Shamanistic Rock Art Motifs: Dynamic and Emplaced Performances of the Sacred among the Ojibway

Summary

The Ojibway on the northern and southern shores of Lake Superior of North America created transitory as well as relatively permanent material expressions of sacred experiences and cultural narratives. Using examples of 'spirit objects' expressed via emplaced pictographs in the landscape in Ontario Canada and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Mide’wiwin birch bark scrolls, and culturally modified ‘storied’ trees, this paper compares and contrasts dynamic and emplaced expressions of the sacred, and the interplay between the two. In process, I explore the role of 'spirit objects' in marking places, promoting a sense of the cultural past, emplacement and displacement, and “ancestral memory.”

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Rock Art and Sacred Spaces: Recent Approaches to the Study of Ritual Landscapes

Keywords

Spatial Coverage