More on the Origins and Originality of Image Making: Reply to Delluc and DellucAuthor(s): Whitney DavisSource: Current Anthropology, Vol. 27, No. 5 (Dec., 1986), pp. 515-516Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation forAnthropological ResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2742863 .

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84.44

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Level Level MSA Level Level Level MSA Cave MSA Howe- Levels 37 14 II 15 17B 16 IV IB III ison's 38/39

Poort

FIG. 2. Similarity among samples relative to the structure isolated by Dimensions 2-7.

informing us about organizational conditions among faunal species in the past. Dimensions 2-7 account for 63% of the total variance, while Dimension 1 accounts for only an addi- tional 17%.

In order to evaluate the similarity among the samples rela- tive to the structure isolated by Dimensions 2-7, I have per- formed a simple cluster analysis on the dimensional values given in table 3 for Dimensions 2-7. Simple distance measures were calculated, and a cluster analysis was performed on these distance measures. The results are summarized in figure 2. It is

clear that Cave 1B is most like MSA IV, and these two cases group with MSA III and Howieson's Poort. These results are in the same ballpark as my earlier assessments of similarities (Binford 1984, 1986). This suite contrasts markedly with all the levels of Cave 1 (except MSA I and Levels 38/39). Level 14 is linked with MSA II of Cave 1A, supporting to some extent the interpretation of the excavators that Level 14 is affected by "tumble from a slope outside the cave mouth" (Singer and Wymer 1982:17). Such "tumbling material" would most likely come from the MSA II layers of Cave 1A. Finally, Levels 38/ 39 of Cave 1 differ from both suites of cases (Cave 1 Levels 37 and 14 plus MSA II of Cave 1A, on the one hand, and the later material indicated by MSA IV, Cave 1B, MSA III, and How- ieson's Poort, on the other). I conclude that Thackeray's analy- sis is procedurally flawed and that a more informed analysis supports my contention that Cave 1B is most likely referable to the era represented by Howieson's Poort and later deposits. Even given Thackeray's "analysis," it is clear that Cave 1B is not like the MSA I of Cave 1. This observation is dismissed by Thackeray in favor of the unjustified equation of Cave 1B with the MSA I by the weak and meaningless statement that "differ- ent conditions" obtained during the duration of MSA I. Where is the evidence that Cave 1B belongs in the MSA I? I submit that, as I have discussed in depth previously (Binford 1986), there is none.

References Cited BINFORD, L. R. 1984. Faunal remains from Klasies River Mouth.

New York: Academic Press. . 1986. Reply to: On Binford on Klasies River Mouth: Re-

sponse of the excavators, by Ronald Singer and John Wymer. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 27:57-62.

GRAYSON, DONALD K. 1984. Quantitative zooarchaeology: Topics in the analysis of archaeologicalfaunas. New York: Academic Press.

HARPENDING, HENRY, and ALAN ROGERS. 1985. ANTANA: A pack- age for multivariate data analysis. MS.

KLEIN, R. G. 1976. The mammalian fauna of the Klasies River Mouth sites, southern Cape Province, South Africa. South African Ar- chaeological Bulletin 31:75-98.

SINGER, R., and J. WYMER. The Middle Stone Age at Klasies River Mouth in South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

THACKERAY, J. F. n.d. Quantification of environmental variability during the Late Quaternary. MS.

More on the Origins and Originality of Image Making: Reply to Delluc and Delluc

by WHITNEY DAVIS Department of History of Art, University of California, Berkeley, Calif. 94720, U.S.A. 1 VI 86

I have no quarrel with many remarks in Delluc and Delluc's comment (CA 27:371) on my article on the origins of image making (CA 27:193-215). Their detailed work (Delluc and Delluc 1978) has opened up many possibilities for morpholog- ical analysis which I tried to exploit in my own account. In my initial reply I elaborated on some points raised by them and by other commentators (e.g., the nature of pre-Aurignacian non- representational marks and the importance of image making in three dimensions or "lumps" rather than "marks"). However, I do have a few reservations about their rhetoric for the origin or origins and for the originality of image making.

I do not know whether "someone or some group" in south- western France in the Aurignacian period can be credited with having "invented drawing." In contemporary usage invention seems like a once-and-for-all affair-an inaugural or founding

creative fabrication, an act in which modern philosophy and Romantic aesthetics have had a great deal of faith. Fortunately the inaugural sense of the term-inventus, invenire-also per- mits us to speak of "coming upon," of "finding," perhaps in- voluntarily and always with the shock of the unexpected, a connotation I want to take literally.

"Seeing-as" goes on continuously in human perceptual life. Consequently on my account representation has been discov- ered and rediscovered continuously throughout human history. In many cases it is found by people, such as children or naifs, who have only a minimal grasp of the specialized conventions elaborated in social life to regulate the use of any particular image-making technology. Therefore the history of art is not a seamless continuity unfolding from some mythic moment of "invention," and we need not necessarily be obsessed with crediting authorship. Image making will have many unrelated "origins." And to be specific, we do not know whether images were made before the Aurignacian period in other media. I must stress again that my account is a general model applied to what I take to be (only) one genuine instance of such an origin.

Although I concentrated on the early "abbreviated" depic- tions of animals and parts of animals, Delluc and Delluc are quite right that these images are accompanied on the Aurigna- cian blocks by other marks-by "images of the female genitalia," an identification we might suspect, and by other

Vol. 27 * No. 5 * December 1986 515

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strokes and punctations. If these signs are nonrepresentational by my definition, they will not directly enter an account of the origins of image making per se. However, they could certainly be accommodated in a full-scale analysis of the "whole figurative system" of Paleolithic symbolism. The so-called fe- male genitalia are puzzling. As far as I can see, morphological and syntactic criteria do not unambiguously allow us to deter- mine whether they are representational. They seem to fall somewhere between the discreteness and repetitiveness of no- tations and the continuous modulation of representations.

It is dangerous to claim that "the Aurignacians seem fre- quently to have represented the part for the whole." A repre- sentational line literally depicts just and only that which it is seen as. The line may just represent a part of an animal- nothing more. From the line itself we cannot know whether it has any further metaphorical or metonymic role in a set of particular conventions of representation. To call the line an "abbreviation" or metonymic reduction in the first place is to imply, I think, that we somehow already know that the con- ventions of metaphor had been adopted by the image maker. Although this is certainly possible, we would have to establish it on other grounds-perhaps by reconstructing a sequence of standardizations and simplifications, as in the evolution from pictogram to alphabetic sign.

Finally, I must contrast my brand of anti-idealist historicism with the psychologizing idealism latent in Delluc and Delluc's major claim that, through "a capacity for abstraction," "the concept preceded the image" in the emergence of representa- tion. From the whole thrust of my article and reply, it should be clear that I do not believe a human "capacity for abstrac- tion"-or "symboling" or "language" or "culture"-should be regarded as the origin or guarantor of the distinctive Represen- tational practices and technological achievements of Homo in the last million years. To avoid affirming the consequent and for ontological economy, let us agree that the Representational practice of a human being simply is his "capacity for abstrac-

tion," his "ability to symbolize," his "language-using faculty," or his "membership in culture." Therefore the origin and evo- lution of Representation must be approached not by positing a new "capacity" every time we wish to move on to the next level of formal complexity, but rather by considering (in this case) how the hand, eye, and brain, at a given moment in evolution, work in given conditions.

I had to conclude precisely that "the concept" did not pre- cede "the image," as Delluc and Delluc suggest it did-for the mind (hand, eye, and brain) does not have a "concept" of that which it represents until it has actually succeeded in obtaining a Representation, by other "automatic" or autogenous means, in this case, visual perception working in a certain way, namely, "seeing-as" in the inspection and manufacture of graphic marks. (The trickiness of this argument-e.g., of translating resemblance into depiction, or perception into pro- duction-requires a good deal of caution, as Maynard's [CA 2 7:206-7] and other comments suggest.) I think it unlikely that the mind possessed a "concept" of the parts of an animal before it succeeded in representing those parts perceptually and so- cially-in some particular context of action and communica- tion, using some particular technology of Representation. However, I will leave it as a fascinating question for empirical research whether the mind of H. sapiens sapiens in its present historical format possesses some innate "concepts"-schemata or prototypes. Even here, we could not assume that these wired-in prototype Representations were simply there from the beginning: just as much as we must write their cognitive psy- chology or social anthropology in the present moment, we must write their history.

Reference Cited DELLUC, B., and G. DELLUC. 1978. Les manifestations graphiques

aurignaciennes sur support rocheux des environs des Eyzies (Dor- dognes). Gallia Pr6histoire 21:213-438.

On Indo-European Origins and the Horse

by BERNARD WAILES Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104, U.S.A. 29 v 86

Ethnoarchaeology and ethnohistory are probably the two cate- gories of ethnographic analogy that have provided the most useful interpretations for archaeologists, for both deal with fundamental aspects of archaeology: material culture and change through time. The first strength of Anthony's (CA 27:291-304) article is that it makes use of both. It argues the probable effects of a new prehistoric technology (for so we may profitably regard the newly domesticated horse) against the comparative evidence for the same process as known ethnohis- torically from both North and South America. Despite the great complexity of the archaeological record for the Neolithic and Chalcolithic in the areas north and west of the Black Sea, Anthony's approach is in essence simple, and this provides the article's second strength: the three environments are broadly similar, the "types of society" are not grossly dissimilar, and the catalyst (the domesticated horse) is the same. Of course there are differences, but these are either plausibly subsumed under the overall model or pointed out explicitly.

The most important of the explicit differences is the (argued) expansion of Sredni Stog and Yamna horse-riders beyond the

margins of the grasslands, which did not happen in the analo- gous situations in the Americas. With regard to later prehis- toric Eurasia this rekindles the long-smouldering question of Indo-European linguistic origins and expansion, for it is in this area and period that those origins have most commonly been seen.

Traditionally, this linguistic expansion has been attributed to invasion-cum-migration by proto-Indo-European-speaking populations. Latterly, this major issue in Eurasiatic culture history has been quietly ignored by many European archaeol- ogists who have seen invasion, migration, and diffusion as inadequate "explanations" for culture change. It is odd that the linguistic evidence for early Indo-European ideology and sociopolitical organization also should have been ignored by archaeologists whose interest in such matters has waxed greatly even as their belief in population movements has waned. Granted, the traditional perception of wholesale inva- sion and migration has been more of an uncritical assumption than an explicitly constructed explanatory model, and indeed we still lack such generally applicable models of the ways in which one language may replace another. But this surely should be seen as a challenge rather than something nasty to be swept under the rug. One hopes that Anthony's work will lead to a reopening of debate and discussion between linguists and archaeologists, for its implications go far beyond the specifics of Indo-European languages and the material culture of their speakers to the whole major problem of long-term relations between archaeological and linguistic evidence.

516 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

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