Iconography and Art: Rock Art (Other Keyword)
1-25 (156 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I have been searching for the photographs and tracings made by J. Louis Giddings in June 1940 as reported in the American Antiquity, Vol. 7, No. 1 (July 1941) since I was an undergraduate student in anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) in 1992. When entering the program for my master’s degree in the 2000’s I had to content myself that...
3D Documentation of a Basketmaker Petroglyph Panel in Southeastern Utah (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our research involves creating and analyzing a 3D model of an inaccessible petroglyph panel in southeastern Utah. The rock art panel occupies the cliff face of an alcove approximately 10–30 m above the modern ground surface. Such heights make documentation difficult; this lofty position likely caused the...
3D Imaging in Remote Areas, Rainforests, and Other Hostile Environments: Investigating Identity and Interaction in Eastern Honduras (2018)
Ancient eastern Honduran populations utilized foreign symbols in limited elite contexts, such as site planning and architecture, but most elements of material culture reflect clear connections to Lower Central America. Iconography seen in petroglyphs appears significantly different from that seen in other media, and may yield additional information and insights into identity formation and interactions within the region. For many reasons, these petroglyphs have not been extensively studied. While...
Ambrose Bierce’s Indian Inscriptions: Biographic Art Along the Bozeman Trail (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Art and Archaeology of the West: Papers in Honor of Lawrence L. Loendorf" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1866 Ambrose Bierce accompanied the Hazen expedition whose tour inspected military outposts in the Department of the Platte. During cartographic work, Bierce recorded two "Indian inscriptions," one petroglyph on the Powder River near Ft. Reno, and an arborglyph on the Yellowstone River upstream from Pompey’s...
Analyzing Archaic Rock Art in Northern New Mexico through Landscape Survey (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. My paper will be centered around an archaeology of the ancient indigenous rock art analysis through the landscapes of northern New Mexico. This project utilizes two primary lines of evidence. First, it examines the plant and animal ecology of the Rio Grande Gorge, particularly the so-called natural signs or traces of mammals such as the modern distribution of...
An Animist Shamanism: The World behind San Rock Art (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Painting the Past: Interpretive Approaches in Global Rock Art Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hunter-gatherer cosmology in southern Africa is very clearly multinatural; persons human and nonhuman working to behave intelligibly to each other so that relations are brokered and maintained. Until recently, however, rock art interpretations have implied a physical division between realms animal and human,...
Anthropomorphic Figures in Arabian Rock Art (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock art is vastly abundant in Arabia, and there are large concentrations of panels in key localities. Hail, Najran and Tabuk are the most prominent ones. These three localities house thousands of panels, which can be multi-period, and were done in various styles and engraving techniques. Anthropomorphic figures can give us an insight into these past...
Archaeoastronomy, Beliefs, and Violence: Documentation, Methodology, and Visualization of Rock Art Panels from CANM, Colorado (USA) (2021)
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. This paper focuses on the presentation of selected examples of Ancestral Pueblo and historic Ute rock art panels located in the Sand Canyon and Sandstone Canyon areas within the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument (CANM), southwestern Colorado, USA, and raises some methodological questions. Some of the panels...
The Art and Light of Paint Rock, Texas (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Paint Rock, Texas (41CC1) at over 300 m in length is the largest continuous rock art site in Texas. Many of its older pictographs have been scheduled to spectacularly interact with the sun on the equinoxes and solstices and apparently also on the cross-quarter days. The older rock...
Artistic Currents in Late Paleolithic Times: An Approach from the Northwest of Iberia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Local and/or Exotic Interactions: Symbols, Materials, and Societies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Traditionally, the distribution of Paleolithic art was limited to the so-called “Franco-Cantabrian area,” but the distribution of this graphic phenomenon has enlarged with the identification of new sites in different parts of the Iberian Peninsula. Previously, the northwest of Iberia, roughly delimited by the valleys of...
Assessing the Patterns and Variation of a Common Pecos River Style Motif (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Art of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Lower Pecos canyonlands of southwest Texas are home to over 350 identified rock art sites containing various pictographic styles. The Pecos River Style is the most well-known and contains many diagnostic characteristics. One of the most ubiquitous is a motif that has been interpreted as a prickly pear pouch, gourd rattle, catfish on a string, dart-headed...
Assessing the Variability and Chronology of Red Linear Style Pictographs of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas: Final Results (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper aims to further define the characteristics of Red Linear style (RLS) anthropomorphs and establish its temporal relationship with other regional rock art styles of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas and Coahuila, Mexico. In 2013, Boyd et al. presented a list of diagnostic attributes for the RLS...
Avian Imagery on Preclumbian Ceramics from Pacific Nicaragua (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout human history people have been entranced by avians. Their ability to fly from earth to the sky, while displaying grace and beauty, as well as exhibiting a ferocity to protect their nests and hatchlings was revered. Birds were often seen as messengers between the sky and earth,...
Baumgarten’s *Aesthetica and the Rock Art of Northeast Brazil (2021)
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. Alexander Baumgarten’s *Aesthetica gave birth to modern aesthetics. He had in mind a specific relationship between human cognition and sensory perception. Originally, aesthetics was the “science of sensitive knowing” (*scientia cognitionis sensitivae), or the study of how we know the world through our senses (sensing it)...
Best Foot Forward: The Social Significance of Cattle Forelegs in South African San Rock Art (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Painting the Past: Interpretive Approaches in Global Rock Art Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock paintings of cattle raids are common in South Africa's southeastern mountains. Traditionally, such scenes are thought to illustrate some degree of conflict between two groups. The postures of the cattle depicted in the same scenes have been interpreted as showing movement such as walking or being driven from one...
Beyond the Stereotype: Working toward a Landscape-Based Model of Study and Cross-Cultural Exchange of Fluteplayer Rock Art Imagery in Chaco Canyon (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Fluteplayer is widely recognized within rock art, characterized by a figure holding and/or playing a flute. It has been misinterpreted as the Kachina Kokopelli. As a result it is now entangled with modern, predominantly Western, interpretations of the Kokopelli character, which are subsequently rooted in...
The Black Rock Site: It's Not Just Paleoindian Rock Art (2021)
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. Black Rock is an extremely rare, fully pecked rock art site in southwestern Wyoming. It is dominated by unusual anthropomorphic forms and associated abstract/geometric designs, with three identifiable zoomorphic figures (two mountain sheep and one elk). As part of a 1990s dating study, 14C and rock varnish...
Bold Line Geometric: Revisiting a Lesser-Known Rock Art Style in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Art of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bold Line Geometric is one of five currently identified rock art styles in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas. It has previously been described as thick, glossy pigment applied in bold lines, geometric shapes, and globular anthropomorphic and zoomorphic forms. In 1965, David Gebhard laid the ground work for the initial description and definition of...
The Boulder Glyphs: An Analysis of Prehistoric Conflict and Historic Ranching Lifeways along the Big Bend of the Rio Grande (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located in the Sierra Vieja breaks, a subset of the Chihuahua Desert near the Rio Grande in far west Texas, are fields of thousands of small vesicular boulders and survey work found some contain petroglyphs. Beginning in the fall of 2018 the Center for Big Bend studies led a thorough investigation and documentation of over 200 petroglyphs pecked into these...
Brushstrokes of the Past: Unraveling Pecos River Style Murals with Harris Matrix Composer (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stratigraphic analysis has long been a cornerstone of archaeological research, and the practice of displaying and analyzing complex relationships between stratigraphic surfaces and layers using Harris Matrix Composer is commonplace. New methods in rock art research have incorporated an understanding of...
The Buffalo Creek Site: Animal and Human Rock Art Diversity in Northern Wyoming (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A small sandstone rockshelter overlooking Buffalo Creek in the southeastern foothills of the Bighorn Mountains has been of interest to researchers since the 1960s due to its shield-bearing warriors, but they account for only a few images at the site. Several different animals here include elk, bears, and...
Can We See Travelers in Rock Art? (2019)
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 Schaafsma’s extraordinary body of rock art publications allows us to return repeatedly to the images to ask different questions as our knowledge expands. Rock art informs my studies of pre-European Native American murals and 3-dimensional human figures because murals are compositions on...
Capturing Time: 3D Preservation of California Central Valley Rock Art for Future Generations (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The preservation of cultural heritage through advanced technology allows us to understand and protect the past for future generations. This poster presents the Rock Art Heritage Preservation Project, a project aimed at digitally conserving the legacy of California Central Valley's rock art with the Southern Sierra Miwok Nation. California's landscape...
Ceremonial Depictions of Bighorn Sheep Anthropomorphs in the Jornada Mogollon Region (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Art and Archaeology of the West: Papers in Honor of Lawrence L. Loendorf" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Jornada Mogollon region is known for its rich body of rock art. Researchers have suggested that elements such as cloud terraces, masks, goggle-eyed figures, and horned serpents are associated with ceremony. Although hundreds of bighorn sheep images exist in the regional rock art these figures are not...
The Chalcatzingo Reliefs Seen from a Critical Perspective (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper is dedicated to carrying out a detailed study of some of the reliefs that were carved on the slopes of Cerro Chalcatzingo, during the Middle Formative period, as well as to present some critical reflections about the interpretations that have been made by other authors. All descriptions imply interpretation, in consequence, every process of...