Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

"Art For Art's Sake In The Paleolithic" By J. Halverson And Comments And Reply, John Halverson, Levon H. Abrahamian, Kathleen M. Adams, Paul G. Bahn, Lydia T. Black, Whitney Davis, Robin Frost, Robert Layton, David Lewis-Williams, Ana Maria Llamazares, Patrick Maynard, David Stenhouse

Anthropology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The question of the "meaning" of Paleolithic cave art has been much discussed since the last century. Of all the theories proposed, "art for art's sake" has had the least acceptance, while various hunting-magic explanations have enjoyed the most success, but all theories, including recent structuralist ones, have been found seriously flawed, and the present state of the question is evidently one of despair. This may be an indication that we have been asking the wrong questions and making the wrong assumptions. Particularly tenuous and suspect is the approach by analogy with modern hunter-gatherers with their long cultural traditions, for …