An Ideology of Blood at the Root of Symbolic Culture

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

At ~160ka, roughly at the end of our African speciation, archaeologists identify a change from sporadic to habitual use of red ochre. This has been interpreted as primarily a pigment for decorating performers’ bodies during communal rituals. What were these rituals, and why was red so central to the establishment and unfolding of the symbolic domain? Archaeologists and paleoanthropologists are cautious about turning to hunter-gatherer ethnography as a resource in evaluating competing explanatory hypotheses. Challenging convention, I present the first cross-cultural comparative review of African hunter-gatherer ritual use of red substances and associated beliefs. The most consistent symbolic theme encountered is a metaphoric relationship between women’s reproduction and men’s hunting. This accords with over a century of social anthropological speculative thought and a prediction made by the Female Cosmetic Coalitions hypothesis of the emergence of symbolic culture. This hypothesis also predicted—long before it could be tested—the establishment of habitual red ochre use by ~160–140ka. The main competing hypothesis, positing intergroup competition between male coalitions, has yet to generate predictions testable in the light of symbolic evidence. Ethnography cannot be transposed onto the deep past, but it can help constrain evolutionary interpretations of the early ochre record.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38305.0