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365 27 Getting a handle on cave ritual in all of its multifaceted dimensions—origins, evolution, motivation, formal variation , social significance—is an overwhelming task in light of its extraordinary time depth and global distribution. If, for instance, cave burial can be considered a form of ritual, then evidence for it extends back to the Neanderthal world of 180,000 years ago (Clottes, this volume; Drew 2004). The birth of cave ritual, among the earliest expressions of ideologically motivated conventional human behavior, is an event so remote as to escape precise understanding beyond general recognition of its profound antiquity. At the same time, these primeval origins do not contradict the fact, attested by essays in this volume, that cave ritual has made sporadic appearances throughout human history in many kinds of societies found on every inhabited continent with accessible caves. Cave ritual’s endurance from the remote past to the present should not be taken as proof that it is a relic of “primitive” behavior preserved in the collective psyche, out of which it emerges in new disguises shaped by the vicissitudes of historical circumstance. Rather, it does show that cave ritual, like food or anything else ideally suited for satisfying critical human needs, serves a purpose that is fundamental and therefore is reimagined over and over again in different times and places. That purpose is to provide an effective medium for constituting and maintaining relationships between humans and a location in the environment—relationships that play a significant role in interpersonal and larger group cohesion. Put another way, social interaction is always mediated by spatial environment and temporal flow. More intimately, space and time are incorporated into the dialectical process of constituting social structure (Pred 1984). Likewise individual practices , understood as social agency, must play out through the medium of the material conditions of time and space (Giddens 1979, 54), as well as through physical objects, such as art, that occupy socially mediated space (Gell 1998). Interaction with objects, through their production and subsequent manipulation, transforms an ostensibly natural space (like a cave) into something humanly constructed. The spatial milieu for these social processes is uniquely articulated by caves as penetrations in the earth, representing both shelter and the natural world’s substrate. The conformation of cave-space is also reliably stable, thus having distinct advantages as a ritual setting, especially in prearchitectural eras. The cave’s internal spatial stability perfectly meshes with ritual’s characteristic invariance, discussed in greater detail below. Cave ritual’s ability to strengthen social solidarity because it melds ideology with a unique spatial milieu is an enduring fact, as true in primordial as modern times. Humans live on the land, of course, and they have complex ideas about it, no matter what their form of social organization. The need to construct relationships Civilizing the Cave Man DiachronicandCross-CulturalPerspectivesonCaveRitual Andrea Stone Andrea Stone 366 leology is reported from only three areas, Central America, Southwest Europe and the Urals.” One must add to this the penetration of deep caves by ancient people in the southeast United States (see Claassen; Prufer and Prufer; Sabo, Hilliard, and Lockhart; Simek, Cressler, and Douglas; and Watson; this volume). In certain Mesoamerican cases, including the Maya and Aztec, these agriculturalists lived in state-level societies. We must get beyond the notion that cave art and cave ritual have an intrinsically important connection with hunter-gatherers, while examples from sedentary societies amount to little more than anachronistic oddities, marginal to an understanding of events of any significance . Indeed, much of what cave ritual has to offer as an effective mediator of social phenomena is as applicable to agriculturalists as to hunter-gatherers. Caves as Ritual Sites and Forms of Social Organization Why would societies running the gamut from Paleo­ lithic hunter-gatherers to village-dwelling agriculturalists, and even elites of state-level societies, find caves attractive as ritual spaces? For the Paleolithic period, it is well documented that caves were used for seasonal migrations resulting in a cycle of repeated visits. Periodic convergences fostered a process of forging emotional and ideological ties between migrating groups and particular caves (TolanSmith and Bonsall 1997, 217). Emphasis should be placed on “particular” since all caves were not equal in terms of the strength or even presence of such ties. This point is made in the survey in the present volume by Robin Skeates. His regional study of caves in southeast Italy shows that even during the Early Paleolithic, around 30,000 years ago, an archaeological...

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