Johanna: Just to clear, what are you claiming with that cite? Yes, one anthropologist has a hypothesis, but is it the concensus opinion in the anthroplogical comunity? I would start out by asking how we know that the woman in this burial was indeed a shaman? But more to the point, wouldn’t the more parsimonious hypthothesis be that both men and women were shamans at different times and different places, which is what we find in primitive cultures survivng today?
Tedlock wrote about the Dolni Vestonice burial
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This particular burial was of no ordinary person, though. A flint spearhead had been placed near the head of the deceased, and the body of a fox had been placed in one hand. For the archaeological team, led by Bohuslav Klíma, the fox was a clear indication that the person in the grave had been a shaman; the fox had a long history as a shamanic spirit guide, in Europe and all the way across Asia and into the Americas. It came as something of a shock, however, when skeletal analysis revealed that the shaman in question was a woman.
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My point is that it beneficial to the living consensus of the community to have dissenters working within it who can challenge its assumptions and keep it from getting too comfortable. Anyway, does anyone actually know what the current consensus is, now that it’s being invoked?
I look upon the study of prehistory as a field where intelligent people can reasonably hold differing views. 
I have no disagreement at all that both men and women have been shamans at all times in history (applying the uniformitarian principle which is famous for its parsimony as you put it) while the relative gender proportions of shamanistic activity have been observed to vary among cultures. Shake on that?
I’m cool with that.
I agre that the tree of orthodoxy needs to be shaken from time to time, and our own gender assumptions are easy to overlook. There is no denying, for example that the field of paleoanthropology stagnated for decades under an implicit (and often explicit) “man the hunter” hypothesis. And you still see it a lot, even today.
And how does Teldock know that this woman is a Shaman? And how does she explain something like the Sungir skeletons where an elderly man and two adolescents (most likely boys) were buried in an incredibly elaborate fusion with incredibly lavish wealth? Does she explain why a 9 year old is buried in a manner more ostentatious than the example at Dolní Věstonice? Are we to assume that a 9yo was a Shaman?
I’d have to read the book, but the case would seem to be exceedingly weak. Anthropology has acknowledged the role of women as Pagan or Animist priestesses from the outset. Indeed my experience suggests that women are more likely to be accepted as priestesses than men are as priests.
None of which suggests that she was the first, or that her findings were particularly surprising, novel or contradictory to the knowledge gathered by hundreds of other anthropologists of both sexes.
OK, so the reason has little to do with the sex of the anthropologist.
The reason is that Aboriginal culture forbids men discussing women’s religion and vice versa. This is a very widespread and well known cultural taboo.Western science OTOH (which anthropology is supposed to be) demands that anyone be able to discuss anything at any time with anyone, and that everyone has access to the information and the information needed to falsify it.
IOW any bias that may have existed (of which we have seen no evidence) was primarily the result of cultural incompatibility between Aboriginal religion andwestern science, not an artefact of sex per se.
This particular burial was of no ordinary person, though. A flint spearhead had been placed near the head of the deceased, and the body of a fox had been placed in one hand. For the archaeological team, led by Bohuslav Klíma, the fox was a clear indication that the person in the grave had been a shaman; the fox had a long history as a shamanic spirit guide, in Europe and all the way across Asia and into the Americas. It came as something of a shock, however, when skeletal analysis revealed that the shaman in question was a woman.
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My point is that it beneficial to the living consensus of the community to have dissenters working within it who can challenge its assumptions and keep it from getting too comfortable. Anyway, does anyone actually know what the current consensus is, now that it’s being invoked?
I look upon the study of prehistory as a field where intelligent people can reasonably hold differing views.
I have no disagreement at all that both men and women have been shamans at all times in history (applying the uniformitarian principle which is famous for its parsimony as you put it) while the relative gender proportions of shamanistic activity have been observed to vary among cultures. Shake on that?
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I’m really struggling to understand what point you are making here. Are you trying to say that evidence of female shaman’s is so rare as to be shocking when found? Or that the evidence suggests that most shamans were female? The two points seem to be mutually contradictory.
The fact that it was a shock would seem to indicate that women shamans of this status were incredibly rare. Any archaeological team would be well aware of the numerous male skeletons found that have been found buried in a similar manner.
Doesn’t the rarity and shock value of such female burial (when male burials are so common) run counter to your claim that “early shamanism was largely done by women”? If early shamanism was largely done by women then why aren’t the larger part of shamanistic burials found to be female skeletons?
If you want to feel a sense of some truly awesome music, listen to Värttinä.
Ogre, not a warning, just a note:
Please do not do this again in GQ.
Thanks.
-xash
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