Rock Art (Other Keyword)

1-25 (200 Records)

The activity of hunter gatherers in the northwest of Durango, México (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosa Ortiz Barrera. Cindy Cristina Sandoval Mora. José Luis Punzo Díaz.

The Northwest in the state of Durango is a understudied area in which it has now been possible to detect, record and describe archaeological sites and materials. The work carried out at the sites "La Peña" and "El Indio" have marked important milestones for the research of hunter-gatherer groups. The excavation of La Peña, located in a rock shelter, allowed to learn the specialization that these groups had in the development of lithic artifacts, since a lot of Toyah arrowheads were found, a...


The Angeles National Forest Mystery Rock (2008)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Nyerges.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us using the...


Animal symbolism in the rock art of the Sonoran Desert (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Julio Amador.

Abstract In this paper we propose a line of interpretation referred to the symbolism attributed to the zoomorphic figures, present in the rock art of the Sonoran Desert. We confront the results of rock art analysis and classification with a systematic study of the myths and legends of the Uto-aztecan cultural groups that lived in the region, when Europeans arrived. We pay special attention to the traditions of the O’odham, who inhabited the Sonoran Desert where we can find the rock art that...


Animated ships (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Skoglund.

The rock art of southern Scandinavia includes a variety of images and among these are ships, humans and animal images. The ship is the most common motif and appears in various constellations. The ship may appear without associated images, it can be seen with a row of lines indicating a crew, and it can be associated to rather detail human and animal images. The process of adding humans and animals to the ships changed the significance of these images. In this paper I will go through some of the...


Animating Sacred Landscapes through Making Rock Art (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Andres Troncoso.

To understand the relationships among rock art and ritual landscapes needs recognize how the process of making engaged in a set of spatial and social practices. These practices create a field of relationships that define the rituality of rock art as well as the sacredness of landscapes. In this paper, we discuss this process in a prehispanic agrarian community of Central North Chile. We propose the process of making rock art related to the animation of a world constituted by a web of non-human...


Another Elk Petroglyph from the Gateway Site: Some Possible Functional Implications (2005)
DOCUMENT Full-Text James D. Keyser. George Poetschat.

During a field trip in conjunction with the Fall 2006 meeting of the Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists (WAPA), the authors led a group to the Gateway petroglyphs (48LN348), which had been recorded two years before (Keyser and Poetschat 2005). During the site visit a combination of low-angled Fall sunlight (on September 16) and the attention of several experienced rock art researchers resulted in the recognition of a large elk figure, only parts of which (legs, antlers) had been...


Apishapa Rock Art and Soul Capture (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Huffman. Frank Earley.

Rather than a western extension of the Plains Village tradition, the Apishapa phase was more likely an eastern extension of the Great Basin Desert culture. Among other things, Great Basin origins explain the Apishapa foraging economy that focused on small mammals, antelope and deer, and meager horticulture. Insubstantial structures and temporary rock shelter habitations attest to residential mobility. As others have noted, Archaic rock art in the Great Basin and Apishapa areas are remarkably...


Applying the Archaeological Resources Protection Act to Rock Art (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Linea Sundstrom.

The Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA) provides a legal framework for site protection. A review of various ARPA cases involving rock art points out the advantages and challenges of referring rock art vandalism and theft for prosecution. Case outcomes have ranged from out-of-court settlements to fines to incarceration. The keys to successful prosecution of such cases are appropriate public education about archaeological resource protection laws, competent gathering of evidence,...


Archaeological Assessment of the Area Surrounding the Proposed Gregory Mountain Landfill San Diego County, California (1991)
DOCUMENT Citation Only SRS, Inc..

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.


Archaeological Chemists & Chemical Archaeologists: Working Together in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, TX (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Steelman. Jessica DeYoung. Carolyn Boyd.

This research is a collaboration between chemists and archaeologists to study the ancient mural paintings of the Lower Pecos. Using two independent methods, we are able to provide reliable age estimates for rock paintings. To obtain direct dates, we oxidize organic material in paint layers using plasma oxidation followed by accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating. For minimum and maximum ages, we isolate calcium oxalate in overlying and underlying accretion layers for combustion and...


The archaeology of dreams and what it tells us about climate change (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only David Whitley.

Why does archaeology matter in the 21st century? One value is its ability to help us understand how humans react to changing circumstances, not with law-like statements but instead in terms of general behavioral patterns. The social context south-central California rock art, a record of visions or dreams, is an example of this fact. As partly indicated by rock art, the Medieval climatic anomaly led in one area to a population collapse but, in a related region, to population increase and the...


Archaeometric Studies of Rock Paintings in Colombia, South America: Geochemical and Mineralogical Characterization (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Judith Trujillo.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geochemical studies of rock paintings in Colombia help to reflect on the technological processes used by the painting peoples to make these representations. With the use of analytical techniques, the chemical and molecular composition of pigments and of possible raw materials used in their manufacture are identified. Geochemical and mineralogical analyses...


Are the Tohono O'odham Descendent from the Hohokam and Their Predecessors? A Rock Art Test of Occupation Continuity in Southern Arizona (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Janine Hernbrode.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper reports data supporting continuity of Hohokam and O'odham occupation and use at the Cocoraque Butte Rock Art Complex by the Archaic, Hohokam, and O'odham people. Data analyzed are from a comprehensive recording of over 11,000 rock art elements completed in March 2018. Surface artifacts indicate the site was in use from 4000 to 5000 years before...


Around the Lower Pecos in 1,095 Days: A Baseline Rock Art Documentation Project (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerod Roberts. Victoria Roberts. Carolyn Boyd.

The Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and northern Mexico houses some of the most complex and compositionally intricate prehistoric rock art in the world. Presently, there are over 300 archaeological sites reported to include rock art in Val Verde County Texas, with a vast majority not being revisited since they received their site designation 30 to 50 years ago. In January 2017, Shumla Archaeological Research and Education Center launched the Baseline Rock Art Documentation Project: a...


The Art of Survival: Mitigating the Impacts of PTSD and Combat Stress through the Manipulation of Moral Status and Identity in the Colonial-Era Rock Art of Southern Africa (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Sam Challis. Andrew Skinner.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the South African colonial period, settler incursion was met by indigenous resistance, sparking a series of brushfire conflicts. In the borderlands of the colony, “Bushman” bandits conducted an insurgency against colonists, facing as they did so significant traumatic stress. Being horse-borne was part of their identity, as was their association with...


The Atlatl Motif in Rock Art (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Lawrence Loendorf.

This is an abstract from the "From the Plains to the Plateau: Papers in Honor of James D. Keyser" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock art researchers often claim that an oval with a vertical line through it represents an atlatl, but many of these depictions are not very convincing examples of atlatls. A better way to identify atlatls is to find examples that show anthropomorphs holding an atlatl while throwing a dart or holding an atlatl in a...


"Bear Coming Out": A Distinctive Plains Shield Motif (2004)
DOCUMENT Full-Text James D. Keyser.

Bear Gulch, an extensive rock art site in central Montana, has several examples of a distinctive shield design showing a bear emerging from its den. This design is known from both ethnographic shields and other rock art images across the Northwestern Plains, including two shields at the Castle Gardens site in Wyoming and one from Montana’s Valley of the Shields site. The comparison of the designs from Bear Gulch with others from both ethnographic sources and other rock art sites illustrates part...


Betwixt and Between: Petroglyph Boulders on Liminal Locations in the Southeastern Mountains (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Johannes Loubser.

As far as can be ascertained, all documented petroglyph boulders in northern Georgia and western North Carolina occur next-to old Indian overland trails or certain river corridors, specifically at transition points on the landscape. Moreover, these transition points occur between sites with mounds and town houses at one end and certain mountain tops at the other. Whereas a few Cherokee accounts explicitly mention petroglyph boulders at such locales, the placement of some others can be inferred...


Beyond Boundaries: A Discussion of "out-of'place" Yokuts and Chumash Motifs (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Gorden. Devlin Gandy.

Rock art research by Grant (1965) and Heizer and Clewlow (1973) revealed the prolific number of painted images that Chumash and Yokuts cultures produced in South Central California. Previous research (ibid; Lee 1991; Grant 1979) often focused on defining distinctive stylistic components and elements that characterize and differentiate these respective traditions, and define their cultural boundaries. Borderland rock art sites such as Carneros Rocks and Painted Rock have become continued points...


Beyond the Solstice (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Elanie Moore.

The Great Murals of Sierra de San Francisco, Baja California, Mexico, have been the subject of in-depth study (Guttierez 2013; Hyland 1997; Rubio 2013; religiVinas 2013). The latter include recordation of major sites and reconstruction of age, cultural affiliation, and hypotheses as to meaning and function. Growing evidence supports that these sites display light patterns correlating with winter / summer solstice timings. Arguments have been presented that light manifestations exhibit...


Big Picture, Little Picture: Reconstructing Rock Art and Context in Both the Virtual and Physical Word (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Yerka. Russell Townsend.

This presentation explores the ways in which 3D reconstruction can succeed as an innovative platform for both archaeological study and public engagement using a case study from the Hiwassee River watershed, North Carolina. The project, initiated by the Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO), Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), involves an effort to repair a vandalized petroglyph panel. The rock art panel is a complex composition of incised, interwoven petroglyphs from which a 1.5 m...


Body Modifications among San Hunter-Gatherers: A Relational Practice and Subsistence Strategy (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Vibeke Viestad.

This is an abstract from the "Body Modification: Examples and Explanations" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Body modifications are a well-known aspect of various cultural practices among the historically and ethnographically known San hunter-gatherers of Southern Africa, but not until recently have such practices been analyzed within an interpretative framework that gives reason to suggest that they were mostly performed to ensure harmonious...


Burning Water: Time and Creation in the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Boyd. Kim Cox.

The White Shaman Mural (~2000 BP) is a planned composition with rules governing the portrayal of symbolic forms and the sequencing of colors. Using digital microscopy we determined that all black paint was applied first, followed by red, then yellow, and last white. Complex images were woven together to form an intricate visual narrative detailing the birth of the sun and beginning of time. One of the key figures in this creation narrative is a small anthropomorphic figure bearing red antlers...


Castle Gardens Ceramic Vessel (2002)
DOCUMENT Full-Text Lawrence Loendorf.

In 1987 a broken ceramic vessel was discovered at the Castle Gardens site in central Wyoming. Craig Bromley, Bureau of Land Management, assisted by members of the Wyoming Archaeological Society, conducted a test excavation recovering about 80% of the pot. Gail Gossett carefully restored the pot (Figure 1). In 1996, the Bureau of Land Management asked me to examine the restored pot; to offer a description of its manufacturing technique and its other attributes; and to compare the pot to other...


Chemical and Radiocarbon Analyses of Paint Samples from Oxtotitlán (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Russ. Karen Steelman. Marvin Rowe. Chris von Nagy. Mary Pohl.

The prehistoric rock paintings in the Oxtotitlán site are thought to be among the earliest of Mexico and represent the beginning of the highly influential Mexican muralism tradition. The proposed antiquity of the murals is based primarily on stylistic interpretation of the motifs represented in the paintings. Our objective was to use radiocarbon analyses of organic matter in the paint and biofilms covering paint layers to provide more direct evidence as to the ages of the artifacts. Small paint...