Leigh Marymor

Bay Area Rock Art News. v.38 n.1. 2023 pp.6-11.  "With the publication of the “Faux Indian Picture-Writing” article in Arts Journal (Marymor 2023), I’m pushing beyond with a more
fine grained analysis of the Western Message Petroglyph (WMP) texts themselves, listening for the author’s voice, as it were, in hopes of revealing patterns and themes that reveal something of the WMP author’s sensibility. Do we find similar evidence that
supports common authorship among the 39 WMP sites reflected in a unity of narrative style and themes that we see reflected in their patterned landscape contexts and image content? In this phase of the investigation, I attempt to accomplish something more than
simply projecting my own voice into this material, as its translator, although there is certainly an inescapable measure of that. The translator walks a narrow line between faithfulness to something original and artfulness in creating something new."

The term “Western Message Petroglyphs” (WMPs) refers to a number of petroglyph sites found scattered among eight western states that are recognized by their shared image content and layout. The imagery is drawn largely from a mash-up of late historic Native American sign-gesture language and picture-writing traditions inter-mixed with pan-cultural imagery from around the world. An increasing number of sites that fit this mold have been reported over the past 85 years or so, currently numbering 39 in all. There is no question that these sites date to post-European contact based on images in some panels that depict Euro-American cultural content (e.g., western-style house, rifle, whiskey keg, horse, etc.). The post-contact era is also apparent in the method used in rendering the engraved images evidenced by the smooth angular lines and chisel strikes produced by metal tools. This paper focuses on narrowing the time frame for these sites based on two additional streams of evidence. First, patterned associations with historic landscape settings tied to the era of western expansion bind the sites together into a coherent whole and set a floor for their oldest probable dates. An example of four sites located in Utah and Arizona illustrates their connection to the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the twentieth. Secondly, a study of their imagery supports the proposed dates by revealing a “smoking gun” for the source of many of the individual icons. An example of the methodology used to translate a Western Message Petroglyph panel is described, and a profile of the central author who appears to have acted with a small group of others is suggested in order to aid in the search for this person(s) in the historic record of the American West.

Columbia Plateau rock art has been the subject of intensive
study for more than a century. Some of the earliest research was
done as part of a large-scale scientific archaeological expedition
from the University of California, but other recordings were done
by avocationalists who were intrigued with the many carvings and
paintings lining the cliff faces along the Columbia River. Of course,
some early avocationalists’ studies are little more than flights of
fancy, trying to attribute the rock art to marauding Viking warriors
or Indian sun-worshippers, but several avocationalists left records
that remain the basis for twenty-first century research projects.
Here, we summarize the history of research into Columbia Plateau
rock art and present it as a matrix organizing the hundreds of
references provided herein.

Recent museum, archaeological, and observer record evidence suggests that North American beaver (Castor canadensis) were historically native to the watersheds of California’s coast, including San Francisco Bay. A wide variety of animals are abundantly represented in Native American petroglyphs and pictographs with their representations fulfilling intentions ranging from the mundane to ceremonial and mythological purposes. However, beaver symbols are poorly represented in California rock art and absent from the San Francisco Bay Area. A novel record, in the form of Western Message Petroglyphs, suggests that a beaver lodge was present in the late nineteenth century in the Alameda Creek watershed, potentially the last evidence of beaver prior to their extirpation in the region by the fur trade.

The Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database is an open access, online resource that fulfils the need for a searchable portal into the world’s rock art literature. Geared to the broadest interests of rock art researchers, students, cultural resource managers and the general public, the RAS database makes rock art literature accessible through a simple search interface that facilitates inquiries into multiple data fields, including authors’ names, title and publication, placename and subject keywords, ISBN/ISSN number and abstract. The results of a data search can further be sorted by any of the data fields, including: authors’ names, date, title and so forth. An ever increasing number of citations within the database include web links to online versions of the reference cited, and many citations include full author’s abstracts. The data compilation has been undertaken by Leigh Marymor with the year 2018 marking the 25th year of continuous revision and expansion of the data. Over 37 2...

"The Bishop WMP site, number 39 on the WMP roster, is both
classically situated and classically engraved. The site is located at the base of the Sierra escarpment, on a rise that overlooks the Owens valley to the east. In the foreground is the northern branch of the historic Midland Trail from Salt Lake City to San Francisco, now overlaid by Interstate 395. In the far view lay the old right-of-way of the Carson and Colorado narrow gauge railroad that served the mining interests at Keeler on the east edge of the valley. . . ."

Pressures that pose threats to the integrity of cultural sites, rock-art sites in particular, are the result of common impacts recognizable throughout the modem and developing world: resource extraction, infrastructure projects, industrial pollutants, expanding boundaries along urban/rural interfaces, rapid growth in cultural tourism, vandalism, natural weathering, and others. Perhaps it can be argued that the dominant culture which tends to embrace consumption over and above other cultural values, such as the value of our shared human heritage which is preserved in prehistoric cultural sites, is a common denominator of many of our man-made threats to these places. In the United States, two parallel trends have emerged that have oflcred conservationist responses to endangered rock art sites; the birth and growth of "cultural resource management" as a responsible discipline of public lands management policy, and the rise of public volunteerism as witnessed in the growth in ...

Recent museum, archaeological, and observer record evidence suggests that North American beaver (Castor canadensis) were historically native to the watersheds of California's coast, including San Francisco Bay. A wide variety of animals are abundantly represented in Native American petroglyphs and pictographs with their representations fulfilling intentions ranging from the mundane to ceremonial and mythological purposes. However, beaver symbols are poorly represented in California rock art and absent from the San Francisco Bay Area. A novel record, in the form of Western Message Petroglyphs, suggests that a beaver lodge was present in the late nineteenth century in the Alameda Creek watershed, potentially the last evidence of beaver prior to their extirpation in the region by the fur trade.

In August 2020, Museum of Northern Arizona Research Associate and Flagstaff Open Space Site Steward, Robert Mark, discovered two historic rock-engravings located in one of Flagstaff’s Open Space Preserves. This discovery sheds new light on a quirky group of rock-writing sites located in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Idaho.  Known as Western Message Petroglyphs (WMPs), this far-flung group of images is thought to date to the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

The Bradshaw Foundation, one of the world's premier portals for rock art researchers, students, and enthusiasts, has dedicated a new page on their website to the Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database. The page includes a link to the search engine at Museum of Northern Arizona, as well as, links to a number of thematic bibliographies that have been published on rock art studies using the RASBdb as their source. The RASBdb currently contains over 44,000 citations to the world's rock art literature. Thanks and kudos to the IT and editorial staff at the Bradshaw Foundation. https://www.bradshawfoundation.com/rock_art_studies_bibliographic_database/index.php?fbclid=IwAR2XKhn47OWNo3MV6Nec9LUbzdgQNlvBnQYk1ZhBK7DIQMdRUFEk9I4E2Mk

Introduction In 2012, one of us (MWR) published 'Bibliography of rock art dating', Rock Art Research 29(1): 118-131, that covered the time span of c. mid-1970s up to 2012. We now add this collection to cover rock art dating studies for the time span from 2011-2012 up to the present time. One of us (LM) has compiled a comprehensive bibliography of world rock art which he has continually updated over the past 27 years 1. Previously published bibliographies that highlight regional and thematic rock art themes by Marymor as well as the present contribution are extracted from the Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database. Currently the RASBdb contains more than 43 000 citations to the world's rock art literature. As with Rowe's Bibliography, we have made no value judgements in this compilation which we have made as complete as possible. That said, there are probably omissions for which we apologise. As before, we have devised categories in order to assist the reader in searching by medium and methodology, e.g. pictograms, petroglyphs and review papers, but with other subdivisions as well. We have undoubtedly mischaracterised some articles and apologise in advance for errors we have made.

A Publication of the Bay Area Rock Art Research Association I'd like to update our BARARA Members on the directions our research has taken in pursuit of those odd and esoteric rock engravings known as Western Message Petroglyphs that are found locally in the Bay Area near Fremont, in the Berkeley Hills, and at Rockville, but also scattered elsewhere in California and among eight western states at thirty-six known locations. Twelve of those sites are here in California, on both sides of the Sierra divide with the others strung out along historic routes and rail corridors overlooking historic mining and quarry sites, travel routes, and Mormon settlements.

Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database https://musnaz.org/search _rock_art_studies_db/ The Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database is an open access, online resource that fulfills the need for a searchable portal into the world's rock art literature. Geared to the broadest interests of rock art researchers, students, cultural resource managers, and the general public, the RAS database makes rock art literature accessible through a simple on-line search interface.

Several years ago our friend, Jane Kolber, took it upon herself to elicit and compile a series of mini-essays authored by a celebrated list of rock art scholars from around the world regarding the ethics of physically touching rock art sites. Her article"Celebrating the life of John Clegg: Touching rock-art can be a touchy subject," and the volume in which it appears are dedicated to the life work of Australian rock art scholar, John Clegg.

Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database © https://musnaz.org/search_rock_art_studies_db/ The Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database is an open access, online resource that fulfills the need for a searchable portal into the world's rock art literature. Geared to the broadest interests of rock art researchers, students, cultural resource managers, and the general public, the RAS database makes rock art literature accessible through a simple searchable interface. An ever increasing number of citations within the database include web links to online versions of the reference cited, and many citations include full author's abstracts. Over 39,175 citations are currently contained in the database.

The Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database is an open access, online resource that fulfils the need for a searchable portal into the world's rock art literature. Geared to the broadest interests of rock art researchers, students, cultural resource managers and the general public, the RAS database makes rock art literature accessible through a simple search interface that facilitates inquiries into multiple data fields, including authors' names, title and publication, placename and subject keywords, ISBN/ISSN number and abstract. The results of a data search can further be sorted by any of the data fields, including: authors' names, date, title and so forth. An ever increasing number of citations within the database include web links to online versions of the reference cited, and many citations include full author's abstracts. The data compilation has been undertaken by Leigh Marymor with the year 2018 marking the 25th year of continuous revision and expansion of the data. Over 37 200 citations are currently contained in the database. The RAS database first launched online as a joint project of the Bay Area Rock Art Research Association and University of California's Bancroft Library. After thirteen years of collaboration, the project found a new home and collaborator at the Anthropology Department at the Museum of Northern Arizona. The Australian Rock Art Bibliography results from an export of approximately 1980 citations from the RAS database and captures a freeze-frame in the state of Australian rock art literature as compiled here in the year 2018. The online version of the RAS Bibliographic Database at the Museum of Northern Arizona is updated annually, and we refer the reader to that resource for up-to-date bibliographic data revisions and additions. Researchers who consult the online database in concert with their reference to the Australian Rock Art Bibliography will discover a powerful ally in further refining geographic and thematic inquiries.

The Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database is an open access, online resource that fulfills the need for a searchable portal into the world's rock art literature. Geared to the broadest interests of rock art researchers, students, cultural resource managers, and the general public, the RAS database makes rock art literature accessible through a simple searchable interface. An ever increasing number of citations within the database include web links to online versions of the reference cited, and many citations include full author's abstracts. Over 37,200 citations are currently contained in the database. The RAS database first launched online as a joint project of the Bay Area Rock Art Research Association and

Arts 2018, 7(2), 14; doi:10.3390/arts7020014 (registering DOI)

The online version of the Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database can be searched at: https://musnaz.org/search_rock_art_studies_db/.

Received: 23 October 2017 / Revised: 29 October 2017 / Accepted: 30 October 2017 / Published: 3 April 2018

(This article belongs to the Collection World Rock Art)


Abstract
The Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database is an open access; online resource that fulfills the need for a searchable portal into the world’s rock art literature. Geared to the broadest interests of rock art researchers; students; cultural resource managers; and the general public; the RAS database makes rock art literature accessible through a simple search interface that facilitates inquiries into multiple data fields; including authors’ names; title and publication; place-name keyword; subject keyword; ISBN/ISSN number and abstract. The results of a data search can further be sorted by any of the data fields; including: authors’ names; date; title; and so forth. An ever increasing number of citations within the database include web links to online versions of the reference cited; and many citations include full author’s abstracts. The data compilation has been undertaken by Leigh Marymor with the year 2018 marking the 25th year of continuous revision and expansion of the data. Over 37,000 citations are currently contained in the database. The RAS database first launched online as a joint project of the Bay Area Rock Art Research Association and University of California’s Bancroft Library. After thirteen years of collaboration; the project found a new home and collaborator at the Anthropology Department at the Museum of Northern Arizona. The Paleolithic Rock Art bibliography results from an export of data from the RAS database and captures a freeze-frame in the state of the rock art literature for the world’s Paleolithic rock art as compiled here in the year 2018. The online version of the RAS Bibliographic Database at the Museum of Northern Arizona is updated annually; and we refer the reader to that resource for up-to-date bibliographic data revisions and additions. Researchers who consult the online database in concert with their reference to the Paleolithic Rock Art bibliography will discover a powerful ally in further refining geographic and thematic inquiries.

Keywords: Paleolithic; bibliography; rock art studies; world

The EAST AFRICA and HORN OF AFRICA Rock Art Bibliography is extracted from the Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database version r31 and contains 228 citations covering the countries of: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Djibuti, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia.

BRITISH ISLES Rock Art Bibliography is extracted from the Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database verison r31 and contains 766 citations covering the countries of: England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Isle of Man, and Channel Islands. (This revision eliminates several duplicate records, provides a few grammatical edits, and corrects a few citation errors.)

BRITISH ISLES Rock Art Bibliography is extracted from the Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database verison r31 and contains 770 citations covering the countries of: England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Isle of Man, and Channel Islands.

The RAS project is a searchable bibliographic database of the World's rock art literature and contains 35,000 citations as of spring 2017. The RAS database was hosted as a joint project between the Bancroft Library (University of California - Berkeley) and the Bay Area Rock Art Research Association (BARARA) from 2003 - 2016.  In fall of 2016, BARARA affiliated with the Museum of Northern Arizona to continue the free and open access to the  RAS database project. The Rock Art Studies Database search engine at the Museum of Northern Arizona is located at:

https://musnaz.org/search_rock_art_studies_db/. 

Robert Bednarik, Convener of the International Federation of Rock Art Organizations has called the RAS Database ". . . an incredibly useful, valuable, and effective resource for the 9000 or so rock art researchers of the world."

A regional rock art bibliography extracted from the Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database - NOTE:  This draft is now available in its expanded and edited version in the online publication, Quellca Rumi, Revista de Investigaciones de la Asociación Peruana de Arte Rupestre, 2020.  See https://issuu.com/apar/docs/quellca_rumi_2-2?fbclid=IwAR1KkWksvz9sTaGueZb2k4IFBOYwzxELF47t2lm9DcxLJcq-PEGMDjnX-PQ.

Celebrating 25 years of continuous data collection, the RAS bibliographic database will contain over 37,000 citations to the world's rock art literature when updated on the Museum of Northern Arizona website in Spring 2018. The compiler of the project presents a brief introduction to the database.

The WMP project appears to have been intent on the appropriation of cultural picture-writing traditions for repurposing as a new lexicon where the culture-bound images are stripped from their original contexts and now function as words in narrative picture-texts. These narrations, obscured by their semi-remote locations and use of esoteric picture-writing, appear to be in the form of brief folk-wisdom commentaries. Often poignant with ironic, humorous, and numinous overtones, the narrations comment on the human condition as experienced by an unknown author riding along the under-belly of Manifest Destiny in the latter years of western expansion and early industrialization of the American West.

More than 50,000 citations to the world's rock art literature. The "go to" open access resource for rock art researchers, academics, land managers, and the inquiring public. Simple and complex searches. Thirty years of continuous compilation by HI [Human Intelligence].

The symbolic representation of the "hand" has held intrinsic appeal for humans the world over dating to at least 40,000 years B.P. (M. Aubert et al 2018). Cultural conceptions of the hand image as expressed on rock surfaces in natural landscape settings are both remarkably diverse, and startlingly similar, dependent on time and place. The present bibliography brings together a comprehensive compilation of more than 500 references that feature discussions of the hand motif from both published and unpublished sources dating between 1893-2022. This bibliography is an update on an earlier unpublished draft compiled by the author in 2016.

The Idaho Rock Art Bibliography takes a comprehensive look at the literature concerned with rock art studies in the State of Idaho (USA) from the earliest reports through the present day. The data for this bibliography has been exported from the Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database (https://musnaz.org/rock_art_studies_db/).

Join this Zoom Lecture hosted by the American Rock Art Research Association on January 9th, 2021 @ 5:30 PM (Pacific Daylight Time). Leigh Marymor shares six years of research that sheds light on the enigma of an esoteric group of historic petroglyphs scattered throughout the  American West.

The aim of the RASBdb keyword guide is to support nuanced searches of the world’s rock art literature. With the advent of the Systematic Quantitative Literature Review (SQLR) methodology making its way into academic rock art research, it is hoped that this keyword guide will assist students and researchers in expanding their familiarity with the body of research that impacts their research questions.

The current revision of this guide (r.4) includes hundreds of new search terms that were culled from 7700 citations that included the keyword "motif" in the subject keyword field.

The Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database is an open access, online resource that fulfills the need for a searchable portal into the world’s rock art literature.
The web enabled FileMakerPro platform that supports the database can be perplexing, especially for people who have little experience with searching and sorting digital database platforms.
The RASBdb Tutorial is intended to provide assistance to users to enable them to get the most from their experience.

The present bibliography updates previous drafts of Chumash Indian rock art bibliographies extracted from the Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database. This most recent update was compiled from more than 41,900 citations to the world's rock art literature on 7/17/2020.

Interest in the historiography of Rock Art Studies has been increasing steadily over the years in keeping with the exponential growth of the field of study around the world. The rate of publications increase for the field as a whole, or on a more nuanced level by region or country is easily illustrated graphically using data extracted from the Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database. The present example focuses on the rock art research in North Africa, graphed by country over time beginning in 1880 to the present (2019). The data set for this illustration is drawn from 39,037 citations to the world's rock art literature.

Abstract: The Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database is an open access, online resource that fulfills the need for a searchable portal into the world's rock art literature. Geared to the broadest interests of rock art researchers, students, cultural resource managers, and the general public, the RAS database makes rock art literature accessible through a simple search interface that facilitates inquiries into multiple data fields, including authors' names, title and publication, place-name and subject keywords, ISBN/ISSN number, and abstract. The results of a data search can further be sorted by any of the data fields, including: authors' names, date, title, and so forth. An ever increasing number of citations within the database include web links to online versions of the reference cited, and many citations include full author's abstracts. The data compilation has been undertaken by Leigh Marymor with the year 2018 marking the 25th year of continuous revision and expansion of the data. Over 38,900 citations are currently contained in the database.
The RAS database first launched online as a joint project of the Bay Area Rock Art Research Association and University of California's Bancroft Library. After thirteen years of collaboration, the project found a new home and collaborator at the Anthropology Department at the Museum of Northern Arizona. The Rock Art of Portugal bibliography results from an export of data from the RAS database and captures a freeze-frame in the state of the rock art literature for Portuguese rock art as compiled at the beginning of the year 2019.
The online version of the RAS Bibliographic Database at the Museum of Northern Arizona is updated annually, and we refer the reader to that resource for up-to-date bibliographic data revisions and additions. Researchers who consult the online database in concert with their reference to the Portugal Rock Art bibliography will discover a powerful ally in further refining geographic and thematic inquiries.
Keywords: Portugal; Europe; rock art studies; bibliography.

The Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database is an open access, online resource that fulfills the need for a searchable portal into the world’s rock art literature.
The web enabled FileMakerPro platform that supports the database can be perplexing, especially for people who have little experience with searching and sorting digital database platforms.
The RASBdb Tutorial is intended to provide assistance to users to enable them to get the most from their experience.  The pdf format of the tutorial includes updates and edits, and is download friendly.