Scholars have interpreted Paleolithic art numerous ways but most contemporary interpretations either utilize a sophisticated form of analogy or a blend of processualist approaches (especially cognitive processualism). Such methods typically result in the conclusion that Paleolithic art represents elements of a religious ideology. Besides these approaches, which admittedly employ weak forms of inference, scholars argue for non-interpretation of the evidence.

We know that the basic form of Homo sapiens sapiens has changed little in one hundred millennia but most of what we understand to be human culture is quite young. Barely ten thousand years ago did humankind begin its abandonment of lithic technologies and band-level societies to become metallurgists and nation-makers (Mellars & Stringer 1989). Paleolithic art, though, records a distinctly human "cultural" endeavor from a time long before the first civilizations. It is one of the few sets of evidence we have from that large terra incognita in human history, the time after which we became a distinct species and the time we began to develop recognizable civilizations with sophisticated, ramified social structures. The majority of human history is a history about which we know almost nothing. But we do know that something as uniquely human as artistic activity began to emerge on a grand scale nearly forty thousand years ago (Lewis-Williams & Clottes 1998). Staggering finds have been made in Australia, Africa, parts of Asia, and in various parts of Europe. We are dealing then with a universal phenomenon. While the spectacular caves of Southwestern Europe typically get all the fanfare, impressive finds of prehistorical artistry come from all over the globe. Archaeologists are universal in their opinion that Paleolithic art represents a unique expression of the human animal but their opinions begin to differ when it comes to assigning specific meaning to these finds. Does Paleolithic art represent mere decoration—art for art's sake, as Halverson and others argue (1987)? Is it specifically functional, art as a means of information-coding such as Marshack hypothesizes (1972)? Are the canvases of ancient beasts criss-crossed with arrows just Paleolithic hunting classrooms, their chalkboards left unerased? Or, perhaps most significantly, are these relics of ancient religions; the material remains of Ice Age theophanies (Dickson 1990)? The reconstruction of meaning on the basis of Paleolithic art presents enormous challenges to archaeological inference and methodology. But one thing that appears again and again in the varied approaches to this material is an essentially cognitive approach. The art is too symbolically evocative to match well with interpretations uninterested in "meaning."

A number of scholars, such as Paul Bahn, remain skeptical of any interpretations of this material. As Bahn wrote in Journey Through the Ice Age: "What it comes down to, basically, is whether one is content to work with the art as a body of markings that cannot be read, or whether one wants to have stories made up about them" (1997:211). Many others reject this hypercritical approach; the allure of Paleolithic art is too great to leave hermeneutically virgin. Scholars such as Bruce Dickson believe that the judicious use of ethnographic analogy may yield important insights into the actual meaning of this enigmatic material. On the cutting edge of contemporary interpretations of Paleolithic art are the cognitive processualists such as David Lewis-Williams and Stephen Mithen. They utilize ideas from psychology and cognitive science about the human mind in an attempt to "bridge" the great expanse of time that separates us from the primordial artists. In Altered Consciousness in the Upper Paleolithic, Lewis-Williams and Clottes write: "…because Upper Paleolithic people were Homo sapiens sapiens, they had the same nervous system as everyone in the world today, whether residual hunter-gatherers or industrialists. …there is a neurological bridge between us and that remote period" (1998:14). Our brains unite all of humanity, past and present, according to this school of thought. The archaeological interpretation of Paleolithic art may well be a limit case for the endeavor of archaeology itself (Watson & Fotiadis 1990). We have a contingent set of remains to work with, those few things that fortune selected for multimillennial preservation. No living population can inform us about these primordial creations and we shall never find a Rosetta Stone to translate the scratches and depictions of the Upper Paleolithic into a modern language. Even reconstructing the environment of the time presents a host of challenges. Only with a broad conglomeration of techniques, cross-disciplinary insights, and interpretive methods can we hope to gain any insight into the radically different human worlds of the Pleistocene artists.

A host of good reasons lie behind this first interpretation of Upper Paleolithic cave art. The majority of depictions rendered on cave walls are those of animals and, even more specifically, game animals (Hammond 1974). Further, a great number of slashes and pointed implements intersect the game animals, probably a representation of spears and arrows. Often enough, the animals show wounds as a result of these schematic implements (Sieveking 1979:144). A curious aspect of the parietal art of the Upper Paleolithic is its highly specific content. Breuil was the first great cataloguer of this art, noting the specific patterns of representation (Breuil 1913). But even if the vast category of animals is highlighted, we must wonder why so few of the animals that prehistoric man is likely to have subsisted on are represented. For instance, though we might expect the illustration of small animals and certainly of fish, we do not find them. We find only the large game animals, the ones likely to have presented a significant challenge to ancient hunters as well as an element of danger. Such a specific representation of animals fits well with Malinowski's ideas about magic. Concerning the use of magic, Malinowski writes: "…where man can rely completely upon his knowledge and skill, magic does not exist" (1954:31). Breuil's belief that the parietal art of the Upper Paleolithic may have aided as a means of hunting magic then is supported, rather than refuted, by the limited sampling of animals we find as subjects of the art. But while Breuil's notion of hunting magic has its appeal, it relies heavily on the direct analogy between sympathetic magic as used in ethnographically studied populations and how it may have been used by populations whose culture existed tens of millennia in the past. Even working within this set of tenuous hypotheses, scholars find problems with Breuil's concepts. Conkey, for instance, argues that modern ethnography does not support a contention of hunting and gathering peoples as "anxiety-ridden about food and the hunt" (1981:24). So, whatever the appeal of explanatory elegance Breuil's hypotheses offer, they must be considered within a critical context.

Ascher delimits the relevance of ethnographic analogy by setting up two conditions: 1) Relevance can be established by demonstrating…that there is a historical continuity between the archaeologically observed unit and the ethnographically cited society or social unit; 2) In the absence of the above demonstrated justification, relevance could be justified by seeking analogies in cultures which manipulate similar environments in similar ways (Ascher 1961). Ascher's first condition does not apply to our studies because no known cultural continuities exist between the peoples of the Pleistocene and modern populations. The second condition is more favorable but still inadequate since we do not know the specific ways that peoples of the Upper Paleolithic manipulated their environments. Furthermore, we do not suspect that the environments that Ice Age peoples lived in were sufficiently similar to modern ones to justify such analogical reasoning. By Ascher's relevance criteria, ethnographic analogy is inappropriate in the interpretation of Paleolithic art. Other scholars have used simple analogy in suspect ways, rife with anachronisms. Maringer has supposed a rather elaborate religious hierarchy in the Upper Paleolithic, replete with roles for priests and priestesses (1977). He created a checklist of social preconditions which supports a specific religious hierarchy. Such a hierarchy assumes: 1) a differentiated economy with a settled way of life; 2) leisure for spiritual activities; 3) a production surplus; 4) "material foundation of rich sacrificial custom requiring special ritual members"; 5) the existence of centers requiring priests/priestesses (1977:101). Maringer's schema seems to be projecting modern religious labels and structures onto prehistoric lifestyles. And the creation of this checklist is sure to be contravened by numerous exceptions whenever studying any individual culture.

Certainly one of the great scholars of Pleistocene art, André Leroi-Gourhan is known for his extremely comprehensive and systematic studies. His approach combined a processualist's sensibilities with a theoretical framework informed by structuralism. A proponent of the laborious method of card-sorting computation, Leroi-Gourhan quantified data from more than sixty cave art sites to search for a set of patterns (1967, 1968). Through these methods, he could note that of 2188 identifiable animal figures in 66 caves, 610 are horses, 510 bison, 205 mammoth, 176 ibex, 137 wild cattle (1967). While the promise of Leroi-Gourhan's methods was great, a theoretical hubris ensued.

He asserted a metaphysical system so finely drawn that one has the impression he wrote from a set of ethnographic notes. Leroi-Gourhan segmented the interior space of cave art sites into seven zones: 1) the place where one encounters the first image; 2) the interconnecting passages between the more spacious parts of the cave; 3) places in the forward part of the cave that possess crevices and niches; 4) the most remote part of the cave with any art; 5) the central parts of the cave art areas; 6) the marginal parts of the cave art areas; 7) the places in the central parts of the cave with crevices and niches. Leroi-Gourhan maintains that these seven zones were fully distinguished by the cave artists themselves who utilized them in a sort of grammar, a set of "emic" categories (1968). In the most important central part of the painted areas, Leroi-Gourhan finds 85 percent of all pictures of bison, wild oxen, aurochs, and horses. These are the most prominent and common images in Upper Paleolithic art and he finds it telling that these animals also dominate the central position in the galleries. A second group of animals consisting of ibex, deer, and mammoths are found in increasingly marginal cave areas. And the third group of animals consisting of rhinoceroses, bears, and lions are typically found in only the most remote parts of caves, furthest from the central positions (Leroi-Gourhan & Leroi-Gourhan, 1965.

From this initially promising categorization, Leroi-Gourhan gets into increasingly more trouble as he reads these depictions and another set of geometric signs through a structuralist hermeneutic. The geometric signs he divides into three types: broad signs, narrow signs, and dots. The first two sets of signs he considers to be highly stylized depictions of human genitalia. He asserts that the "female" broad signs occur mostly with pictures of bison and aurochs while the narrow "male" signs he finds with horses in the central position of caves and panels, and with ibex and mammoth on peripheral panels and marginal parts of the caves (1982:55-56). Conkey sums up Leroi-Gourhan's approach in the following: …his structuralism treats the imagery as a system of signs. Leroi-Gourhan considered a well-preserved cave to be a message (cave-as-text) with elements (frame and figures); and these elements, he notes, are in the very position chosen by the author of the figures. …the mode governing the assemblage was that of a mythogram in which the figures are arranged around a central point, as in a picture. (1989:142-143) And what text does he read from this set of signs? He believes that cave art as a whole represented a life-renewal cycle with two actors: man/horse/weapon and woman/bison/wound. The cave, feminine itself, helped in the regulation of this cycle (Leroi-Gourhan 1965). While his enormous contributions to the study of cave art have been lauded, few have supported Leroi-Gourhan's structuralist approach with its strict sexual dichotomy. In particular, while some few signs do genuinely resemble vulvae or phalli, the vast majority pose no such resemblance. And while his study of more than sixty caves seems vast, it is actually but a sample of the possibilities. The methods of his sampling are unknown, so scholars have remained unsure whether these sites were selected to support his ideas.

While one cannot be a prisoner of the ethnographic record, neither can one ignore the possibilities that it presents. One hopes to keep the ethnographic comparisons on a general enough level to avoid spurious homologies and cultural uniformitarianism. Yet anthropology has a tradition of comparison and generalization that extends into much of current archaeology, and it seems legitimate to introduce ethnographic parallels in an attempt to generate hypotheses (Bogucki 1987:21). As Bogucki points out, the generation of hypotheses is the key to a sophisticated usage of analogy. We will not gain insights by identifying the traits of some past people to the traits of a current people unless historical continuity is evident. Since nothing suggests historical continuity between the Pleistocene artists and any group of modern peoples, we must use analogy in a generative manner to gain more hypotheses. A method entitled 'sophisticated' analogy should be reflexive. It must admit the tentative nature of its approach and the uncertainties that will always plague the subject of Paleolithic art. There should be an appreciation that the role of the interpreter is not neutral. When dealing with a subject where so many romantic conceptions abound, the tendency to drop into fictional conventions must be indulged in with care. Watson and Fotiadis address this as a hazard in archaeology in general: "There is often a rather thin line between archaeological inference and the writing of fiction because archaeology is, by nature, an underdetermined kind of scholarship" (1990:10). In dealing with material so evocative yet data impoverished, the archaeologist must be wary of imaginary conventions. The tendency to project the contemporary mind back into the past is strong yet probably not as effective as building up models from the material itself.

Second, a method of sophisticated analogy must fully differentiate, when possible, between the nature of the Pleistocene and any enthnographically studied populations. The human populations of the Upper Paleolithic, especially in Southwestern Europe, lived substantially different kinds of lives than contemporary hunter-gatherers, their closest modern analogues. For instance, many scholars have attempted to relate modern Arctic populations with Ice Age ones since they both represent humans living in and adapting to frigid environments. But the problem with this simple analogy is that peoples of the Pleistocene experienced oscillations in their climate between relatively warmer periods and cooler ones. With these changes ensued alterations in the relative numbers and types of animals present. So even focusing on something as specific as hunting would require an appreciation for great change over time in the case of Pleistocene peoples (Dickson 1990: 74-76). And if we discuss the area of Southwestern Europe in the Pleistocene, it presents substantial differences to modern arctic and subarctic areas. The flora and fauna of Southwestern Europe, throughout the Upper Paleolithic, would have been especially diverse in comparison to arctic areas. And the many months with extremely low-light that we expect in arctic areas never plagued the peoples who produced Paleolithic art in Southwestern Europe (Butzer 1971:463). The amount of total biomass, even in cold periods, would have been much greater in Pleistocene Europe than in the contemporary Arctic.

Sophisticated analogy should focus on the generation of hypotheses, not on interpretation. This method is exemplified in Lewis-William's work with San rock art. He has made a careful study of this art and spoken to living informants about its creation and meaning (2002). This work has led him to conclude that San rock art is thoroughly infused with meanings derived from shamanic rituals and ideas. Though shamanism originally derived from the study of Arctic peoples, it has come to be a much broader category referring, essentially, to any religious system in which a specialist intermediates between multiple planes of realities via the technique of ecstasy, the mastery of altered states of consciousness. Such a system typically employs surprisingly consistent ideas and methods in many different parts of the world. Lewis-Williams mentions this in his discussion of San rock art writes in one article: "…there are sufficient commonalities between central Asian shamanism, the so-called 'classic' shamanism, and that practiced in North America and elsewhere. San religious beliefs and rituals fall comfortably into this category, and the general word 'shamanism' is therefore appropriate" (2001). Exploring other shamanic traditions in other cultures he has come to believe that a great deal of rock art may be heavily influenced by shamanic ideas. It is not, then, "art for art's sake" but an expression of religious consciousness. How does such a study of San rock art and its shamanic influences help in the understanding of Paleolithic art? The archaeologist can, given this ethnographic information, begin to generate hypotheses such as: "Parietal art of the Upper Paleolithic is part of a shamanic orientation." Evidence for or against this hypothesis can be assembled from Paleolithic art. Such a technique, then, is an example of analogy as a means to generate new ideas about this very old art. It is the archaeologist's job to then determine whether such hypotheses are true or false. Lewis-Williams, among others, have sought to test this particular hypothesis. We will consider this within the review of cognitive processualism since this has been another method to gain evidence to test the hypothesis.

Lewis-Williams goes back to Giambattista Vico as one of the first to posit a "language of the mind" that helps to structure our perceptions of reality (2002:51). We do not freely perceive a world at large, rather our conceptions help shape what we perceive and how we perceive it. While this may seem a ticket to unchecked relativism, in fact, Vico's arguments proceeded from a defense that the newly discovered "primitives" of his time did not possess a different human mind from the Europeans (as most thought) but were simply informed by a different set of metaphors about reality. Lewis-Williams follows this argument and considers the peoples of the Upper Paleolithic to have the same kinds of minds as we moderns, even if radically different interpretations of reality separate us from them. The particular hypothesis that Lewis-Williams puts forward is a belief that altered states of consciousness inspired the markings and depictions that remain from the Upper Paleolithic (2002). He believes that the various symbols that Leroi-Gourhan made so much of—the various slashes, patterns of dots, crisscrosses, etc.—derive from entoptic phenomena. While the animal images have always been relatively straight-forward in their representations, the other signs present major challenges to the researchers. As Lewis-Williams and Clottes write in Altered Consciousness in the Upper Paleolithic: "One of the most puzzling features of hunter-gatherer rock art worldwide is the intimate relationship between representational and geometric images" (Lewis-Williams & Clottes 1998:6). The entoptic phenomena hypothesis helps to explain these signs. Entoptic images occur in the early stages of alterations in consciousness, such as the hypnagogic imagery that appears as one slips into sleep. People who suffer scotomas and migraines also have noticed such entoptic phenomena (Klüver 1966).

Lewis-Williams and Clottes believe that many of the contour-driven images, the places in caves where natural features of the rock are highlighted to reveal parts of animals, come about through the inspirations of altered states of consciousness. From contemporary analogies to shamanism, they have come to think of the caves as thin "membranes" between the world of humans and a separate reality: "The caves were thus like the entrails of the underworld, and the floors, walls, and ceilings a thin "membrane" between the people who ventured in and the spirit world behind the surfaces. Shamans sought to draw animals through this permeable "membrane"" (Lewis-Williams & Clottes 1998:5). As one imagines navigating the caves with nothing more than weak torch light flickering to illuminate one area or the other, the dynamism of the parietal images, especially those that seem to be emerging from the damp surfaces of the walls, must have been startling. Shamanism is a major proponent of the cognitive processualist approach. While researchers like Lewis-Williams are loathe to essentialize shamanism too much, they do think that an appreciation for elements of a shamanic framework may serve an important purpose. To phrase their approach more generally, Lewis-Williams and Clottes write: "The ubiquity of cross-culturally very similar altered states among hunter-gatherers points to the high antiquity of the form of ritualized altered states that we call shamanism" (1998:3). Shamans are mediators between the quotidian world and the world behind this one, a world of unseen causes and power (Eliade 1964). Through the use of ethnographic analogy, Lewis-Williams believes that the vast majority of hunting-gathering cultures employ shamans and elements of the shamanic worldview. Imagining them to be common in past hunting-gathering cultures does not seem too much like a jump. Such a universal cultural "type" must have an anchor in the human being as a physiological creature: "…we should note the ancient, universal, human neurological inheritance that includes the capacity of the nervous system to enter altered states and the need to make sense of the resultant dreams and hallucinations within a foraging way of life. There seems to be no other explanation for the remarkable similarities between shamanistic traditions worldwide" (Lewis-Williams 2002:206).  Shamanism and its metaphysical elements (especially an emphasis on the importance of altered states of consciousness) seems to derive from the facility human beings have in experiencing altered states of consciousness, a facility that is part and parcel of possessing a human nervous system. An aspect of shamanism that is quite common involves a reliance on spirit helpers and power animals. Shamans may often experience powerful fantasies about being animals. The enigmatic therianthropes (images that possess both human and animal features) may well represent such shamanic notions. A fascinating image from the Lascaux cave shows the stick figure of a human but a human with a bird's head. Next to this image is a totem-like stick with a bird atop it. Such powerful and repeated bird imagery is a common shamanic themes, since shamans frequently "fly" in their altered states of consciousness (Eliade 1964:480).

Another reason for inferring their role in Paleolithic art (especially parietal art) is that caves themselves have often been noted as the domains of shamans according to numerous ethnographic accounts. The mythology of caves presents them again and again as passages into another world. In ancient Greek the "journey to the underworld" through a cave was a common enough theme in different legends that a particular word for it emerged: katabasis. The alterity between the light of day and the instant night one experiences when entering a cave fends off most faint-hearted individuals. Living in an age of electrification, we forget the powerful associations and fears that nighttime held for ancient peoples. The cave, a place of permanent night, remained the province of shamans. Conventions about the "caveman" have led us to believe that caves were merely domiciles for ancient peoples. While this was likely true in different eras of hominid evolution, it is unlikely to have served such purposes during the Upper Paleolithic. Archaeological studies of the caves where we find parietal art has confirmed that these were not habitation sites. Dickson furthers this distinction: "…Upper Paleolithic peoples made an important spatial distinction between "living space," in the light and above ground where their everyday activities took place, and "ceremonial space," in the dark galleries below the earth's surface where extraordinary actions took place" (1990:205). The cave, then, served as a ritual place for highly symbolic activities, activities which may well have been engaged in by shamanically-informed peoples. Such a plethora of useful analogies and comparative analyses helps to support at least the viability of the shamanic hypothesis of Paleolithic art, even if it does not provide an empirical test for it.

A related, but different perspective on cognitive processualist accounts of Paleolithic art arises from the work of Stephen Mithen. He has attracted notice with his idea of "cognitive fluidity" as a means to explain religious symbology in the Upper Paleolithic. He believes that most animals possess highly specific "cognitive domains" such as evolved patterns for social behavior, eating behavior, etc. Mithen thinks that the various hominids also possessed these domains but when Homo sapiens sapiens evolved these domains broke down in favor of communication across domains—or cognitive fluidity. This capacity gave us an adaptive advantage through creatively utilizing elements across different cognitive domains. Our social intelligence, including abilities to model other's minds and intentions, projected onto natural occurrences leading to ideas about invisible agents, or gods. Our social intelligence also spilled over into an understanding of animals, so that we imagined animals in the way we imagine other humans. This may help explain the mysterious therianthropes—the images that possess mixtures of human and animal characteristics such as the famous 'sorcerer of Les Trois Freres." As Mithen writes in one article: …by having a cognitively fluid mind, a whole host of new ways of thought lacking in any functional significance were also made possible—such as believing in beings which were half human/half beast. Transmission of such ideas required cultural support, such as visual symbols and ritual to anchor them in the mind as they have no evolved domain of their own (Mithen 1997:73) Mithen's ideas utilize notions from the emerging disciplines of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology. While he imports scientific terminology and suggestive ideas from the cognitive sciences, one must wonder just how scientific these ideas actually are. Without an ability to be tested, such ideas do not fit the falsifiability criterion that most empirical scientists insist on in their methodology. But in a universe of possible interpretations, Mithen's ideas come closer to the scientific realities than most others. Future insights from the cognitive sciences are likely to enlighten some of these questions.

That Paleolithic art is more than art for art's sake seems certain. Paleolithic art, especially the art of the caves, does not reveal a free-for-all of artistic imagery and inspiration. A number of suggestive patterns emerge from the study of cave art. Among other things, the placement of the art seems especially meaningful. While Leroi-Gourhan could perceive a systematic placement of images in different zones, others are less certain of such complexity. But there is some order to the placement of these creations. Pfeiffer notes the overall effect of the image placement with: …malice aforethought, so that they would be encountered unexpectedly, just past a bend, under a ledge, on a high stalagmitic column, at the edge of a pit, or deep in a pit. In fact, every visit to an art cave is a series of surprises, and you get the feeling that the surprises were planned by someone with a fine sense of drama and theater, a master of illusion. (1980:75) A set of chosen subjects and regular patterns appear, suggesting this activity to be highly meaningful and ritually circumscribed. If such art was ritually determined it would imply social structures of a fairly refined sort. In other words, to transmit and "enforce" a given set of conventions there must be structured "power" of some sort. This may have been encoded in beliefs, myths, or teachings over a fairly pronounced length of time. Overall, the themes, patterns, placement and context of Paleolithic art suggests the importance of altered states of consciousness in the production of these images. Something akin to shamanism (proto-shamanism?) may have been behind much of the spectacular creations archaeologists study from these periods.

Beyond some very basic ideas and hypotheses about Paleolithic art, we must tolerate a vast amount of uncertainty if we are to treat this material honestly. Symbolic material culture, especially religious data, does not present itself for systematic interpretation. Even the utilization of such terms as "art" and "religion" imports assumptions about categorization that are not likely to have been distinguished in the Upper Paleolithic. It is just as likely that for these primeval hunter-gatherers everything was "religious." The art of the Upper Paleolithic may be an intersection of economic, religious, and social realities. Meanings may have changed through time or been differentially weighted according to individual creators. What we "know" is tentative and totally reliant on archeological inference. As Insoll writes: "…with much of the archaeology of religions we will never get at its essence no matter how long we boil the pot, because it is in the mind, it defies rationality, and the best-meant assertions of cognitive processualism aside, it will remain elusive" (2004:150). An understanding of Paleolithic art presumes an appreciation for the meaningful activity of agentive people in the Pleistocene. We may not know the particulars of these ancient peoples but we can infer them to be like us in many ways.

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