From the Plains to the Plateau: Papers in Honor of James D. Keyser

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "From the Plains to the Plateau: Papers in Honor of James D. Keyser" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Growing up in Ronan, Montana, within the Flathead Indian Reservation, instilled James D. Keyser with a keen interest in Northern Plains archaeology and anthropology. PhD studies at the University of Oregon expanded the scope of his interests to the Plateau. Both regions have been the focus of his research for the subsequent four decades. Although Keyser’s early publications in the 1970s and early 1980s focused on subsistence and lithics, he increasingly began to focus on his real interests: the iconography of ledger drawings and rock art. By the 1990s Keyser added ethnographic interpretations to this mix. His efforts have yielded numerous sites documented, with detailed symbolic and historical interpretations, creating a body of evidence about Northern Plains and Plateau iconography that rivals the knowledge accumulated in other archaeological subdisciplines. The papers in this session reflect Keyser’s research interests, approaches, and results, in some cases constituting additions to our understandings of the art and iconography in these two regions, in others applying his methods elsewhere, but in all cases emphasizing the significance of research on iconography, art, and the prehistoric past.

Other Keywords
Iconography and Art: Rock Art • Rock Art • Archaic • Ethnohistory/History • Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology • Crow • Dating Techniques • Volunteer • Aesthetics • Historic

Geographic Keywords
North America: Great Plains • United States of America (Country) • North America (Continent) • USA (Country) • North America: Rocky Mountains • Arizona (State / Territory) • Idaho (State / Territory) • Utah (State / Territory) • Nevada (State / Territory) • California (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)

  • Documents (10)
Documents
  • Archaeoastronomy, Beliefs, and Violence: Documentation, Methodology, and Visualization of Rock Art Panels from CANM, Colorado (USA) (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Radoslaw Palonka. Katarzyna Ciomek. Vincent MacMillan. Ross Gralia. Maiya Gralia.

    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 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...

  • Baumgarten’s *Aesthetica and the Rock Art of Northeast Brazil (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Reinaldo Morales.

    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)...

  • The Black Rock Site: It's Not Just Paleoindian Rock Art (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Francis. Mark Willis.

    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...

  • Decoding a Crow War Party Tally at 24ST560 (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only James D. Keyser. David Kaiser.

    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. Site 24ST560, located northwest of Billings, Montana, contains the most detailed example of a Crow war party tally known in northern Plains rock art. Known from two avocationalist publications, we analyze the site imagery using Crow ledger drawings and Crow ethnographic information, and determine that it represents the...

  • Ethnography of Salinan Rock Art (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only David Whitley.

    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. The Salinan Tribe occupied territory extending from the California’s Salinas Valley across the Santa Lucia/Central Coast Ranges to the Pacific coast. Although poorly known, they created a small but important corpus of rock paintings. Even less well-known is the ethnographic record on these pictographs. This includes a...

  • Horses in East-Central Montana Rock Art: A Test for Crow, Blackfoot, or Other Ethnic Affiliation (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John W. Greer. Mavis Greer.

    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. Keyser’s interest in horse styles in rock art of the Northwestern Plains has expanded our knowledge and ways of thinking about this image. His recent work to quantify differences in Crow and Blackfoot horses has led to identifying infusions of each group into the other’s territory. However, his identification system has...

  • On the Margin, Marginal Too? A Western Outpost of Paleolithic Cantabrian Cave Art (NW Iberia) (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ramón Fábregas Valcarce. Arturo de Lombera-Hermida. Marcos Garcia-Diez. Xose Pedro Rodriguez. Ramon Viñas.

    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. The Franco-Cantabrian group of cave art ranks among the best known examples of Paleolithic symbolic behavior. For more than a century no decorated cave was reported beyond the Nalón Valley in the center of Asturias, until the carvings and paintings from Cova Eirós were discovered. At more than 100 km from the Nalón,...

  • Recording and Interpreting Rock Art as a Volunteer (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Bies. Linea Sundstrom.

    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. Jim Keyser has been a key figure in recording and interpreting rock art in Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota for many years. This paper highlights some of his many contributions in understanding Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric narrative rock art. Jim has expanded his impact on the field of rock art research by...

  • Searching for Tobacco Man: Jim Keyser and the Ethnographic Analysis of Columbia Plateau Rock Art (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Don Hann.

    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. American Indian peoples of the Columbia Plateau have engaged with numerous scholars and others since the mid-nineteenth century to document many aspects of their traditional lifeways. The resulting documentary record has provided a gold mine for researchers studying the rock art of the region. Jim Keyser has been a...