Images of the human form can be analysed for what they reveal about social roles, hierarchy, and ... more Images of the human form can be analysed for what they reveal about social roles, hierarchy, and other identities, as well as culturally determined perceptions about humanity's relationships to the natural environment and supernatural realm. It is proposed that the portrayal of the multitudinous human subjects related to religious ideology and practice in Rio Grande Tradition and Navajo rock art focuses on the interconnectedness of all things, deflecting meaning away from human beings as prime subjects as seen in Western religious art. Rather, informed by ethnographic data, the Native American abstracted, costumed forms, along with conflated human/animal subjects, define humanity's intimate link to the cosmos, and their added attributes evoke the supernatural strengths of other living beings, along with animated entities such as rain-clouds and the sun. These images themselves are perceived as active agents, attracting the pictured forces, sanctifying place and facilitating communication with resident spirits. What is pictured on stone extends to the performative dimensions of ethnographic contexts, thereby blurring the boundaries between the ceremonial participants, the representations and the animistic cosmos. Yet it is an iron rule of history that every imagined hierarchy disavows its fictional origins and claims to be natural and inevitable.
Images of the human form can be analysed for what they reveal about social roles, hierarchy, and ... more Images of the human form can be analysed for what they reveal about social roles, hierarchy, and other identities, as well as culturally determined perceptions about humanity's relationships to the natural environment and supernatural realm. It is proposed that the portrayal of the multitudinous human subjects related to religious ideology and practice in Rio Grande Tradition and Navajo rock art focuses on the interconnectedness of all things, deflecting meaning away from human beings as prime subjects as seen in Western religious art. Rather, informed by ethnographic data, the Native American abstracted, costumed forms, along with conflated human/animal subjects, define humanity's intimate link to the cosmos, and their added attributes evoke the supernatural strengths of other living beings, along with animated entities such as rain-clouds and the sun. These images themselves are perceived as active agents, attracting the pictured forces, sanctifying place and facilitating ...
Dating the late 1000s to the mid-1200s CE, petroglyphs of sandal images are among others that dis... more Dating the late 1000s to the mid-1200s CE, petroglyphs of sandal images are among others that distinguish ancient Pueblo rock art in the San Juan and Little Colorado River drainages on the Colorado Plateau from Ancestral Pueblo rock art elsewhere across the Southwest. The sandal “track” also has counterparts as effigies in stone and wood often found in ceremonial contexts in Pueblo sites. These representations reflect the sandal styles of the times, both plain in contour and the jog-toed variety, the latter characterized by a projection where the little toe is positioned. These representations are both plain and patterned, as are their material sandal counterparts. Their significance as symbolic icons is their dominant aspect, and a ritual meaning is implicit. As a component of a symbol system that was radically altered after 1300 CE, however, there is no ethnographic information that provides clues as to the sandal icon’s meaning. While there is no significant pattern of its associ...
Page 1. A NEW LOOK AT TIE-DYE AND THE DOT-IN-A-SQUARE MOTIF IN THE PREHISPANIC SOUTHWEST LAURIE D... more Page 1. A NEW LOOK AT TIE-DYE AND THE DOT-IN-A-SQUARE MOTIF IN THE PREHISPANIC SOUTHWEST LAURIE D. WEBSTER KELLEY A. HAYS-GILPIN AND POLLY SCHAAFSMA ABSTRACT Tie-dyed fabrics patterned ...
Bumper stickers saying “I brake for petroglyphs” give one pause. They are loaded with implication... more Bumper stickers saying “I brake for petroglyphs” give one pause. They are loaded with implications—a flip public statement advertising the group “identity” and recreational interests of the Euro-American driver. In a rather materialistic way, rock art sites have become the destinations of weekend “collecting expeditions.” This discussion is not about the blatantly unethical thievery of image-laden rocks. Outdoor-oriented folks “collect sites,” visiting and photographing as many as possible, and if a new site is “discovered,” a stampede is certain to follow. Rock art trips give hikers and other outdoor aficionados a focus. Rock art “interest groups” and avocational archaeologists across the country are motivated by a number of factors, including the amassing of photographs, and thus, social status accrued in proportion to the number of sites visited. These considerations even have a number of positive spin-offs such as dedicated persons committed to site protection and recording. There is nothing “wrong” with this picture, but it is worth a deeper look.
Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, 1985
... American Rock Art Studies POLLY SCHAAFSMA INTRODUCTION The rapidly accumulating body of liter... more ... American Rock Art Studies POLLY SCHAAFSMA INTRODUCTION The rapidly accumulating body of literature on rock art, not only in North America but throughout the world, is indicative of the importance of rock art in current anthropological research. ...
Tied as it is to landscape, rock-art is a powerful vehicle for identifying and reconstructing pas... more Tied as it is to landscape, rock-art is a powerful vehicle for identifying and reconstructing past ideological systems regarding human relationships to natural environments. Rock-art can be used to help rediscover and define past cultural landscapes that have been rewritten by highways, cities, and other artefacts of the technological ideology of western culture. This study aims to show how rock-art – framed within its locational and graphic symbolism – may be used together with ethnographic information to understand the archaeological Puebloan landscape in connection with the Puebloan preoccupation with rain-making. Pueblo people of New Mexico and Arizona see themselves as integral parts of the historical/ecological processes that form their world (Anschuetz et al 2000:3.55), and the distribution of images on rocks in the Pueblo landscape – as is true elsewhere – is the result of a culturally prescribed, as opposed to random, interaction between people, their terrain, and their ideology of place. In esse...
I once overheard an archaeologist conducting a tour of a rock art site for the general public, te... more I once overheard an archaeologist conducting a tour of a rock art site for the general public, telling the group: “It can mean anything you want it to mean.” Coming from an archaeologist, who theoretically was poised to offer some informed idea of intended/original significance of the images from the position of an academic, this was definitely misleading. Figures do/did have intended meaning. It is true that the multi-vocality of many images and their metaphorical implications allow readings of diverse but related clusters of meanings. Thus, American Indians themselves will differ in their interpretations of specific images or symbolic content. While the answer you get may depend on whom you ask and on the knowledge of that individual, meaning is not a willy-nilly guessing game. To open up interpretation to a general public of Euro-Americans harboring foreign mental templates was an assertion—albeit unconscious—of cultural dominance, beyond being just simply irresponsible.
Images of the human form can be analysed for what they reveal about social roles, hierarchy, and ... more Images of the human form can be analysed for what they reveal about social roles, hierarchy, and other identities, as well as culturally determined perceptions about humanity's relationships to the natural environment and supernatural realm. It is proposed that the portrayal of the multitudinous human subjects related to religious ideology and practice in Rio Grande Tradition and Navajo rock art focuses on the interconnectedness of all things, deflecting meaning away from human beings as prime subjects as seen in Western religious art. Rather, informed by ethnographic data, the Native American abstracted, costumed forms, along with conflated human/animal subjects, define humanity's intimate link to the cosmos, and their added attributes evoke the supernatural strengths of other living beings, along with animated entities such as rain-clouds and the sun. These images themselves are perceived as active agents, attracting the pictured forces, sanctifying place and facilitating communication with resident spirits. What is pictured on stone extends to the performative dimensions of ethnographic contexts, thereby blurring the boundaries between the ceremonial participants, the representations and the animistic cosmos. Yet it is an iron rule of history that every imagined hierarchy disavows its fictional origins and claims to be natural and inevitable.
Images of the human form can be analysed for what they reveal about social roles, hierarchy, and ... more Images of the human form can be analysed for what they reveal about social roles, hierarchy, and other identities, as well as culturally determined perceptions about humanity's relationships to the natural environment and supernatural realm. It is proposed that the portrayal of the multitudinous human subjects related to religious ideology and practice in Rio Grande Tradition and Navajo rock art focuses on the interconnectedness of all things, deflecting meaning away from human beings as prime subjects as seen in Western religious art. Rather, informed by ethnographic data, the Native American abstracted, costumed forms, along with conflated human/animal subjects, define humanity's intimate link to the cosmos, and their added attributes evoke the supernatural strengths of other living beings, along with animated entities such as rain-clouds and the sun. These images themselves are perceived as active agents, attracting the pictured forces, sanctifying place and facilitating ...
Dating the late 1000s to the mid-1200s CE, petroglyphs of sandal images are among others that dis... more Dating the late 1000s to the mid-1200s CE, petroglyphs of sandal images are among others that distinguish ancient Pueblo rock art in the San Juan and Little Colorado River drainages on the Colorado Plateau from Ancestral Pueblo rock art elsewhere across the Southwest. The sandal “track” also has counterparts as effigies in stone and wood often found in ceremonial contexts in Pueblo sites. These representations reflect the sandal styles of the times, both plain in contour and the jog-toed variety, the latter characterized by a projection where the little toe is positioned. These representations are both plain and patterned, as are their material sandal counterparts. Their significance as symbolic icons is their dominant aspect, and a ritual meaning is implicit. As a component of a symbol system that was radically altered after 1300 CE, however, there is no ethnographic information that provides clues as to the sandal icon’s meaning. While there is no significant pattern of its associ...
Page 1. A NEW LOOK AT TIE-DYE AND THE DOT-IN-A-SQUARE MOTIF IN THE PREHISPANIC SOUTHWEST LAURIE D... more Page 1. A NEW LOOK AT TIE-DYE AND THE DOT-IN-A-SQUARE MOTIF IN THE PREHISPANIC SOUTHWEST LAURIE D. WEBSTER KELLEY A. HAYS-GILPIN AND POLLY SCHAAFSMA ABSTRACT Tie-dyed fabrics patterned ...
Bumper stickers saying “I brake for petroglyphs” give one pause. They are loaded with implication... more Bumper stickers saying “I brake for petroglyphs” give one pause. They are loaded with implications—a flip public statement advertising the group “identity” and recreational interests of the Euro-American driver. In a rather materialistic way, rock art sites have become the destinations of weekend “collecting expeditions.” This discussion is not about the blatantly unethical thievery of image-laden rocks. Outdoor-oriented folks “collect sites,” visiting and photographing as many as possible, and if a new site is “discovered,” a stampede is certain to follow. Rock art trips give hikers and other outdoor aficionados a focus. Rock art “interest groups” and avocational archaeologists across the country are motivated by a number of factors, including the amassing of photographs, and thus, social status accrued in proportion to the number of sites visited. These considerations even have a number of positive spin-offs such as dedicated persons committed to site protection and recording. There is nothing “wrong” with this picture, but it is worth a deeper look.
Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, 1985
... American Rock Art Studies POLLY SCHAAFSMA INTRODUCTION The rapidly accumulating body of liter... more ... American Rock Art Studies POLLY SCHAAFSMA INTRODUCTION The rapidly accumulating body of literature on rock art, not only in North America but throughout the world, is indicative of the importance of rock art in current anthropological research. ...
Tied as it is to landscape, rock-art is a powerful vehicle for identifying and reconstructing pas... more Tied as it is to landscape, rock-art is a powerful vehicle for identifying and reconstructing past ideological systems regarding human relationships to natural environments. Rock-art can be used to help rediscover and define past cultural landscapes that have been rewritten by highways, cities, and other artefacts of the technological ideology of western culture. This study aims to show how rock-art – framed within its locational and graphic symbolism – may be used together with ethnographic information to understand the archaeological Puebloan landscape in connection with the Puebloan preoccupation with rain-making. Pueblo people of New Mexico and Arizona see themselves as integral parts of the historical/ecological processes that form their world (Anschuetz et al 2000:3.55), and the distribution of images on rocks in the Pueblo landscape – as is true elsewhere – is the result of a culturally prescribed, as opposed to random, interaction between people, their terrain, and their ideology of place. In esse...
I once overheard an archaeologist conducting a tour of a rock art site for the general public, te... more I once overheard an archaeologist conducting a tour of a rock art site for the general public, telling the group: “It can mean anything you want it to mean.” Coming from an archaeologist, who theoretically was poised to offer some informed idea of intended/original significance of the images from the position of an academic, this was definitely misleading. Figures do/did have intended meaning. It is true that the multi-vocality of many images and their metaphorical implications allow readings of diverse but related clusters of meanings. Thus, American Indians themselves will differ in their interpretations of specific images or symbolic content. While the answer you get may depend on whom you ask and on the knowledge of that individual, meaning is not a willy-nilly guessing game. To open up interpretation to a general public of Euro-Americans harboring foreign mental templates was an assertion—albeit unconscious—of cultural dominance, beyond being just simply irresponsible.
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