ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 2, Spring 2015
Matt J. Rossano
Department of Psychology, Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond Louisiana
“Art as Materialized and Embodied Ritual”
I am grateful to the editors for this opportunity to comment on Anthony Lock’s interesting and engaging article. While numerous and varied thoughts were provoked as I
read, I believe most of them can be organized around the theme of the social origins
and function of art as the materialization and embodiment of ritual.
Let me start with the Acheulean hand axe. As Lock points out, this artifact may represent humanity’s first primitive engagement with the plastic arts. There’s another aspect of the hand axe that deserves mention: its highly social nature. Ethnographic
studies of traditional societies that make hand-axe-like implements (adzes), such as
the Kim-Yal of New Guinea, show how the construction of these implements is a
highly social activity. Groups of adze-makers spend hours working, talking, and critiquing each other’s creations. Furthermore, collective adze-making serves as a venue
not only for learning the skill, but for the transmission of important cultural stories,
norms, and traditions. True, the Kim-Yal people are not Homo heidelbergensis. However, as Lock discusses, the numerous unused hand axes compel us to look for explanations beyond the purely practical for their creation. The social world provides a reasonable explanation. Their creation was a social event and their “use” was as a social
signal. The social event of hand axe making could easily have had important groupbonding effects and the social signal of the created hand axe could well have provided
important information about the intelligence, skill, and resourcefulness of the creator.
If the hand axe is the beginning of art, then from the start art was deeply, functionally
entwined with the social.
Let me expand a moment on the social signaling function of art. Art emerges, I believe, from ritual. Ritualized signals (such as the famous canine “play bow”) have
deep evolutionary roots as effective transmitters of unambiguous social messages. To
ritualize a signal, a utilitarian gesture is typically exaggerated, stylized, and repeated
in order to attract and hold another’s attention. Ritual amplifies gesture thereby ensuring effective communication. Art goes further, it amplifies ritual. Visual and plastic
art materialize ritual, while performance art embodies ritual. For example, a simple
nod can gesture respect and deference. A deep bow with head lowered and hands
clasped ritually signals respect and deference in an even more amplified way compared to a nod. Art can take these sentiments even further with dances, songs, portraits, and poems done in honor of someone. Rituals are known to have important social bonding effects. Art can have similar effects. Groups can rally around materialized images and symbols that represent their collective identities. Warriors executing
intricately coordinated dances and chants reinforce to one another their organizational
discipline while simultaneously intimidating any onlookers who might challenge
them.
It is not hard to imagine that in our evolutionary past, under group-competitive conditions, those groups that could more successfully inculcate an “esprit de corps” in their
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