Rock Art Research and Ethnohistory on the Northwestern Plains and Adjacent Rocky Mountains

Summary

Ethnohistorical sources in our region are mainly used for rock art explanation relative to warfare scenes, but they are equally important for tribal demographics and travel patterns and often more detailed than other sources. Ethnohistory can also provide support for theories about gender and age of rock art production and use when no other information is available. Such references supply details regarding religious practices and beliefs as they actually happened, not as they were later interpreted in ethnographic perspective as an idealized practice. Ethnohistorical documents can provide information on clothes and hairstyles that reflect tribal affiliation as well as individual status within the group. Incidents of daily life that might be reflected in rock art can be found in ethnohistorical sources as well as messages that may have been left in that media as warnings to others not only relative to marking territory and warfare but also relative to possible encounters with animals and even diseases, such as smallpox. Various kinds of information are available in ethnohistorical records to answer these and other questions when investigating explanations for rock art.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Solving Archaeological Research Problems in Rocky Mountain and Plains Prehistory

Keywords

Spatial Coverage