. But in general they just don't see why it's so important or what we're looking for. They're looking for something else and. But Richard puts them in there with their ideas and everybody treats each other respectfully. In fact, 1 Richard report I think it's called Yana Watt Y A N A W A And T is with the piute. In Kanab Greek um where I've hiked and so it had some meaning to me and there's pictures of them together laughing. Okay, you don't see that much in um, many archeological articles you see. Words like primitive superstitious irrational stuff like that and so you're not going to get much cooperation and I know this sounds um and you know it sounds terrible to say but I think that the native americans hold. The answers to the meaningful questions of rock art if we would just talk to them. 08:59.77 Alan Well Don I think you're right and I've said this before you know on these podcasts. My revelation came when I did the handbook of the Koaau and in 4 years of working directly with my co-author who is the former headman or president. The Kowaa Siu nation and sort of the Eastern Currentern Native americans I learned more in 4 years working with them than I did in 40 years doing it on my own under trying to understand the archaeology anthropology and some of the epiphanies that I had. 09:29.49 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Um, no I agree with you. 09:37.20 Alan So striking that I had to you know, pen them and also had a number of native people as co-authors on the on my major articles. So I certainly have tried to and attempted this this integration. Yeah yeah. 09:47.77 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Is um, us your coauthor Donald yeah. 09:55.83 Alan Was Harold Williams and there was and there's another one who's ah actually a yeah big horn sheep singer and he's from the Serrano and and co koia nations and he's he's helped us as well. So please continue. 10:05.88 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Um, yeah I think it's moving in the right direction. Um. 10:14.73 Alan I do too. So so there's an there's 1 example, um, you had mentioned some some other examples that may not be so profound or so integrated or or that come across. Much more adversarial. Um, you don't have to you don't have to you know name names. But how how does that? How does that exactly work. How does how does that come across and what's the perspective of let's say a conventional researcher looking at rock art that does not sort of abode for that integration. 10:36.80 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Right. 10:52.38 Alan What particular explanatory platform would they use. 10:56.25 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Well, um I also started looking at people that were doing more innovative approaches like Bayesian Kinetics is a big buzz thing in social sciences right now. Well um. It's complicated and so I got I got into some of the methodology and right away started discovering critics of the social sciences and archaeology and what their approach was you know their at their outsider approach and not going to the source culture. And that led me around kind of um about the validity of the literature in general not just archaeology and there's a prominent epidemiologist at Stanford who's one of the leaders in the country John ionidis and he made. He has 3 articles and they've been in the top 10 I think on pinos or scopus or um, one of them or it's not academia edu. It. It might be research gate but he has 3 of the top 10 articles and. 11:56.12 Alan Ah. 12:05.55 Alan E. 12:07.73 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ These 3 articles are why 85% of the literature is useless wrong and I forget the third term not needed and I read his articles and I thought wow we really have some improvement to do and then the. american statistician association wrote a 400 page supplement I think from 2018 and they were really down on our literature and psych literature saying that we were you know detached we were misusing statistics we basically would. 12:44.10 Alan It on and on and on interesting. 12:45.20 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ You know, write our article after we got the results Um, rather than a pre-register technique which is they're trying to push right now. Um, so there were a lot of problems. What is it that evidence. 12:53.71 Alan So So what has happened So What has happened in the in the and the discipline of let's call it medicine and also psychology and also the study perhaps of some of the ethnobotanicals. That's been a bit of a revolution where we're seeing a a veneration of certainly an acceptance of some of the elements of shamanism and a learning or embracing of those techniques employing them in certain modalities. 13:31.76 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Mario. 13:32.34 Alan Certainly modified to ah assist those who are ill. 13:36.29 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Boy I glad you asked that question. Um, okay, um, as you know I don't know when you introduced me to Michael Winkelman who was trained at Irvine went to Arizona State University 13:49.60 Alan Right? right. 13:55.66 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Now lives ah in Brazil I'm not sure if he's coming back. He says he doesn't want to but he's still in contact with other people and I I email him every couple months to to ask him questions and that he's always real good. But anyway Michael Winkelman 14:05.61 Alan E. 14:11.87 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ I asked him when I was done with his book which took me a couple of years to understand his shamunism book in 2010 but he's updated it several times but I like that book. Um I said okay I read all your theory. 14:15.96 Alan Oh. 14:26.90 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ But can they really do this and so he pointed me in the direction of Bill Lyons book who it's a very admired book. It was picked up by Cambridge University Press and Twenty Twenty or 2019 but the original was twenty twelve and he changed some of the science in it. But it's minor. So. 14:39.20 Alan E. 14:46.58 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Ah, either edition is mine. He said read Bill Lyon's book spirit talkers and spirit talkers I forget is like 500 pages or so of ah medicine men. It's just on the native american practice and he has a chapter on quantum or quantum physics. It's the first chapter and's difficult to read and we don't really know at this point if the native americans do what they do because of quantum science. But there is a relationship. Um anyway. So I read his book and and it's covers basically from about the 1940 s until about 1980 or so and he was an anthropology professor at Berkeley and stopped working and followed the the act of shaman around ah for about 30 years and he had a close. Closest relationship probably with Wallace Black Elk one of the students of Nicholas Black Elk and he gives a lot of eyewitness Testimony that would be a good example to read if we have time later because it's only about a page. Um I tried to put in the third book. 15:58.10 Alan Sure sure. 16:03.50 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Cases that just seem airtight that there couldn't possibly be another explanation for it. There are just too many facts. You know that had to be discovered in a short time for to be coincidence. But anyway, so Bill Lyons I read that and then I forget who I asked. You know what's next basically and I found Virgil Vogel's book American Indian Medicine that covered almost the entire span of the country up until about world war ii and um, the overview of that although it's about an 800 page book. Ah, an expansion needless to say of his doctoral thesis. Um Virgil Vogel has about 800 pages of what happened in the first you know 400 years or almost five four hundred and fifty years of the country and the biggest shot to me. 16:44.47 Alan Ah. 16:56.38 Alan Yeah. 17:00.61 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Was that the native americans had the most advanced medical practice probably in the world. But at least in the western hemisphere they had this is in the seventeen hundreds Eighteen hundreds they had an earlier they were doing surgery. They had pain relievers. They had anesthetics. They had syringes. They were really good at treating wounds. They were put in drain tubes chest tubes they had obstetricians that were women. Um they had ah a whole bunch of drugs that here's a side light of just. Give you a couple of examples of things that they actually did solve the native american. Yeah yeah. 17:42.14 Alan Yeah, we'll get those up the next. Um, next one can you hear me? Yeah, we'll pick it up on the next segment. Thanks to. 17:52.30 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Yeah, yeah. 17:56.18 archpodnet So so Helan give it this give us give us a little more alllan like ah ah I don't know well no, that's fine. Let me just end it. That's fine. 17:57.44 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Go ahead. 18:03.63 Alan Hey no no I I don't think that that. 18:14.16 archpodnet Um, you think yeah, we lost you stand by. 18:14.77 Alan Hear a meeting. 18:15.28 Don Liponi_ Ph_D_ Um, what happened.