The Eye of Beauty Book

I know of Neil Price through his earlier work The Viking Way: Religion and War in Iron Age Scandinavia, and suffice it to say that I am a huge fan. The Archaeology of Shamanism is an entirely different project, yet it demonstrates what seems to be a characteristic desire of Price's to be inclusive and interdisciplinary, to bring many angles to bear on a given subject.

This collection of articles attempts to address the question "how far is it possible to talk of shamanism in the pre-historic past?" The answer, Price asserts, "can only be sought in studies of material culture and, thus, archaeology." These papers, other than one about San rock painting in southern Africa, focus on the circumpolar region. They present archaeological studies of portable objects (i.e. amulets and the like), of the landscape, of rock art, of Neolithic monuments, and of animal sacrifice in cremation graves, and describe what might be evidence of the existence of shamanism or related actions/beliefs in the originating culture of each.

As in his earlier work, Price acknowledges people besides academics who have an interest in some of these archaeological finds and the ideas they might generate - namely, practitioners of neo-shamanism and indigenous peoples whose ancestors are/might be the subjects of the excavations and/or studies. Unfortunately, (as far as I can tell) the collection doesn't have a statement from the latter point of view, but there is an article by a trained archaeologist with a personal involvement in neo-shamanism.

All in all, I enjoyed and learned a lot from this collection.