The Role of Shamanism in Mesoamerican Art

Increasing numbers of scholars are relying on the concept of shamanism to interpret preColumbian artworks without examining its origins and questioning its viability. This essay explores the historical roots of this fields romance with the shaman and offers an explanation of its appeal. We argue that by avoiding such terms as priest, doctor, and political leader, the words shaman and shamanism have helped scholars to other preColumbian peoples by portraying them as steeped in magic and the spiritual. We begin with a look at when, where, and why this reductive representation emerged in preColumbian art studies, suggesting that it originated as an idealist aversion to materialist explanations of human behavior. We then examine the sources and validity of the principal criteria used by PreColumbianists to identify shamanism in works of art and look at some possible reasons for shamanisms popularity among them. We conclude that there is a pressing need to create a more refined, more nuanced terminology that would distinguish, crossculturally, among the many different kinds of roles currently lumped together under the vague and homogenizing rubric of shaman.