Rock Art (Other Keyword)

101-125 (209 Records)

Marking the Sacred: Rock Art Images in an Unusual Context (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jewel Gentry. Donna L. Gillette.

Rock art images, generally associated with outdoor landscapes and boulders occur in an unexpected context and very sacred space in the California Spanish colonial community of Mission San Miguel the Arcángel. The Mission Community consisted primarily of Salinan and Tulare native populations and included neophyte Indians from previously established nearby Missions. It has been suggested that images found etched throughout the sanctified interior are analogous to California Indian rock art with...


Marking Time and Place - Eclipse Representations in the Late Prehistoric Rock Art of the Central Mississippi River Valley (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Russell Weisman.

Total solar eclipses are perhaps the most dramatic of celestial events. During a total eclipse, for a few moments, while the moon passes unseen between the earth and the sun, viewers positioned directly in line with the sun and moon experience totality. The sun goes black. Day turns suddenly to dusk, winds stir and animals assume their night time behaviors. It is then and only then that the sun’s luminous and variable corona becomes visible. Solar eclipse representations have been widely...


A Matter of Time – Applications of portable X-Ray Fluorescence in establishing rock art chronologies (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Clare Bedford. David Robinson. Fraser Sturt. Julienne Bernard.

The aim in this examination was to examine the potential for portable XRF technology to contribute to chronologies of in situ rock art. In order to do this pXRF data from Chumash rock art panels in the Wind Wolves Preserve in South Central California were compared with one another, and with readings from ochre found in excavated deposits. These ochre deposits are associated with other artefacts which have known dates. The results showed that multiple pigments were used within each rock art panel...


Memory and Materiality in Rock Art and Ghost Dance Performances (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex Ruuska.

In this paper, I examine the materiality of memory practices as expressed in rock art associated with the Ghost Dance in the Great Basin, Colorado Plateau, and Eastern California. Building on Jeff Malpas’ (2010) claim that "place is perhaps the key term for interdisciplinary research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences in the 21st C." (Creswell 2015:1), and Susan Kuchler’s perspective of ‘landscape as memory’ in which embodied experiences "govern the mnemonic transmission of land-based...


Method and Theory in the Archaeology of Interior Salish Rock Art Sites on the British Columbia Plateau. (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Arnett.

Interior Salish rock art sites on the British Columbia Plateau are multi-component assemblages which include the geomorphology, the rock art and other surface and subsurface elements such as trails, manuports, petroforms, hearths, lithics, radiocarbon dates, flora and fauna. Defining the inter-relationships of these components is essential to understanding the site formation process. In addition, direct historical and cultural continuity between these sites and Interior Salish descendant...


Mountain Doorways: Caves, Shelters, and Rock Art in Past and Present Southwestern Honduras (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandro Figueroa.

Caves and shelters hold a special place among Mesoamerican cultures. Some of the earliest evidence of human occupation in this region is found inside these natural features, where well-preserved materials attest to the detailed knowledge past populations had of their surrounding landscapes and resources. In later time periods, caves were treated as the portals to the underworld and became an essential part of Mesoamerican ideology. The landscape of the Santa Elena highlands of southwestern...


Neandertal artists? Exploring misconceptions about Neandertal symbolic capacities through rock art studies. (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Chase. Genevieve von Petzinger. Oscar Moro Abadia.

The question of whether Neandertals created art is one that is currently under debate within the field of prehistoric art studies. Originally thought to be brutish and unintelligent, Neandertals have recently come to be acknowledged as complex humans with symbolic capacities, through discoveries of Neandertal-associated modern behaviours including burials, pigment use, and ornament creation. One of the last hold outs separating the symbolic and artistic abilities of Neandertals from those of...


New Methods for Rock Art Recording at Petrified Forest National Park (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Lohman.

Researchers and park staff recorded rock art at Petrified Forest National Park with a number of different and disparate approaches over the past half-century. As part of a graduate research project a standardized multi-scalar approach for recording rock art at the park was developed. The development process examined the efficacy of four different approaches for creating panel sketches. A comparison of the variables of time to complete, accuracy, and perceived ease for each method revealed the...


The Origin of Human Creativity (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Maxime Aubert.

The recent discovery of cave paintings in Sulawesi dating to at least 40,000 years ago has altered our understanding of the origins and spread of the first painting traditions. This suggests that either rock art developed independently in Europe and Southeast Asia at about the same time, or that our species invented this trait prior to its initial expansion from Africa. Here I will discuss the implication of this discovery as well as new evidence from Borneo with the aim to deepen our knowledge...


Patterns through space: a spatial analysis of Murujuga rock art, Northwest Australia. (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucia Clayton Martinez.

Spatial analysis is a methodology that has been widely used for researching rock art. It has had a wide-ranging focus, varying from informed methods (using ethnographic information), to formal, and experiential methods. Spatial analyses undertaken on Murujuga, the Burrup Peninsula in northwest Australia, have primarily focused on establishing chronologies, the clustering of rock art motifs at a broad landscape scale, and the relationship with resource foci. My research has focused on formal...


Petroglyphs of East Tank Mesa and the Mac Stod Great House: Using Rock Art to Gauge Regional Influences in Petrified Forest National Park (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Maxwell Forton.

East Tank Mesa is a prominent landform located within the new expansion lands of Petrified Forest National Park: harboring a high concentration of Pueblo II-Pueblo III petroglyph panels and one of the region’s few possible Chacoan outliers. This possible outlier is the Mac Stod site: a seven-room pueblo possessing some of the hallmarks of Chacoan architecture (core veneer masonry, large rooms, long straight walls, and well constructed rectangular doorways). The nature of Mac Stod, and whether it...


The Petrographs of Janos, Chihuahua and its Archaic Community (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Emiliano Gallaga. victor ortega. Tobias García.

In this paper, we will present the preliminary results of the first field season of the El Peñón del Diablo, Janos, Chihuahua Project, focused on an interesting rock art site on the chihuahuan prairie. We like to emphasize, that this archaeological project was created under the Janos community initiative, which wanted to know more about the site for its protection and for tourist development in the area. Thanks to the close collaboration between the Janos municipality, the Centro INAH Chihuahua,...


Phylogenetic Approaches in Examining Western North American Rock Art: The Evolution of the Shield-Bearing Warrior Motif (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Karly Law. Ben Chiewphasa. Lorena Craig.

The present study examines rock art and its ritual landscapes as the physical remnants of evolving cultural traditions. By incorporating an evolutionary framework in rock art studies, we can determine if rock art traditions evolved via descent with modification versus blending and borrowing of ideas. This project focuses on Fremont and Ceremonial Style shield-bearing warrior motifs associated with ritual contexts and spaces (animal medicine, cosmology, and shamanism). Drawing upon several...


Pictures, Patterns and Objects: Rock-Art of the Torres Strait Islands, Northeastern Australia
PROJECT Liam Brady.

This series showcases innovative research in Indigenous studies, history and culture. Thematically, it profiles ways in which settler society and Indigenous cultures have intersected, clashed, melded and meshed. Each book emerges out of research conducted in close collaboration and partnership with Indigenous people and communities. The series is geographically confined to Oceania. It is wide-ranging in subject-matter, yet it has a distinct focus on cross-cultural dialogues. Its intention is to...


The Piedras Rayadas of El Tigre, Honduras: Brokering Place and Cultural Memory (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Marie Kolbenstetter.

This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Grooved boulders seem to be an archaeological feature unique to El Tigre island in Honduras. Distributed around the small island, they are known locally as piedras rayadas, and feature in local oral histories. As durable traces, their meaning is everchanging, yet...


Pisanay and the Endangered Rock Art Traditions of Arequipa, Peru (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jo Burkholder.

Drawing on the archaeological excavations at the site of Pisanay, located in the Sihuas Valley of Arequipa (southern) Peru, this paper will situate the rock art at the site within the broader contexts of multiple rock art traditions in the region. These traditions include both painted and pecked images on rock surfaces, a wide variety of geoglyphs, mobilary art, and sacred offerings made to particular rocks and geographic landmarks that represent huacas (loosely ‘holy places’). Within the...


Places, paths and territories: Exploring the multifunctional nature of northeastern Ontario rock art (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only François Gagnon. Dagmara Zawadzka.

The rock art of northeastern Ontario is less well-known than its counterpart in northwestern Ontario. However, recent explorations of the numerous lakes and meandering rivers in the Canadian Shield have led to the identification of previously unknown sites, as well as to the proper documentation of previously known sites, thus increasing greatly the sample and allowing for the emergence of a more complex regional picture. As an example, the rock art of Temagami area is discussed. This large...


Planina Nazca bez záhad (2011)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jiří Sonnek.

The Nazca Plains without mysteries The author explains the pictures on the Nazca Plains as tended work areas, created while making ropes and nets. The adjacent pictures of animals and various symbols served as symbols of the groups of makers.


Polly - Rock Art - And Understanding Chaco (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Vivian.

This is an abstract from the "The Role of Rock Art in Cultural Understanding: A Symposium in Honor of Polly Schaafsma" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Polly's long and productive anthropological career has been characterized by her use of art as a means to better interpret the social and organizational characteristics of several prehistoric and historic societies in the American Southwest. Her research has ranged geographically from the northern...


Populations expansion as a replacement or merging of peoples: insights from the rock art of Doria Gudaluk (Beswick Creek Cave), Northern Territory Australia (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Smith. Ines Domingo. Didac Roman. Gary Jackson.

The rock art of Doria Gudaluk (Beswick Creek Cave) in the Northern Territory of Australia provided a valuable lesson in the difficulties of interpretation without local knowledge. Now, newly recorded motifs at the site—some only visible through digital enhancement—highlight the dangers of relating stylistic changes to population replacement. When considered in the context of local history, developments in the rock art of Doria Gudaluk during the second half of the twentieth century can be...


Portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) and Photogrammetric Studies In Illinois Rock Art Research (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Wagner. Kayleigh Sharp.

Illinois rock art studies conducted in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries typically used drawings, tracings, and print photography to record prehistoric petroglyphs and pictographs. These types of studies have been replaced in recent years by a variety of new methods including digital photography, DSTRETCH enhancement, photogrammetry, pXRF analysis, and other technologies. These new techniques have greatly enhanced our ability to quickly and accurately record rock art sites in comparison to...


Possible Images of Theobroma cacao in the Prehispanic American Southwest (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Crown.

The discovery of cacao residues in southwestern pottery raises questions about how much southwestern populations knew about Theobroma cacao. A number of possible images of cacao trees and pods suggest that some southwestern people were either familiar with the tree and the fruit that held cacao beans. Comparisons of Mesoamerican and southwestern imagery offer possible parallels in depiction of trees and fruit, and the southwestern material provides potential iconographic models that may be...


Postcards in the Landscape: Considering Lower Pecos Pictographs as Nahua Pilgrimage Destinations (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Tate.

This is an abstract from the "Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chicomoztoc, the place of seven caves, from which the Nahua ancestors emerged, appears in many central Mexican pictorial manuscripts as a place of origin and one of pilgrimage. Like the mythical Aztlan, its location has not been confirmed; perhaps several such places served different groups of people. However, recent...


Prehistoric images and medicines under the sea (2006)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jean Clottes. David Wescott.

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...


Prehistoric Rock Art and Historic "Graffiti": Petroglyphs at a Multicomponent Site in Eastern New Mexico (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Jenks.

Recent field investigations at Los Ojitos, a multicomponent site in the Middle Pecos River Valley, have focused on refining the site chronology and documenting the land-use practices of Hispanic homesteaders who settled this area in the late nineteenth century. Like earlier visitors to this site, the Hispanic settlers were attracted to the clean water provided by several little springs ("ojitos") that empty into the river. Survey of one of these spring-fed drainages identified at least 45...