00:00.60 archpodnet You're on. 00:01.46 alan Well hello out there in archeology podcast land this is your host Dr Allen Garfinkel and this is episode 100 the centennial. How exciting we've been doing this for about 3 years and 1 of our most popular. And gifted scholars is on with us this evening patching in from Mexico his name is Tertam Mukahabadi he's a fulbright scholar and an excellent researcher turtha. Are you with us. 00:35.35 Tirtha I'm right here with you Alan thank you very much for having me on this show. 00:37.60 alan Well, it's a pleasure so give us a sound bite as to how what the focus of our efforts going to be today. 00:48.90 Tirtha Ah, well I'd like to talk more theoretically today and explore some of the cognitive perspectives regarding the structure and appearance of rock art and I would like to call this session. The archeology of rock art. The archaeology of ah emotion there. There are the. 01:12.60 alan Emotions Yeah, and I think this is something this is something that's rather distinctive in terms of our efforts together. Ah I did not realize before we spent considerable time together to write our book and do our articles that um. That the images on stone are evocative. They have an agency or a sense of an emotional intensity. Do They not. 01:41.10 Tirtha Um, yes, that was precisely. Ah, the foundation for the series of articles that we developed on a rock art and especially of the rock art in this region in this part of the world. 01:55.17 Tirtha As elsewhere and I have been studying rock artt elsewhere as well and the most important aspect of rock art's research seemed to me to lie in this phenomenon of a rock art The rock art figures. The configurations. The geometrical representationals as they are called in the literature that they all have ah emotional impact on the viewer and the most interesting conclusion that we could already draw rather the inference that we could draw from ah this kind of of. 02:33.66 Tirtha Methodological epistemological posturing about the rock art figures is that the rock arts are somehow indicative of ah of the human ability to depict emotional. Figures or emotional objects and that this would stand contrary to the received. Ah ah, theoretical opinions regarding Iraq art images in the traditional academic. Cultural anthropology anthropological mill use and scholarship. So who. 03:13.30 alan Sure So I think I think what you're talking about is sometimes when typically traditionally when archaeologists and even rock art scholars are looking at the imagery that exists within rock art. They call them static. Static Anthropomorphs or they call them ah images that are that are really um, ah they don't have the vitality or the the power or communicative communicative elements to them. But I think they're. They're somehow missing the content. Are they. 03:55.80 Tirtha Yes, some scholars have called them the invisible elements of rock art and ah the archaeologists and even anthropologists when those studying visual culture for example, have not gone. 03:59.80 alan Okay. 04:12.29 Tirtha As far as to suggest that these ah um, images are even if we consider the prehist history the history of sculptures and those ah gravian um, upper paleolithic. Sculptural figures that there has that these that these representations do not have any intrinsic ah communicative or or semantic or so value. In other words anthropology ah the anthropologists of the last hundred. 04:32.92 alan Ah huh. 04:49.87 Tirtha To 200 years including the great anthropologists of ah the german ah Anglican ah anthropological traditions including Edward Taylor ah Franz Boas and you you name the? ah. But Carl Lomholes those pack pioneers in cultural anthropological studies have always tended to consider the images as static symbols to which humans have given some kind of have attributed meaning in a consensual way. But that this meaning is part of a collective consensus that it's and it's not that that the image does not intrinsically have any meaning or ah to to communicate. 05:37.56 alan Right? right? And so what? So What? the revolution is or what the novel Discovery is is their intrinsic power communicative ability and emotions agency and in some way or other almost that comes from.. The images am I correct. 05:56.91 Tirtha Absolutely I mean we are trying to restore some subjective subjective value some subjective validity to the to the creativity of the ancient shamans. The the ritual artist. 06:13.93 alan So let's some give give give us some examples of of exactly what you're talking about so that we can sort of have a ah 3 dimensional understanding of this of this type of communication. How's that. 06:21.93 Tirtha Yes, the. 06:30.75 Tirtha Yes, the that's the way to move forward really and I would like to set up a kind of chronological map of ah of the early prehistoric Depictive traditions and we could well begin with. The early Holocene rock art and gradually try and consider the Meanings inherent in some of the rock arts of the more later ah epochs in history. 07:04.71 alan Sure. 07:06.95 Tirtha Ah, for for example, ah some of the most elemental images that we discern on the surfaces of rocks for example in the great ah rock art traditions of the american american southwest. And California for example or or the rock art traditions of central india or the rock art traditions of the um, the central asia this the great central tradition. 07:36.61 alan Certainly the great. The great The great. Yeah and the and the and the great basin of course. 07:43.37 Tirtha Yes, the great basin in North america of course and and and everywhere the the most elemental signs are geometrical. They have geometrical orientations. They are either squares quadrants and with crisscross rickrack patterns. Zizagging patterns and some kind and some ah kind of ritual patterns and we do not know the meaning of these rock cars. The people who made them are no longer there to communicate that meaning to us to pass on there but they have but they did pass on that meaning to us. 08:02.78 alan Ah, her. 08:20.64 Tirtha And that meaning is it's It's not a meaning which we could perhaps represent verbally but it's a meaning that we start to feel at the rock art recently I'm beginning to to. Ah, understand even to feel that there is a gap a hiatus between um, the emotive power of those representational geometrical shapes and the visible shape itself. In other words that. There is an aura of of psychological meaning to those to those geometrical shapes in rock art. But to return to that earlier point that that chronological evolution of rock art figures. Rock art Images. So what? what we see is that Ah, when we look intently at a representation we begin to see that this image is it's It's very. It's ah it's a very different kind of pattern and some of the effects. How does the rock art maker. The hypothetical rock art maker the shaman or or the priest or however, we might call this person this this person this man or woman who depicted that that pated on the surface of the rock. 09:53.69 Tirtha Ah, what was he or she thinking at that part of time and how how was he or she tried to secure those emotional effects Empirically there is a set of indicators for these emotions. And this is where we could try to understand scientifically how the emotional effects are really secured in the more elemental geometrical patterns and maybe in these representationals. There are for example, ah glow effects Glow effects are secured with outward shooting lines from a certain central figure or a central configuration. There may be frail effects or embelly Schmidz. And then there is of course that very strange the and the recurrents of the fibonacci circles. There are concentric circles. There are Mae patterns. There are Diamond shapes with parallel. Ah so ah, Centric Diamond Patterns and the the other interesting aspect of this that when we consider the metrics that the distance between one point. 11:12.16 alan Are. 11:27.26 Tirtha And another point in in that visual Continuum We begin to identify Perhaps um ah ah, a kind of ah apprecience ah a preemptive understanding of how. 11:32.45 alan Ah. 11:46.10 Tirtha These Ah the proportions. The ratios would impact the viewer and the prehistoric shaman already had an immersive understanding of the way in which these emotions could be evoked. 12:04.98 Tirtha Through a very consensious and very informed knowledge of geometrical ratios and this would take an enormous amount of research and recognition Of. An um, enormous amount of literature for us in order to understand how these effects were were really so secured, but there is no doubt that the geometrical patterns that we see on the surface of rocks in in the Rock Arts. For example in the patterned torsos of those anthropomorphs those spirit entities are are whatever those human shapes those Humanoid expressions they seem not just to be. Ah, an accident. There is logic. There is thinking there is a historic even evolutionary contemplation ingrained in the way the shamans depicted. Ah, rock art. Yes, Yes, there. 13:22.73 alan So There's this So. There's a structure and there's a a method to their effort and what are what are they trying to communicate or what is the emotion that the perceiver the people that view these images. Ah. Are intended to process. 13:40.94 Tirtha Um, ah this is an interesting interesting question and ah to understand this. We have to again depend on our ability to respond to. 14:00.80 Tirtha Ah, emotional or emotive signals. You know emotions and the the very etymology of the word emotions suggests motion or movement and even in various other Indo-european language. 14:12.42 alan Um. 14:16.97 Tirtha Languages For example, emotions are always associated with a sense of movement or a sense of yeah, could we could we call it shock effects which would um impact. Physically and corporeally as much as ah, internally our states of feelings that is so they move us. So if we fall back on this very traditional idea of what the what the emotions are and even as we try to wade through the theoretical um ideas of the theoretical definitions and in Cognitive. And the cognitive science of emotions. Ah, if you look at the definitions of emotions so you would see that that everywhere from some some of these great. Ah, scientific research on the emotions shows us that the emotions are. 15:29.50 Tirtha Ah, somehow connected that the they are reflexes that they express themselves in in in ah and through our body that the emotions are visible on the face. For example. That there are certain basic emotions but the basic emotions are connected to basic behavioral Reflexes. So okay. 15:50.48 alan Well let's stop it there and and we'll pick it up on the next and next segment and we'll delve a little bit further into the archeology of emotions see in the Flip- Flop gang.