num_pages: 240
description: Here is an exciting, innovative study of ancient European religious practice and practitioners. The Aldhouse-Greens entertaining and informative book represents a search, a voyage of discovery in which evidence is sought that there were individuals living in Europe from the Stone Age to the early post-Roman period who believed they were able to liaise with the spirit-world through the medium of trance and who perceived themselves to be part-human and part-animal.The authors support their argument with diverse and rich evidence, including the 30,000-year-old lion-human ivory figurines found in south-western Germany, which may represent monsters seen by shamans in altered states of consciousness; the newly discovered and spectacular Nebra sky-disc, which depicts the sun, moon and the Pleiades, indicating that Bronze Age shamans were using highly sophisticated objects to explore the heavens; and, the Doctors Grave from southeast England, which suggests that a Late Iron Age chieftain, who may have been a shaman, was sent to the Otherworld equipped with hallucinogens, medical kit and divining tools.
language: English
title: The Quest for the Shaman: Shape-Shifters, Sorcerers and Spirit Healers in Ancient Europe
publisher: Thames and Hudson