Expert: John J. Shea - 8/26/2005

Question
Hi John,

I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to share your expertise with me.  It was a wonderful experience, I learned a lot and it was fun.  

There is a free archeology newsletter, e-mailed Sunday morning, that I really enjoy and you might interest you (if you don't know about it already.)  It's David Meadow's "Explorator."  You can find a sample of it here

http://s9.invisionfree.com/Classics_Central/index.php?showtopic=279

If there any online resources (for neophytes) you could recommend to me I would be delighted to learn about them.

Thank you again for your kindness in considering and responding to my questions.  

Very best wishes,

Barbara

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Followup To
Question -
Thank you for you response.  I will look into the books you recommended and greatly appreciate your advice.

My question has evolved to a more sociological one than a prurient one. What would mankind be like if you removed the years and years of cultural influence and history - take away written laws - take away Christianity and the idea of original sin. Was life without civilization uncivilized? What aspects of human life are independent of our accumulated layers of civilization. I bet we haven't changed much. I found this http://www.bigeye.com/sexeducation/mesopotamia.html and postulate that whether it is a civilization or a prehistoric group they will make up rules and customs.  Perhaps in prehistoric times it would be less organized, perhaps less complicated, and individuals would have more of an influence. I imagine separate groups might have had very different customs.  Since cave drawings are a written history I was wondering if they told us about more than cavemen and hunting. There were sexual images too.  Is there anything else you would add to this line of thought, or are the answers I am looking for shrouded completely in the mystery of prehistory?  Thank you.
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Followup To
Question -
Did cavemen draw pornographic images?
Answer -
Dear Barbara,
Among the Ice Age art of Europe, there are images that have been interpreted as depictions of penises, vulvas, and of people engaging in sexual intercourse. So, by the standards by which 19th-20th Century Europeans and Americans define pornography, the answer is "yes".  Two problems with such a simple answer, though, are
1. The descriptive terms we use for such images reflect our interpretations, and these may not (and probably aren't) necessarily be the same as those of the original artists.  For example, what one modern day-archaeologist interprets and describes as a vulva could be to another archaeologist an abstract sign, or to a third researcher a stylized representation of the track of a cloven-hoofed animal.  (This is an exercise I use in my course on Paleolithic art to point out to the difficulty of interpreting the meaning of Ice Age art.)
2. Even if these images have what we think to be sexual content, we do not know if they were intended to stimulate "prurient" interest (a key element in most judicial definitions of pornography).  There are a lot of images of nude humans in art museums that no reasonable person would view as pornographic.
I hope this answer helps.  If you want to read more by a leading scholar of this subject, look up the work of Prof. Meg (Margaret) Conkey of the Anthropology Department and the Univ. of California at Berkeley.  There are also several good books on this subject by Paul Bahn (Journey through the Ice Age) and David Lewis-Williams (the Mind in the Cave).
Cheers,
John Shea

Answer -
Hello again, Barbara,
I certainly did not mean to impute a prurient interest on your part.
It's hard to speculate about the scenario you propose, stripping away "civilization" and its institutions from a small group of people and seeing what would result.  My guess is that they would either come up with some social rules of one kind or another or become extinct fairly quickly.
The nearest analog (not an exact one, mind you) is the Pitcairn Island situation, where the HMS Bounty mutineers settled together with Polynesians they had kidnapped.  The society limped along for some decades with a fair amount of violence until they were rediscovered by the British Navy.  In this case, however, all involved arrived at Pitcairn with "civilized" social institutions, both the Polynesians and the Bounty mutineers.
I would also caution about interpreting the Paleolithic art as history.  Some images may depict actual events (as does some of the rock art of recent hunter-gatherers), but there is no way to tell.  Essentially, when you look at prehistoric images and symbol, you should exercise all the same cautions you would in interpreting a work of art in a museum.  Unless you the artist standing there next to the painting explaining it to you (an impossibility in prehistoric research), your guess about their intention in creating the art has to remain conjectural.
Sincerely
John Shea

Answer
You are most welcome.  There are some good websites on general aspects of archaeology at About.com and the Archaeological Institute of America (www.archaeological.com), and the Archaeology Channel.
RE: Paleolithic art, -there is a new book coming out soon on the natural history of the animals depicted in European Ice Age art.  It is by R.Dale Guthrie and entitled "The Nature of Paleolithic Art" (I think). If it like his other writing on this subject, it ought to be very interesting.
Cheers,
John Shea