Rock Art Research

To date most of the work in rock art studies has been done by archaeologists and anthropologists and so rock art research has mostly adopted theory related to historical contextualisation. Without playing down the contribution of archaeology and anthropology, I examine the theoretical basis of historical approaches before going on to assessments of non-historical or universalist approaches (those of structuralism and, more recently, the ‘phosphene’ hypothesis — both in its shamanic and non-shamanic versions). Finally, I give an account of my own approach which is applicable not only to rock art but to art in general, and in that respect has relevance to the discipline of art history. Specifically this approach involves a combination of phenomenology, cognitive science and neurophysiology. Phenomenology, or the analysis of phenomena, provides a philosophical framework for the discussion of rock art from the standpoint of visual perception. At the same time cognitive science (in the form of perceptual psychology) and neurophysiology (knowledge of the neural structures of visual perception) provide experimental support for phenomenological analysis. Without excluding other approaches, this one seeks to offer yet another basis for a universalist rather than a historically oriented line on rock art studies.