LEWISWILLIAMS, J. DAVID

South Africanrock artresearcher who proposed a shamanistic interpretation (also known as the “trancehypothesis”) to some of this diverse imagery. Attending to the similarities between theSouthern Africanmaterial andEuropeanPaleolithic cave art, Lewis-Williams andThomas Dowsondeveloped aneuropsychological modelfor establishing whether a given rock art tradition is derived fromaltered states of consciousness, and if so, how it is shamanistic, within its specific community context. Lewis-Williams has also written a volume on cave art (TheMind in the Cave, 2002) and the EuropeanNeolithic. LewisWilliams is professor emeritus of rock art at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.