Dreaming of the Prehistoric Rock Art
on Ometepe Island, Nicaragua
Ryan Hurd is an MA
candidate at John F. Kennedy University in the Consciousness and
Transformative Studies and Dream Studies programs. He holds a BA
in anthropology, and has worked extensively as a field
archeologist. After fifteen years of dream journaling, he is
interested in exploring dreams from the crossroads of culture,
ecology and spirituality.
Abstract
The Pre-Columbian rock art of
Ometepe Island, Nicaragua is as mysterious as the revered wall
paintings of Paleolithic Europe. Often overshadowed by the
impressive stone ruins of the empires to the north and south,
Nicaragua contains one of the richest distributions of rock art in
the world. The cultural creators have long since vanished, and
archaeologists are not even sure when the art was made. Consisting
mostly of carvings on boulders, the petroglyphs of Ometepe Island
are enchanting to modern eyes. Swirls, vortices, and long meanders
blend into animal and human-like figures on boulder faces that dot
the slopes of the Maderas Volcano. Join me in a graphics-rich
exploration of this tropical island on Lake Nicaragua, where the
imaginal realm comes alive through this largely undocumented
collection of ancient art.
This paper
presentation emphasizes the subjective domains of an integral
research methodology into the prehistoric rock art of Ometepe
Island, Nicaragua. The fieldwork for this project was undertaken
in January 2006 as part of an archaeological survey for
petroglyphs on Ometepe Island, in cooperation with the Nicaraguan
Government and the Ometepe Petroglyph Project.
Rock art has been
notoriously resistant to modern investigations into all aspects of
the creation of the images, questions that range from “How old is
it? Why was it made?” and especially “What does it all mean?”
A
more integral methodology for the study of rock art situates the
researcher in the context of the study. As findings in cognitive
neuropsychology suggest that the construction of expectation
precedes perception (or as Goethe said, “Seeing is knowing”), then
the imaginal realm of the researcher is almost as important to
investigate as the objects of inquiry themselves. While meaning is
culturally mediated, all modern peoples share the perception of
the geometric “building blocks” of visual imagery. This imagery is
known ethnographically and cross-culturally to originate, in part,
from visionary states that include trance, hallucinogenic reverie,
out-of-body experiences, and, of course, dreams. It is dreams that
will lead us in this inquiry today.
This
study explores the construction of the see-r and the seen by
conducting phenomenological text analyses of the researcher’s
dream reports. Lucid dreams were also incubated to direct the
dreamer towards the phenomenon of rock art as it is perceived in
his mind. Natural themes will be discussed, developing a narrative
that reveals how the researcher structured the experience of
investigating rock art on Ometepe Island. The presentation of this
pilot study will be a visual feast of some of the most beautiful –
and unpublished – rock art in the world that will hopefully remind
all of their own visionary capabilities.
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