Bryn Tapper

In this chapter, we discuss the impacts different globalizations (in plural) have had on the development of rock art research in Argentina and Canada over time. In particular, we focus on: (1) the initial or pioneer views on deep-time rock art in Eastern Canada and Patagonia (those of voyagers, explorers, militaries, and missionaries); (2) the development of archaeologies of art in the strict academic sense of the term (e.g. culture-history and stylistic approaches as well as processual approaches, following and creatively adapting international academic trends); and (3) a number of new theoretical approaches associated with post-processualism, including landscape archaeology, ecological approaches, materiality, and, more recently, the 'ontological turn'. These three periods in the history of Western thought on deep-time rock art emerged in different contexts and under specific historical conditions, yet are characterised by the globalization of theoretical concepts from central areas of traditional academic theoretical production (i.e. Europe and USA), towards South America and Canada. In sum, we show how interpretations of deep-time Indigenous rock art in Eastern Canada and in Argentinean Patagonia were conceived under different conceptual frameworks according to different contexts of globalizations over time.

Fiore, Danae, Bryn Tapper, Dagmara Zawadzka, and Agustin Acevedo. 2024. "Rock art research and knowledge production in the context of globalizations: a compartive approach to the cases of Patagonia-Argentina and Eastern Canada." In Deep-time images in the Age of Globalization: Rock art in the 21st century, edited by Oscar Moro Abadia, Margaret W. Conkey and Jo McDonald, 89-108. Springer.

Tapper, Bryn. 2021. "Kwipek, Mi’kma’ki: pemiaq aqq pilua’sik ta’n tel amalilitu’n kuntewiktuk / Continuity and change in Mi’kmaw petroglyphs at Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada." In Ontologies of rock art: images, relational approaches, and Indigenous knowledges, edited by Oscar Moro Abadía and Martin Porr, 374-394. London: Routledge.

'Introduction
Contact period rock art of Indigenous peoples provides important alternative lines of evidence to examine colonial encounters; evidence otherwise dominated by European accounts which have often censored or silenced Indigenous voices and narratives of the past (Paterson 2012, 80). Moreover, contact period rock art can reveal the 'reverse gaze' of colonial contact-----documenting Indigenous observations of, and responses and adaptations to, profound and often devastating cultural change.

In many regions of the world, contact period rock art demonstrates how Indigenous people deployed imagery as a means to accommodate and/ or resist change; it discloses Indigenous agency in the processes of encounter and engagement. In South Africa, San rock art has revealed the political and territorial resistance of San Bushman to European encroachment and aggression (Ouzman 2003), while throughout Australia, rock art demonstrates the various ways in which Aboriginal peoples have responded to cross-cultural encounters over the past 500 years (McNiven and Russell 2002; May et al. 2010; Tacon et al. 2012). Similarly, in the Americas, rock art was an important way for some Indigenous groups to express ongoing resistance to colonial oppression (Recalde and Navarro 2014), or to resist Christianization and forcible displacement from their lands (Carroll et al. 2019), or else shows how some groups accommodated rapid technological change (Klassen 1998).

It is in this context of culture contact that I examine the petroglyph site at Kwipek (Bedford), located at the head of Asoqmapskiajk (Bedford Basin) which is part of K'jipuktuk (Halifax Harbour) in Sipekni'katik (the traditional Mi'kmaw district covering much of central mainland Nova Scotia). Kwipek is one of several historic Mi'kmaw rock art sites known in Mi'kma'ki (the Mi'kmaw homeland corresponding to Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, eastern New Brunswick, part of the Gaspe in Quebec, and southern Newfoundland). Making the case for a postcontact origin for the Kwipek petroglyphs I examine the ways in which they not only demonstrate Mi'kmaw spiritual resilience and political resistance to colonial persecution, discrimination, and marginalization, but how they also reveal the Mi'kmaw ontological commitments which guided responses to colonial encounter and conflict.'

Tapper, Bryn, and Oscar Moro Abadía. 2021. "Interpreting scenes in the rock art of the Canadian Maritimes." In Making scenes: global perspectives on scenes in rock art, edited by Iain Davidson and April Nowell, pp. 295-309. New York: Berghahn Books.

'Introduction
Since the beginnings of rock art research, archaeologists and art historians have been particularly interested in the interpretation of scenes, that is, those representations that seem to depict actions, events, or activities. Because of the narrative nature of these images, Western interpretations of rock art scenes have often reflected the biases and prejudices that have oriented rock art research during the last hundred and fifty years. It is well known, for instance, that Henri Breuil described the “White Lady of Brandberg,” a Namibian pictograph representing a shaman performing a ritual dance, as “a young woman with a typically Mediterranean, perhaps Cretan profile” (Breuil 1952: 236). This kind of ethnocentrism remained largely unchallenged until the last decades of the twentieth century. However, during the past twenty years a number of theoretical developments have promoted a less biased understanding of rock art scenes. In the first place, given the postmodernist focus on subjectivity and relativism, Western scholars have become increasingly conscious of the many prejudices that orient their interpretations. In the second place, new theoretical frameworks such as “new” animism' and the “ontological turn” have provided space for alternative readings of rock art images that engage Indigenous theories (Alberti 2016; Ingold 2000).

With these developments in mind, we examine several scenes from the rock art of the Canadian Maritimes. First, we briefly present the context and the chronology of the petroglyph traditions of the Eastern Algonquian peoples in this region. We also examine the history of research in the region in order to show how these images have traditionally been interpreted. Second, we suggest an alternative interpretation of these images influenced by new interpretive frameworks such as ontology and animism (Jones 2017). To begin, we describe the representations of French Lake (New Brunswick), a pre-contact rock art site that is stylistically related to the Algonquian Woodland period rock art known from many places of Central and Eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. We then examine a number of scenes from the post-contact sites of Kejimkujik and McGowan Lakes (Nova Scotia).

We argue that the content, style, and purpose of these pre- and post-contact petroglyph traditions changed as a result of the social, political, religious, and economic upheaval that accompanied European colonization. While both traditions were grounded in relational ontologies, the nature of the relationships reflected in the scenes appears to have been reconfigured as a result of colonization. In the precontact rock art, the artist, the imagery, the site, and the landscape are implicated in an esoteric performance negotiated by ritual specialists for social benefit. The post contact rock art emphasizes individual and communal biographies, as well as narratives concerned with recording a rapidly changing Indigenous way of life; its content was a blend of contemporary concerns interspersed with fragments of cultural memory and traditional knowledge.'

Moro Abadía, Oscar, and Bryn Tapper. 2020. "Pleistocene art at the beginnings of the twenty-first century: rethinking the place of Europe in a globalised context." In Indigenous heritage and rock art: Worldwide research in memory of Daniel Arsenault, edited by Carole Charette, Aron D. Mazel and George Nash, 61-72. Oxford: Archaeopress.

'During the most part of the twentieth century, many archaeologists, anthropologists and art historians proposed a Eurocentric model to explain Pleistocene images. They believed that Pleistocene art was a European phenomenon and interpreted Pleistocene images through the lens of the European archaeological record. In recent years, this Eurocentric paradigm has been called into question. First, the globalisation of prehistoric research, together with a number of technological developments, has led archaeologists to document Pleistocene images all around the world. Discoveries such as Blombos Cave in South Africa, Qurta in Egypt, Nawarla Gabarnmang in Australia, and Sulawesi and Borneo in Indonesia demonstrate that Pleistocene depictions are a worldwide phenomenon. Second, with the expansion of the geographical distribution, it has become clear that a number of long- established assumptions (including the belief in the European origins of Pleistocene representation, the idea that Pleistocene cave paintings are exclusively European and the hegemonic position of the European archaeological record in the interpretation of Pleistocene images) need to be revised in the light of new evidence. In this paper, we review these recent developments and suggest some thoughts about the place of Europe in a globalised context.'

'Over the past six decades, researchers investigating the rock art of the Algonquian-speaking peoples of Central and Eastern Canada have produced interpretations that recognize and draw on Algonquian peoples’ oral traditions, worldviews, and realities. Mainly characterized by the use of ethnohistorical and ethnographic evidence and analogy, this has resulted in a number of important developments and trends in Algonquian rock art research. In particular, this research has identified some of the motives, practices, and performances that underpin the making of rock art, and focused attention on the ways in which humans and other-than-humans are implicated. It has also revealed the paradigms within which researchers have operated. In recent years, the interest in ‘new animism’ has resulted in a shift from epistemological concerns to new ontologically related approaches, which engage Algonquian ontologies as sources of theory and heuristic tools with which to examine the relationality and agency of rock art. The trajectory of current research indicates that the recognition and acceptance of ontological multiplicity and the multivocality of the past are crucial not only to the interpretation of rock art but also to the ‘worlding practices’ that characterize Algonquian rock art research.'

'The analysis of the spatial distribution of fishing rooms demonstrates that French fishing crews preferentially exploited certain parts of the Petit Nord during their prosecution of the historic cod fishery between 1500 and 1904. This research investigates the environmental and cultural factors that influenced where sites were selected and subsequently established. Fishing harbours were the hubs of wider networks, both physical and cognitive, of resource acquisition and navigation. A system of landmarks, daymarks and anchorages warded a network of sailing routes linking fishing rooms to cod grounds and resource areas. Seasonal occupation led to the intense exploitation of natural resources and necessitated the installation of a landscape-based infrastructure to negotiate the division of shore space and allocation of timber and fresh water. The concept of the maritime cultural landscape is used to link the terrestrial sites of the fishery with the region’s network of marine exploitation, land use and navigation. Effects of cultural processes in the past persist in the patterns and character of land use, both cultural and semi-natural, on land and at sea, that are observable in the region today.'

Andy M. Jones, Anna Lawson-Jones, Henrietta Quinnell, Anna Tyacke (Finds Liaison Officer for Cornwall), Graham Hill, Bryn Tapper & Roger Taylor (2013) Landscapes of Stone: Contextualizing Greenstone Working and Lithics from Clodgy Moor, West Penwith, Cornwall, Archaeological Journal, 170:1, 2-29, DOI: 10.1080/00665983.2013.11021000

'Between 2004 and 2011 Graham Hill and Dave Edwards plotted nearly eight thousand prehistoric artefacts from ploughed fields across the Clodgy Moor area of West Penwith. In 2011 a project was carried out by the Historic Environment Service Projects team, Cornwall Council, the Portable Antiquities Scheme and the Cornwall Archaeological Society to catalogue and digitize all the finds recorded from the fieldwalking.

The project demonstrated that some places within the project area were persistent locales which were occupied throughout the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. The results were particularly significant because they shed light on the context of the production of greenstone axes, widely exchanged around Britain and across the Irish Sea during the Neolithic, and suggest why, despite large numbers of artefacts, no greenstone ‘axe factory’ site has been found close to the potential sources of the greenstone before.'

Tapper, Bryn, and Dave Hooley. 2012. "England's Historic Seascapes: mapping the character of the marine historic environment." In IKUWA 3: Beyond Boundaries - Proceedings of The 3rd International Congress on Underwater Archaeology, 9th-12th July 2008, London, edited by Jon Henderson, pp. 105-112. Bonn: Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH.