Arene Candide to Anzick: Ritual Use of Red Ochre

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Paleo Lithics to Legacy Management: Ruthann Knudson—Inawa’sioskitsipaki" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Use of ochre occurs from Paleolithic times to the present. I am interested in when and how humans first used it symbolically. The color red has symbolic importance that crosscuts cultural boundaries in African, Australian, and Native North American societies. Ochre lumps, particularly red ochre, and powder indicate symbolism and ritual behavior dating back to the MSA in Africa. For hunting societies of the Eurasian Upper Paleolithic and New World Paleoindian periods, red ochre was probably meaningful regardless of its use-context. Societies in both regions sprinkled ochre in a pulverized powdered form over human burials and placed lumps of ochre in graves. They also cloaked associated funerary offerings with red ochre, and sometimes included ochre on the bones of large mammals that they were known to hunt. Red ochre as an earth material may have been venerated based on an interpretation offered by Stafford and colleagues for the Powers II Red Ochre Mine in Wyoming that Clovis and other individuals were depositing offerings of projectile points to the red ochre. This paper describes the elements of the spiritual system within which ochre was used in the Clovis era.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paleo Lithics to Legacy Management: Ruthann Knudson—Inawa’sioskitsipaki   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33604