Dr Robert J. Wallis delivers paper at ‘Metageum 2007’ in Malta
30/11/2007
Dr Robert J. Wallis delivers paper at ‘Metageum 2007’ in Malta
‘Metageum 2007: Exploring the Megalithic Mind’ held in Malta, involved a diversity of speakers, from archaeologists (both academic and independent), through psychologists and artists, to researchers in esoteric subjects. The conference presented new results of research and encouraged debate and discussion. No particular position on the interpretation of the temples, artwork or figurines was foregrounded: there are radically different perspectives in circulation, some of which are diametrically opposed to each other (from ‘goddesses’ to un-gendered sculptures). The conference aimed to create a space in which the evidence and competing claims were seen, heard, discussed and assessed. Dr Robert J. Wallis, Associate Professor of Visual Culture and Director of the MA in Art History, presented his recent research on rock art in Britain, as theorised through the ‘new animism’. An abstract of the paper is presented below, and the paper is in preparation for publication in the new journal ‘Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture’, the first issue of which is released from Berg Press in Spring 2008 (see http://www.bergpublishers.com/JournalsHomepage/TimeMind/tabid/3253/Default.aspx).
Animism, Agency and Altered Styles of Communication
Dr Robert J. Wallis
Abstract:
My research to date has engaged with shamanism and altered consciousness in the context of rock art studies and the study of contemporary paganisms. In the case of the former, I examined rock art in Melanesia, Namibia and Britain, and offered a critical analysis of the shamanistic approach to rock art or so-called ‘trance hypothesis’ (e.g. Wallis 2002). Regarding the latter, I explored the interface between indigenous, prehistoric and western shamanistic practitioners (Wallis 2003), and as co-director of the Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights project (www.sacredsites.org.uk) considered contemporary pagan engagements with the past at prehistoric monuments in Britain (e.g. Blain & Wallis 2007). I have always been explicit and upfront about how my academic interest is integrated with my personal practices as a heathen (a practitioner of Northern spirituality): far from being a liability or compromising my ‘objectivity’, I have argued that this practitioner-scholar position offers a unique standpoint alongside other ‘established’ approaches, with its own contribution (and of course difficulties) to scholarship. Here, I discuss the permeability of boundaries between my various (research and pagan) interests pertaining to ‘the megalithic mind’, by introducing recent theorizing of animism and its implications for our understanding of ‘sacred sites’, for our approaches to prehistoric cognition and visual and material culture, and for my own worldview. My concern is not to argue for how ‘the megalithic mind’ was constituted, but to consider how indigenous worldviews challenge western cognicentrism, with a relational animistic epistemology contributing to our understanding of megalithic sacred sites and associated rock art, focusing on examples from the British Isles.
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