Interpreting Palimpsest Rock Art in the North American Southwest

Summary

This paper examines what might be called the "palimpsest panel" rock art tradition of the northern Rio Grande region of New Mexico. Palimpsest panels are rock faces with petroglyphs that have accrued in a layered fashion through time. Prior research into such panels has typically focused on questions of chronology, each layer representing a distinct culture-historical era of iconographic production or a chapter in a linear chronology. Here, however, I move away from the traditional chronological approach, in order to examine the iconographic data present in the form of representation itself, the so-called palimpsest. The way that meaning develops though the act of layering itself is a process by which the icons interact and modify one another. Such an approach reveals not only the rich, information-laden periods between discrete chronological chapters but also demonstrates that palimpsests are far more than the sum of their parts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20139