Finding Context for Rock Art Images in the Southwest

Summary

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.

This paper will demonstrate how cultural and chronological context for rock art images can be established using Polly Schaafsma’s Indian Rock Art of the Southwest book. I had photos of rock art from the Navajo Reservation I could not place in any tradition. Number one shows two dark red masked figures from Slim Canyon nearby Canyon de Chelly. A comparison with Schaafsma’s rock art styles suggests they may be a late regional variation of the San Juan Anthropomorphic style. Number two is a petroglyph of a bighorn sheep dominating a human and polychrome pictographs of anthropomorphs with zigzagged torsos from Mystery Valley next to Monument Valley. They can be assigned to the Kayenta regional style between c. 1050-1250 A.D. and its cultural context. Number three is a white abstract panel found in an unexplored Ancestral Pueblo shelter between Navajo National Monument and Navajo Mountain, which can be related to blanket designs in Schaafsma's documentation.

I will further interrogate the blanket design, whether it was the representation of a textile or the result of an interaction by its makers with the rock as a social agent who was being dressed. Visual evidence supporting the latter is implied in the design.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Role of Rock Art in Cultural Understanding: A Symposium in Honor of Polly Schaafsma   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25172