The Jaguar Within

Shamanic Trance in Ancient Central and South American Art

Rebecca R. Stone (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

243 Seiten

2011
University of Texas Press (Verlag)
978-0-292-72626-0 (ISBN)

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An important new way of viewing the prehistoric art of the Americas, The Jaguar Within demonstrates that understanding a work of art’s connection with shamanic trance can lead to an appreciation of it as an extremely creative solution to the inherent challenge of giving material form to nonmaterial realities and states of being.

Shamanism—the practice of entering a trance state to experience visions of a reality beyond the ordinary and to gain esoteric knowledge—has been an important part of life for indigenous societies throughout the Americas from prehistoric times until the present. Much has been written about shamanism in both scholarly and popular literature, but few authors have linked it to another significant visual realm—art. In this pioneering study, Rebecca R. Stone considers how deep familiarity with, and profound respect for, the extra-ordinary visionary experiences of shamanism profoundly affected the artistic output of indigenous cultures in Central and South America before the European invasions of the sixteenth century.

Using ethnographic accounts of shamanic trance experiences, Stone defines a core set of trance vision characteristics, including enhanced senses; ego dissolution; bodily distortions; flying, spinning, and undulating sensations; synaesthesia; and physical transformation from the human self into animal and other states of being. Stone then traces these visionary characteristics in ancient artworks from Costa Rica and Peru. She makes a convincing case that these works, especially those of the Moche, depict shamans in a trance state or else convey the perceptual experience of visions by creating deliberately chaotic and distorted conglomerations of partial, inverted, and incoherent images.

Rebecca R. Stone was a Masse-Martin/NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities (2010–2014), a professor in the Art History Department, and Faculty Curator of Art of the Ancient Americas in the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University. She has published one other book, Art of the Andes from Chavín to Inca, as well as one online catalogue and two museum catalogues.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. General Recurrent Themes in the Phenomenology of Visions
Chapter 2. The Common Perceptual Phenomena and Stages of the Visionary Experience
Chapter 3. Visions and Shamanizing: The Intermediary Role, Anomalousness, Control, and Balance
Chapter 4. Embodying the Shaman in Trance: Embracing Creative Ambiguity
Chapter 5. Shamanic Embodiment in Ancient Costa Rican Art I: At the Human End and the Balance Point of the Flux Continuum
Chapter 6. Shamanic Embodiment in Ancient Costa Rican Art II: Toward the Animal End and Beyond the Flux Continuum
Chapter 7. Shamanic Embodiment in Ancient Central Andean Art I: Toward the Human End and the Balance Point of the Flux Continuum
Chapter 8. Shamanic Embodiment in Ancient Central Andean Art II: Toward the Animal End and Beyond the Flux Continuum
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Index

Zusatzinfo	152 b&w illustrations
Verlagsort	Austin, TX
Sprache	englisch
Maße	216 x 279 mm
Gewicht	966 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Archäologie
ISBN-10	0-292-72626-0 / 0292726260
ISBN-13	978-0-292-72626-0 / 9780292726260
Zustand	Neuware