[SpringerBriefs in Anthropology] Images and Power ||

SpringerBriefs in Anthropology

Springerbriefs in Anthropology and Ethics

For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/11497

http://www.springer.com/series/11497

Polly Schaafsma

Images and Power

Rock Art and Ethics

Polly Schaafsma Museum of New Mexico Santa Fe, NM, USA

ISSN 2195-0806 ISSN 2195-0814 (electronic) ISBN 978-1-4614-5821-0 ISBN 978-1-4614-5822-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-5822-7 Springer New York Heidelberg Dordrecht London

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012950768

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v

Series Editor’s Foreword

The Anthropology and Ethics Series seeks to foster honest, respectful, and scholarly dialogue on topics that have proven to be contentious. Recent publications have encouraged anthropologists to re fl ect on the ethical rami fi cations of their research activities (Chacon and Dye 2007; Chacon and Mendoza 2007a, 2007b, 2012; Dreger 2011; Gregor and Gross 2002, 2004). In order to provide a venue to further address ethical issues, Springer’s Teresa Krauss requested that I create this new series. Volumes in this series are designed to document and promote investigative proto-cols which honor the ethical obligations that anthropologists have toward their col-leagues, the discipline, and their study populations.

Polly Schaafsma is the author of the fi rst publication in the series titled Images and Power: Rock Art and Ethics. Her deep respect for Amerindian rock art is re fl ected in her long-standing commitment to its preservation. In the 1980s, she played a key role in the establishment of the Petroglyph National Monument (see Schaafsma 1987), and she remains an internationally recognized advocate for the protection of Amerindian cultural heritage. Since many present-day Native Americans consider rock art to be a source of supernatural powers, Schaafsma points out that these images are more than mere archaeological “resources” to be recorded and catalogued. As such, Schaafsma values Native American perspectives on anthropological matters, as evidenced by her collaboration with Amerindian scholars (see Schaafsma and Tsosie 2009).

Schaafsma’s Images and Power: Rock Art and Ethics documents the many threats to rock art ranging from vandalism, theft, unbridled development to the commer-cialization of Amerindian images. Native American rock art motifs are now found on everything from key chains and paperweights to computer mouse pads. This commodi fi cation extends into the New Age Movement which has co-opted rock art to further its own marketing agenda.

This book also sheds light on the complicated task of interpreting rock art. This endeavor often exposes fault lines between Western science and contemporary Native American worldviews. Moreover, this investigation shows how various tribes

vi Series Editor’s Foreword

have differing opinions and attitudes toward rock art. Therefore, there are no blan-ket rules with regard to ethics and rock art. Instead, Schaafsma argues for a judi-cious case-by-case analysis of what is to be considered ethical.

Most signi fi cantly, Schaafsma calls for the full disclosure of research fi ndings. For her, the obfuscation of data (no matter what the motivation) violates profes-sional ethical standards and harms Amerindians in the long run (see Chacon and Mendoza 2012 for similar conclusions). As such, when interpreting rock art, anthro-pologists should honestly adhere to what the data allow. To do otherwise is to des-ecrate the images and to tarnish the legacy of the Amerindians who created them. In short, she discourages anthropologists from eschewing their roles as scholars for that of social activists.

Images and Power: Rock Art and Ethics will likely have signi fi cant impact on policies dealing with Amerindian rock art preservation. Therefore, it is imperative that anthropologists form respectful and mutually bene fi cial partnerships with Native Americans. However, for these partnerships to be valid and fruitful, all par-ties should be allowed to freely express their viewpoints.

Dr. Richard J. Chacon Series Editor of Springer’s Anthropology and Ethics

vii

Works cited

Chacon, Richard and David Dye. 2007. The taking and displaying of human body parts as trophies by Amerindians. New York: Springer.

Chacon, Richard and Ruben Mendoza. 2007a. North American indigenous warfare and ritual violence. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Chacon, Richard and Ruben Mendoza. 2007b. Latin American indigenous warfare and ritual violence. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Chacon, Richard and Ruben Mendoza. 2012. The ethics of anthropology and Amerindian research: Reporting on environmental degradation and warfare . New York: Springer.

Dreger, Alice. 2011. Darkness’s descent on the American Anthropological Association: A cautionary tale. Human Nature <DOI: 10.1007/s12110-011-9103-y.> Accessed April 22, 2011.

Gregor, Thomas and Daniel Gross. 2002. Anthropology and the enemy within. The Chronicle of Higher Education. July 26, 2002. Accessed February 8, 2002. <http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/724271/posts>

Gregor, Thomas and Daniel Gross. 2004. Guilt by association: The culture of accu-sation and the American Anthropological Association’s investigation of Darkness in El Dorado. American Anthropologist 106(4):687–698.

Schaafsma, Polly. 1987. Rock art and associated archaeological sites of the Las Imagines Archaeological District, West Mesa, Albuquerque: statement of signi fi cance. Manuscript submitted to the National Park Service, Region 3 Of fi ce, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

viii Works cited

Schaafsma, Polly and William B. Tsosie. 2009. 2009 Xeroxed on stone: Times of origin and the Navajo holy people in canyon landscapes. In Landscapes of origin in the Americas , ed., Jessica Joyce Christie, pp. 15–31. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

Whiteford, Linda and Robert Trotter. 2008. Ethics for anthropological research and practice . Long Grove, Il: Waveland Press.

ix

Contents

1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 1Is It Art? ..................................................................................................... 3

2 Ethics and Worldviews ............................................................................ 7Time, Space, and Conflicting Paradigms ................................................... 9

3 The Interpretation Game and Ways of Knowing the Past ................... 21Interpretive Approaches ............................................................................. 23Oral Traditions and Inclusion/Goals and Confusion .................................. 26NAGPRA and Other Formal Encounters ................................................... 29Closing Doors ............................................................................................ 34

4 Robbing and Reinventing the Nonmaterial Past ................................... 37Sanitizing Meaning .................................................................................... 37

The Rock Art .......................................................................................... 39Eviscerating the Record: Western Biases, Values, Ethics, and “Shamanic Avoidance” ................................................................... 42

Change: Superimposed Meanings and Rock Art’s Roles in Reinventing the Past, “Desired Knowledge,” and Searching for Identities .................... 55

5 The Use and Reuse of Imagery: Ownership, Banning, and Commodification ...................................................................................... 61Image Appropriation .................................................................................. 62Boundary Issues ......................................................................................... 67

6 Discussion.................................................................................................. 71Roles and Goals in Colliding Worlds ......................................................... 72Ethics, Preservation, and Global Heritage ................................................. 75

Herein Lie Many Challenges ................................................................. 79

x Contents

Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 83End Notes ......................................................................................................... 85Acknowledgments ............................................................................................ 85

References ....................................................................................................... 87

Index ................................................................................................................ 101

xi

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Hunter-gatherer painting, Barrier Canyon Style, eastern Utah (ca. 5,000–500 BC). The manipulation of the sense of space by size differentiation of the figures creates an illusion of three-dimensional space that encloses a tall ethereal figure (ca. 2 m in height). In addition, varied methods of paint application, abstraction, and simplification of the human form effectively communicate an “other-worldly” aspect of this composition ........................................................................... 5

Fig. 2.1 (a) and (b). Eel Dreaming, northern Australia. This rock art site is situated near a waterhole said to be the home of serpentine ancestral beings marking events in the time of the creation, the period in the past poorly described as the Dreamtime. (a) The nearby cliff is composed of colorful bands of strata suggesting serpents. (b) Paintings of these beings occur in great numbers, and in some cases follow the lines of stratigraphy that they enhance, thereby confirming the presence of the serpentine supernaturals that the stratigraphy suggests ........................................................................ 14

Fig. 2.2 Ancestral Pueblo petroglyphs covering the walls of a narrow canyon head west of Zuni, New Mexico. The original meaning of most of the figures is unknown, but today the petroglyphs and the topography and waterholes contribute to the site’s current significance as a shrine marking a series of important events described in Zuni oral traditions ............................................ 16

Fig. 4.1 Barrier Canyon Style rock painting, eastern Utah. The shamanic themes, exempli fi ed by this composition that includes birds, snakes, fl ight metaphors, and transmogri fi cation, are typical components of these paintings ......................................................... 41

xii Contents

Fig. 4.2 Pecos River Style painting showing ascending and diving fi gures viewed as portrayals of shamanic travel ............................... 41

Fig. 4.3 Petroglyph of a Basketmaker II fl ayed head skin. The incised loop on top indicates ritual use. San Juan River, Utah ..................... 49

Fig. 4.4 Thirteenth century forti fi ed cliff structure in southern Utah with painted shields, Grand Gulch, Utah. Similar sites are distributed throughout the Four Corners region in southern Utah and northern Arizona ............................................................... 51

Fig. 4.5 Weapon and shield-bearing warriors pictured in the Galisteo Basin of New Mexico by the Southern Tewa Pueblo people between ca. 1350 and 1525 CE. In addition to the warriors themselves, the panel contains a rich suite of cosmological symbolism related to warfare, scalping, and rain such as the eagle-feathered morning star icons ................................................... 52

Fig. 5.1 (a) Likely Mescalero Apache rock painting from Hueco Tanks State Park. (b) Its recent reuse as a logo for the Speaking Rock Casino by the Pueblo Indians of Ysleta del Sur, Texas ........... 63

Fig. 5.2 Ancient and recently appropriated rock art imagery for modern use in new contexts by Euro-Americans: (a) Fremont images on a T-shirt, (b) a post-1350 CE Pueblo face reproduced as jewelry, and (c) a pre-1300 CE Ancestral Pueblo figure on a milk carton ..................................................................................... 64

Fig. 6.1 Ancient Ancestral Pueblo petroglyphs from the Four-Corners region, from which small quantities of stone have been removed by grinding and pecking. Areas targeted include the head, headdress, feet, and heart, all of which were/are possibly regarded as repositories of spiritual forces. (a) Ancestral Pueblo figure, ca. 500–900 CE, Montezuma County, Colorado. The careful, removal by grinding with minimal impact to the figure is thought to indicate that the removed material was used toward positive ends. (b) Basketmaker figures, ca. 200–500 CE, Coconino County, Arizona. Removal by pecking has resulted in varying degrees of damage to the images, and the motivating forces behind this activity are not clear. It could be a way of divesting the images of their power, or alternatively, of acquiring some of it ................................ 76

Fig. 6.2 Two examples of Basketmaker II petroglyphs (ca. 100–400 CE) destroyed by chiseling on the Navajo Reservation along the San Juan River, Utah. These figures are said to have been obliterated during the twentieth century because their perceived inherent power was believed to have been acquired by sorcerers to cause illness. Note the contrast in patina between the chopping and the nearby undamaged petroglyphs ........................... 77

1P. Schaafsma, Images and Power: Rock Art and Ethics, SpringerBriefs in Anthropology, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-5822-7_1, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Rock art is one of the most immediately accessible aspects of the archaeological record. Persisting over millennia and viewed by numerous peoples and cultures through time, petroglyphs and rock paintings are not only highly provocative but interactive, as they continue to exert their power on observers, demanding mean-ing. Rock art is not inert cultural residue. Images function in many ways, and as visually oriented human beings, we are all affected by and respond to images that invade our lives at every turn through a multitude of media in contemporary societies. Encountered in the landscape, images carved or painted on stone equally capture our attention, engendering a multitude of perceptions that vary greatly depending on our cultural legacies, roles, and personal histories. These responses have recently given rise to the multifaceted ethical considerations reviewed in this book.

Above all else rock art is visual dialogue, and the dialogue takes many forms, actively conveying meaning and communicating, whether or not its intended signi fi cance de fi es interpretation. Even for its creators, it was multivocal, symboli-cally and metaphorically. Rock art presents a kaleidoscope of meanings that shift through time depending on the viewer. On the other hand, ascribing meaning is not a Rorschach test. One of the challenges facing archaeologists is a concern for origi-nal meanings—what was intended in the past by those who made it? Rock art also de fi nes cultural landscapes on social and spiritual levels. It is a social record of resi-dence and migrations. What can images on stone in the landscape tell us about the social dimensions of the ancient communities?

Rock art presents numerous and unique ethical challenges within today’s anthro-pological climate. This discussion, while taking on more global concerns, has as its particular focus ethical issues that have been generated as human bearers of old-world cultures interact with American Indian rock art in the American West (fn.1). While “rock art ethics” are relatively straightforward when “hard” issues are at stake, such as image appropriation toward commercial ends, to say nothing of out-right physical theft, there are many more additional concerns. These more dif fi cult problems, perhaps less obvious at fi rst, revolve around nonmaterial mental

Chapter 1 Introduction

2 1 Introduction

constructs—worldview and religions, and the interpretation of the meaning and functions rock art had in the past and may continue to exert. These are powerful value-laden threads that comprise a complex fabric of concerns, some of which are identi fi ed here. If the roots of con fl icting values and perspectives can be identi fi ed and the contexts of issues of contention more fully explicated, then possibly ethical issues can more successfully addressed.

Among the topics for discussion is how rock art is interpreted, both by archaeolo-gists as well as its indigenous heirs. Innumerable factors bear on the interpretive issue that snag the attention of the ethics department, including cultural bias, change, rein-vention, perceptions of ownership, and even demands for secrecy. Imagery in the “wild” is also subject to appropriation. Due to the catchy visual appeal of “marks on rocks,” dialogues on rock art and ethics are sometimes dominated by material concerns regarding the copying of these elements for commercial purposes or their “borrowed” use by artists their own work (Heyd 2003 :39–40; Hyder 1999 ) . Alternative roles and commodi fi cation may be perceived as threatening to the identity of the original culture or subjecting traditional imagery to trivialization. Further, in regard to publication, from academic venues to tourist brochures, is it OK to publish some images but not others? Who decides? How do rock art researchers and native consultants resolve dif-ferences when they occur, and is reconciliation always reasonable, desirable, or neces-sary or even possible? Importantly, do ethical considerations apply to both sides of the debate? Does rock art ever fall into the category of a “global heritage?”

“Who owns the past?” This is an issue that has emerged since the 1980s, as indigenous claims of cultural ownership are weighed against the broader society’s value on open communication (Brown 2003 :ix–xii). And what are the goals of the scienti fi c-humanistic enterprise of documenting and studying this imagery? Who bene fi ts and how? Are some of these endeavors damaging to the American Indian descendants? When con fl icts arise, do ethical goals seemingly achieved by bowing to opinions of native communities or consultants transcend in importance the scienti fi c data of archaeologists? Do answers derived from archaeological data out-weigh indigenous interpretations? Can varied interpretations live side by side? Is there more than one “truth?” Obviously, there is no single response.

The challenges presented by the persistent presence of images carved and painted in the landscape and their subsequent interface with contemporary archaeologists, rock art researchers, and Native Americans are many. Among these challenges are dramatically contrasting paradigms about “the way things are.” Judeo-Christian, or more broadly what might be called Abrahamism, is grounded in worldviews, for-eign to the traditional thinking of all American Indians (Deloria 2003 ) and other indigenous people as well. Perceptions of cosmological order—time, space, and their qualitative attributes—differ signi fi cantly. Also critical to these differences are cultural distinctions between things regarded as animate or inanimate. Cosmogony is fundamental in that it sets in motion a navigational map, so to speak, on behav-ioral levels that in turn account for the diversity of perspectives and the ensuing actions brought to bear on our subject.

Indigenous colleagues engaged in collaborations vary considerably among them-selves. Values, traditional knowledge, and thus opinions among American Indian

3Is It Art?

consultants differ between individual spokesmen, even within the same tribal group. Acculturation is another variable that may blur native perspectives and attitudes in regard to the past. Does the archaeologist, with a focus on the past, concede to opin-ions in the present when con fl icting views arise? And fi nally, some debates on ethics and rock art seem to exist largely between scholars!

Any discussion of “rock art ethics” leads one down a path of unpredictable encounters. This book is not aimed at solutions to these encounters; it is not a road-map to ethical practices. Instead, it reviews some of the better understood problems and the consequent questions that these raise, with the idea that the identi fi cation and contextualization of issues will facilitate negotiations and understanding on both sides of the issues at stake.

Is It Art?

It is clear that image-making is intrinsic to the state of being human. So then what is rock art? Before any of this can be discussed, there is the problem of “appropri-ate” terminology. Few agree even in regard to the term “rock art” itself. Is it art? What is art? What is rock art ? An artist friend, knowing of my interest in images from the past, once said to me, “There is no progress in art!” No society exists with-out art, although a word for it may be lacking. One may easily argue that just as there is no such thing as a primitive language—there is no such thing as “primitive” art. Our dictionary de fi nitions of “art” are extremely broad and refer to efforts to imitate nature or create productions of pleasing arrangements of sound, color, forms, and so forth, acknowledging an aspiration toward aesthetic qualities to which human beings respond. Although the values ascribed to such qualities may be culturally conditioned, the fact that today we fi nd aesthetic grati fi cation, for example, in view-ing the paintings in Paleolithic European caves or the ancient Bradshaw paintings in Australia reminds us of the universality of humanity. Recently, artist-art historian Barbara Olins Alpert has examined in depth the cognitive continuities between Paleolithic cave painters and artists throughout history (Alpert 2008 ) . Exploring the ability of all of us to relate to the visual legacy of art, from cave paintings to Picasso, she argues for art as a connective medium between all human beings, thereby dem-onstrating the unity pervading human expression and perception regardless of time and cultural origins (Alpert 2008 :186–190). What we call “art” breaches boundaries of time and cultures, even though the speci fi c meanings it held for its creators may be forgotten. The issue of cross-cultural aesthetics has also been considered at some length and brought into the realm of ethics by Thomas Heyd ( 2003 : 43), who sug-gests, “ Not to consider marks on rocks from the aesthetic point of view, when they are offered as such, constitutes a kind of neglect.”

Discussions pro and con about “art” as an appropriate term, nevertheless, persist (Francis 2005 :190; Francis and Loendorf 2002 :20; Munson 2011 ; Murray 2011). Many cultures, including the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest, have no word for “art” that purportedly isolates their creative material productions (fn.2). At Hopi,

4 1 Introduction

for example, the closest equivalent is “tuhisveni,” meaning literally “ingenious marking,” a de fi nition that following Kelley Hays-Gilpin ( 2010 :9) puts emphasis on the process of making objects. Some assert that that the notion of “art” is a modern European invention and that it carries Western baggage (Shiner in Heyd 2003 :40; Munson 2011 :2–3) and that large-scale societies have developed the notion of “art” as a distinct category for things produced by artists simply for aesthetic pleasure. Viewed as products of civilization and leisure, separate from all other important concerns, this concept becomes a criterion for a place in the hierarchy of societies. The perception of art-garnished complex societies juxtaposed with the rest of the world that lacks “art” appears, however, to be an elitist propaganda designed to elevate civilizations, especially those of the Old World. Unfortunately, in a turn-about view, some Native Americans themselves have contributed to this debate, offering the opinion that calling rock art “art” degrades it. They narrowly miscon-strue art as a Western concept con fi ned to secular pieces, framed and hung on the walls of galleries and museums, signaling out in particular its commercial proper-ties. They perceive that labeling rock art “art” imposes secular Western values and Euro-American belief systems on their imagery, divorcing it from their cosmologies and religions and thereby depriving it of its sacred and spiritual character. Such arguments are made by those—including both archaeologists and American Indians—seemingly totally unaware that art and religion have been united through-out most of human history and that museums and galleries are modern innovations granting art a space in a secular world. I would argue that via this perceptual twist, by denying rock art a place in human artistic legacy, American Indians themselves are unwittingly diminishing their cultural heritage. Meanwhile, the term “rock art” is sometimes sidestepped by archaeologists with expectations that eventually it will be dropped. Francis and Loendorf ( 2002 : 20–21) state, “Nevertheless, the term is so ingrained in the literature and in the consciousness of archaeologists and other researchers that it will take time to change its use.”

Amid this dialogue, I fi nd it not only useful, but essential, to retain the term “art,” recognizing that art has its ups and downs in human history and that likewise not all periods in have provoked the production of imagery (including rock art) high in aesthetic content. Most importantly , the medium and venue are not the criteria. Images painted and carved on stone in landscape setting cannot be arbi-trarily excluded as art from images painted (or carved) on any other surface, whether it be paper, canvas, Masonite, pottery, or wall plaster, etc., inside or out-side of buildings!

Like art in its traditional functions worldwide, paintings and carvings on stone are yet another form of visual legacy created to communicate and reaf fi rm symbols and metaphors of stories, cosmologies, and worldviews, projecting conceptual uni-verses, cultural values, and social concerns. Within such complicated and dynamic frameworks, it was the role of the artist to create a network of metaphor and anal-ogy connecting social and cosmological dimensions ( Townsend 1992:46), con fi rming and reinforcing worldviews and cultural paradigms. Art stores cultural meanings whether, for example, it takes the form of sculpture on the façade of Gothic cathedrals or paintings and petroglyphs in the landscape. Neither Gothic

5Is It Art?

sculpture nor rock art is “ l’art pour l’art ,” created for or the sole purpose of self-grati fi cation or remuneration. Rather both served signi fi cant social purposes functioning toward communicative ends. The development of certain aesthetic qualities was not an end in itself, but these qualities worked to fuel and validate whatever message was at stake.

Rock painters and carvers more often than not projected their sense of aesthetics into their graphic productions to evoke responses and emotions among their con-temporaries, much as these same qualities continue to move and capture us as observers, distant in time with different cultural baggage. The role of aesthetics is undeniable in the highly abstracted anthropomorphic shapes of the Barrier Canyon Style in eastern Utah painted by hunter-gatherers (Fig. 1.1 ). The humanlike forms that dominate this style are eerily nonhuman, thus distancing the viewer as he/she is projected into a supernatural space where these fi gures appear to reside. In the Lower Pecos River region, Solveig Turpin (201la:2–3) has explored environmental and social factors during the late Archaic to explain how scalar stress gave rise to high-pro fi le religious practitioners who conveyed their insights and consolidated their shamanic powers via the expressive paintings of the Pecos River Style. Thus taking economic factors into consideration, Turpin links these notable achievements in art with need. Is not reducing these productions to “marks on rocks,” with the aim of appearing neutral in a tangle of misconceptions, the ultimate in denigration?

The problems brought into high relief in regard to this one issue—the use of “rock art” as an acceptable term—exemplify the kinds dif fi culties encountered and the kinds of challenges faced on a multitude of other fronts as we continue the discussion on rock art and ethics.

Fig. 1.1 Hunter-gatherer painting, Barrier Canyon Style, eastern Utah (ca. 5,000–500 BC). The manipulation of the sense of space by size differentiation of the fi gures creates an illusion of three-dimensional space that encloses a tall ethereal fi gure (ca. 2 m in height). In addition, varied meth-ods of paint application, abstraction, and simpli fi cation of the human form effectively communicate an “other-worldly” aspect of this composition


Rock art in the New World is a not-so-ancient phenomenon in terms of human leg-acy, and the earliest migrants were heir to a long history of image-making. While the earliest dates for rock art in general in the Americas have yet to be agreed upon—and they are not critical to this discussion—we know that they go back many thousands of years (Rowe 2001 ; Turpin 2010 :39, Whitley 2000 :38–39). Rock art is, par excellence , an artifact of past ideologies and worldviews based in comprehen-sive ideas of how the cosmos is structured and what comprises the natural and supernatural domains. Many treatises on rock art are based on well-reasoned archae-ological approaches, sometimes combined with ethnographic information, offering credible hypotheses or explanations for the rock art in question. Each, however, presents its own set of ethical challenges.

Many factors in fl uence the way rock art is understood by both scholars and indigenous people, so the issue is far from straightforward. This chapter seeks to explore some of the cultural perspectives on both sides of the debate, focusing on fundamental conceptual building blocks such as views of time, space, and land-scape. In addition, whether rock art is regarded as “a resource” or “heritage” is a key factor that greatly in fl uences perspectives on rock art (Steinbring 1992 ) . “Heritage” is a dynamic category that involves living people and rock art as legacies that are subject to rede fi nition in the present. It follows that rock art as “heritage” calls for sensitive Western perceptions that take into consideration both contemporary heirs as well as claims for rock art as a “global heritage.” As an aspect of indigenous cultural heritage, approaches to rock art include humanistic and contemporary social considerations. “Resource” by comparison is a conceptually more limiting term, commonly employed in contemporary Western jargon by archaeologists and rock art site managers, that reduces rock art to its information potential in illuminating the past or even for its various kinds of economic spin-offs. As we approach this discussion, I will begin with some observations from the platform of archaeology.

Certain kinds of data are available for study in the rock art record, and these data heavily structure the kinds of questions we ask. As archaeologists and rock art research-ers committed to scienti fi c investigations, we quantify and categorize our fi ndings. We

Chapter 2 Ethics and Worldviews

8 2 Ethics and Worldviews

arrange them in relative linear chronological order, pleased with absolute dates if they are available. We seek patterns in element and style distributions and de fi ne tradi-tions of image-making, establishing both boundaries and patterns of interaction. We tabulate nonrandom correlations between rock art and evidence of other past activities—habitation sites, farming, routes of travel, hunting and collecting locali-ties, and so forth. These observations provide an etic, or outside, perspective on pat-terns and events that went unnoticed or that were taken for granted by the cultures responsible for the rock art. In summary, our observations provide historical, economic, and ideological information (Schaafsma 1997 :16). Simultaneously, we are traversing a landscape intricately structured spatially and temporally in very different ways by the people whose artifacts we study and their descendants of today.

Recently, as archaeologists and rock art scholars, we are fi nding the need for self-re fl ection (Schaafsma 1997 :8). Traditional directions in archaeological thinking in general have been subject to reevaluation, and there has been a demand for a willing-ness to look at ourselves as we look at the past—an important step in bridging concep-tual boundaries and understanding humanity and its many ideologies. What factors or intellectual frameworks are operative that determine our approaches to archaeological data? Michael Graves ( 1994 :5) asks, “To what extent do our ideas about the past re fl ect the historical and contemporary conditions of Western society? How, then, has this context affected archaeological knowledge?” As Preucel ( 1991 :17) questions whether archaeologists through their examination of artifacts discover an ancient past or do they create alternative pasts, he alerts us to our own latent biases. Our own ideol-ogy and the methods we bring to bear on studying others as anthropologists are up for scrutiny. Current paths to knowledge and the cognitive interests of several theoretical postures have been explored to this end (Preucel 1991 ) .

In very general terms, processual archaeology is an analytic science grounded in logical positivism (Preucel 1991 ) . An alternative post-processual archaeology advo-cated by Hodder ( 1991 ) includes references to hermeneutics, the science and method-ology of interpretation. Hermeneutic archaeology is concerned with understanding meanings in terms of cultural norms through studies that attempt to “recover intention-ality” in terms of empathic projection. In Mark Leone’s terms ( 1982 ) , it is a phenom-enological view that involves something like being a participant-observer—immersing one’s self in another culture in order to understand it from the inside. Critical theory in archaeology, closely associated with Leone’s work, asserts that Western theories and language impede our understanding of other worldviews. Thus, a critical examination of the Western perspective is needed in order to appraise the deeply rooted assumptions that structure the worldview of archaeologists (Schaafsma 1997 :8).

Particularly relevant here are some of the ways in which our thinking about how the fundamental dimensions of time and space are structured and how this relates to our ideas of the cosmos and, more immediately, our environment and the landscapes in which rock art is found. Do our preconceived notions of cosmological order impact or even block our access to understanding other cognitive universes and, consequently, the information that rock art encodes? Within the intercultural dialogue presented by rock art, concepts of space and time must be recognized as cultural constructs, not absolutes. How do these differences play out in the arena of ethics and rock art?

9Time, Space, and Conflicting Paradigms

Time, Space, and Con fl icting Paradigms

While time, space, and landscape are important contexts for rock art, they embody broader considerations when differing or even con fl icting views about them are brought to bear in the engagement between indigenous people and Western scholar-ship. Rock art is inextricably linked to landscape, but landscape itself is layered with numerous cognitive maps regarding space, time, and events by the cultures engaged with it and who left their art on rocks in it over the millennia. Although the upper-most physical “layer” is shared today by archaeologists and the American Indians alike, the ideas about what is going on will differ, and they are often irreconcilable.

The following discussion in large part derives from earlier thoughts on similar issues presented in a keynote address to the International Rock Art Congress in 1994 (Schaafsma 1997 ) . In that paper entitled “Rock Art, World Views, and Contemporary Issues,” I began with the idea of examining the roots of Western perceptions of land-scape to see how these values structure our ideas about rock art in ways that contrast with and perhaps blind us to indigenous values and ideologies. The result was a patchwork of ideas assembled from a variety of sources, perspectives, and angles. This subject of land and rock art contexts has also been addressed by American Indians. From the Native American side of the issue, Walter Echo-Hawk ( 1997 :2) underscores the existence of fundamental contrasts in philosophies between American Indian people and the West, the former perceiving a unity of all life, the second split-ting it up “taking God out of nature and looking at nature and this planet as if it were not alive,” using it as a resource and commodity. Vine Deloria, Jr. identi fi es and then grapples with the con fl icts inherent in the encounter between Christianity and American Indian religions, and in a fi nal discussion in God is Red, he takes on the issue of land, sacred places, and moral responsibility (Deloria 2003 :271–296). These topics are fundamental to the conversation about rock art.

Rock art does not fl oat in a vacuum, but the nature of this non-vacuum is viewed very differently by Euro-Americans and American Indians. How land-scapes are conceived determines how peoples and cultures relate to them. Based in deep-seated, contrasting ideological perspectives, this is contentious ground. Recreational and Arcadian values aside, in the Western perspective, land itself is seen largely as a material resource that is valued in accordance with its eco-nomic potential (Schaafsma 1997 :12–13; 1998 ) . In practice, the economic machine that propels Western society demands increasingly destructive exploi-tation of the landscape, simultaneously providing greater access to rock sites and the potential for vandalism. Such mega-threats, however, have given rise to a mega-conservation/preservation ethic—the other side of the same coin. Rock art recording and “preservation” have become major concerns. In regard to archaeology and rock art ethics, what gets to be preserved, how, and why? Do “records” in the form of notes, drawings, photographs, and digital recordings stashed in archives within buildings take the place of the real thing absent the land? How do archived archaeological data differ from sacred histories or icons infused with spiritual powers?


By de fi nition, petroglyph and rock paintings articulate with cultural landscapes in a variety of meaningful ways. M. Jane Young ( 1985 ) explores the various ways in which rock art images in the Zuni landscape function to connect the Zuni with their past as well as how power-invoking imagery imparts power to place—all in contrast with the dominant culture that regards rock art, like the land itself, as a “resource” existing within secular space. In order to address the diversity of ethical issues, it is mandatory to examine further and in some depth the perceptual differences between the Western world and indigenous peoples of the Americas in regard to landscape. Only by so doing can we begin to comprehend the extent of the cultural divide and thus address ethical considerations in an informed manner. The review that follows is derived from an ear-lier presentation in which I examined these issues (Schaafsma 1997 ) .

First, however, there follows an anecdote, slightly modi fi ed from my earlier ven-ture into this topic (Schaafsma 1997 :8–9). I have chosen to repeat it here because of its signi fi cance in regard to imagery’s context. At the same time, it exempli fi es the complexity and confusion latent in contemporary encounters between ourselves and the Native American community, alerting us to the unexpected.

Conversations with Maria . “They were sure out to hurt somebody,” she said to me. We were sitting in my living room looking at slides of beautifully detailed ceremonial fi gures painted between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries in rock shelters near the ruins of Tompiro Pueblos of central New Mexico. I was stunned. I had chosen these particular images to show my good friend, Maria, from Taos Pueblo because I had wanted her reaction to them, but I had not expected this .

I had never taken a clue from the fact that she and her relatives had told me for years about some fi gures on rocks in the foothills behind the village, “surely made by witches—human fi gures with arrows stuck in them,” they said. Certainly the product of some malevolence, they assured me. A nephew had even offered to “dress me like an Indian, wrapped in a blanket,” and sneak me up there on horseback to have a look. Very bad fi gures, they insisted. Someone might have even been hung up there, her daughter suggested! I began to wonder about their apparent glee at the thought of taking their white friend to such a place.

For a while, I had thought that this was a site-speci fi c case. After all, the fi gures were said to be pierced like voodoo dolls. But I soon became aware that among the Taos whom I talked with, witchcraft was thought to be the motivation behind all rock art. Joe said the ancient Ancestral Pueblo petroglyphs on Taos Creek near Ranchos were done by witches, and so on it went. Thus, I had chosen these particu-lar slides to show Maria—partly due to curiosity as to what she would say and partly to show her that these lovely fi gures painted in traditional dress with dance kilts, rain sashes, and necklaces could not possibly have been done with witchcraft in mind. They obviously had ritual meaning derived from the nitty-gritty of Pueblo religious ideals. (Furthermore, I had a personal agenda: I was getting antsy about Maria and her relatives thinking that my life was occupied with the study of the machinations of witches.)

I was unsuccessful. This elderly woman, a bastion of Pueblo and Catholic faith combined, never budged on her opinion. She remained certain that whoever put this stuff on the rocks was out to cause problems.


The following day as we were traveling together to Jemez, I suggested that we stop at Coronado State Monument where the kiva murals from the protohistoric Tiwa Pueblo of Kuaua were on display. The mural picture fi gures of ceremonial participants are very much like those we had been looking at in the rock art the evening before. I was only slightly less than astonished to fi nd that she was entranced by the kiva paint-ings. Her reaction was totally positive as she recognized the ceremonial importance of what was pictured on the kiva wall, relating them to paintings in Taos kivas.

In conclusion, fi gures in the landscape were believed to be the machinations of witches, and the kiva paintings were religious (thus good), and the imagery was essentially the same; in other words, the context overrode the image. The confusing factor here is that Taos beliefs about rock art appear to have been heavily in fl uenced by attitudes inherent to traditional Judeo-Christian thought wherein there is a funda-mental dichotomy regarding secular outside and holy inside space. Paintings inside (kiva or church, no matter) are related to religion, and fi gures on the rocks outside perceived as threatening. As far as I know, however, this view of rock art held by some members of this Northern Tiwa Pueblo does not extend to other Pueblo com-munities, including the Southern Tiwa speakers, who do not share this view (see following). This account is signi fi cant in regard to rock art ethics and the problems latent in native accounts when indigenous people subscribe to Western paradigms, an issue to which I will return.

For the moment, however, I want to pursue the differences highlighted here between inside and outside space. This dichotomy has profound implications in regard to the perception of landscape and the rock art in it, as Western development pushes against indigenous sacred lands and the resulting ethical quandaries that result from these encounters. In order to better understand the fundamental differ-ences in the de fi nitions and values of space, landscape and place between American Indian and Euro-American paradigms further review is in order.

Space and Time: The Judeo-Christian Perspectives. Just as anthropologists examine the mythologies of other cultures to discover the roots of their values and cosmolo-gies—ways of de fi ning the world—we may also examine our own myths to discover the bases of our own belief system that structure the way we view the world. In turn, these views, embraced as “truths,” impact the way we view other peoples’ cultures and the artifacts thereof, including rock art (Schaafsma 1997 :9). Our Western world-view, like all others, is uni fi ed by “a few deep structural principles having to do with a common template of understandings” (Gossen 1986 :ix). Especially pertinent to this discussion are the ideas of secular versus sacred space and the linear concept of time. Eva Hunt ( 1977 ) uses the term “structural armature” to refer to the supporting conceptual framework that determines a particular perspective or cosmology. Hunt ( 1977 :259), in reference to Mesoamerican cosmology, stresses that such armatures are “quite fi xed over long periods of time, across geographic, social, and culture boundaries.” Likewise the concept equally applies to fundamental notions of time and space that underlie Western paradigms (Schaafsma 1997 :9–10).

Why does the West today regard landscape space primarily as secular and a resource, and how does this relate to our notions of sacred interiors of religious buildings? The


duality of outside versus inside space has a de fi nite impact on how we regard landscape and the imagery that occurs in it. A complicating factor is that within the Western para-digm, landscape, if not strictly secular, is regarded by some as inhabited by malevolent powers as illustrated in the Taos story. This, too, has an ancient history.

Beliefs in witchcraft were clearly well established in Europe in the Middle Ages and even by that time had a long heritage on European turf. “As late as the fourth and fi fth centuries AD, paganism fl ourished in Europe, including the veneration of sacred trees, rocks, and springs and of spirits of fi elds and streams (Russell 1972 :55, 68). (fn.3) These things were literally outside the walls of the church, out of doors, and therefore suspect and even dangerous, and their worship was eventually con-demned. In Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, Jeffrey Burton Russell ( 1972 ) describes how witchcraft during this period grew out of the survival of early pagan religions and magical practices indigenous to Europe. Old gods were labeled as ‘demons,’ and human beings that took on their powers became witches. In the New World, as in the Old, the Christian attitude toward people subscribing to indigenous religions resulted in the ascription of threatening labels such as witches, heretics, and ulti-mately repression of the thinking that challenged the authority of the Church” (Schaafsma 1997 :10). The inside/outside dichotomy is manifested culturally in a variety of ways. Vincent Scully notes that from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, it was the architect’s preoccupation to build an image of heaven on earth—inside. Nature, on the outside, is deadly, unpredictable, and thus to be feared, but inside the walls of buildings, it is possible to construct a vision of perfection created by man. To quote Scully ( 1992 :78), “Who would go outside to wrestle with imperfection Ð ?” Deloria ( 1969 :175) concurs saying “Gone were the religious rites of the white tribesmen. Only the Gothic arches in the great cathedrals, symbolizing the oaks under which their ancestors worshipped, remained to remind them of the glories that had been.”

We can pursue this split even further by examining our own oral traditions. Basic to the issue of divesting the landscape of its sacredness is the Judeo-Christian account delineating how Yahweh (God) was removed from his mountain abode. “A signi fi cant outcome of this event was that God, encapsulated within the Ark of the Covenant inside the Tent of Meeting, was portable. One no longer had to journey to a moun-taintop to commune with God, but His presence could be called up within the Tent with the Ark inside. The landscape, in turn, devoid of God, was, in essence, secular-ized. The Ark (and Yahweh) were ultimately transported to the Temple in Jerusalem after having spent a long time cut off from the outdoors by the walls of a tent (but walls nevertheless)” (Schaafsma 1997 :110). This lengthy event, described from Exodus through Chronicles, is critically signi fi cant to the Judeo-Christian world-view. It explains and rationalizes the separation of secular from sacred space and the resulting associations of bad and good spiritual powers. Once God (Yahweh) was removed, the landscape was perceived as dangerous, harboring competing pagan, demonized gods, or alternatively, fair game for absolutely anything man wanted to do with it. We have already seen that rock art itself can be relegated to the “danger-ous” category. Conceptually related is the story of the eviction from the Garden of Eden, an event that immediately set the stage for humanity’s separation from nature.


In Genesis, thistles and thorns symbolize the nasty place outside of the realm of the holy and the nature hating that was the result of the expulsion (Solnit 1989 ) .

Originally in the Middle East, as in Europe, every fi eld, vineyard, well, spring, and mountain had its divine possessor, but once the split had transpired, there were many battles between the followers of Yahweh (God) and peoples who subscribed to nature-based religions. The much later conquest of Europe can be seen in similar terms. This conquest involved some of our own ancestors who, as late as the early Middle Ages in northern Europe, had to stop doing animal dances and worshipping nature in exchange for the worship of one God in a building (Russell 1972 :51). Eventually this desancti fi cation nature and the perception of where the sacred was located were repeated all over again in the New World and elsewhere (Schaafsma 1997 :11).

As for the persistence of structural armatures, the early foundations established in Western thinking in the Middle East were given new impetus and embellishments later on in Europe by philosophers such as Bacon (1214?–1294), Descartes (1596–1650), and Newton (1642–1727). “ Bacon made it explicit that our goal was to enslave nature through science, while Descartes described a mechanistic universe in which animals were only machines toward which we had no obligations and whose behavior was determined by material causes (Heisenberg 1958 :80). Newton contributed con-cepts of absolute space and linear time. The latter arranges historical events past, present, and future, like beads on a string that extend from a certain point in the past into an endless future” (Schaafsma 1997 :11). These developments overall also allowed for the detached pursuit of knowledge as to “how things work” and the devel-opment of a scienti fi c ethic wherein information is valued in and of itself. Applicable not only to the physical sciences but the social realm as well, anthropology itself aspires toward scienti fi c goals. Not to be overlooked, however, is the fact that the Western philosophic stance has contributed to the self-serving, value-laden concepts of Western Enlightenment and progress. Because anthropology, especially in the past, has ascribed to these beliefs of cultural superiority, intercultural friction has ensued.

In sum, this simple and hasty review provides some insight into the depth, com-plexity, and nature of Western structural premises held almost unconsciously and acted upon as some kind of “truth,” instead of one of many ways of describing the world. What is of interest here speci fi cally is how, within the detached conceptual framework of Western science, the perception emerges of a secularized landscape that determines how archaeologists and rock art researchers understand and struc-ture the past. Rock art is regarded as a fruitful “resource” into this end. Only recently have the contradictions and disjunctions between information gathered on the basis of archaeological data and indigenous perspectives been factored into the intercul-tural dialogue. Discrepancies in interpretations result in ethical issues demanding some kind of resolution. Before we can further understand the nature of these dif-ferences, however, we must take a closer look at some indigenous views.

Time, Space, and Indigenous Perspectives. While generalizations are risky, overall indigenous views of space and time thwart the Western paradigmatic framework of secular time and space, measurable in absolute terms that exist independently of the observer. Indigenous cultures often “map” space and time according to mythic events that establish cultural origins and that interconnect time, space, and social


order in a scared continuum, collapsing time, con fl ating past and present. In this way, indigenous concepts concerning rock art and landscapes are inseparable from sociocultural identity. Likewise, the indigenous peoples seldom, if ever, boxed up their divinities, thus removing them from the land.

In Australia, the land and all species, including people, share a common origin in the Dreaming, the ancestral past that existed before human beings, “yet extends into the present” (Flood 1997 :352; Tacon and Faulstich 1993 ) . The landscape of the Australian Aborigines, created by actions of ancestral heroes and totemic spirits, is a synthesis of the physical and spiritual worlds, and water holes, rivers, mountains, hills, and rock shelters are associated with creative activities of the Dreaming. After these were completed, the ancestral spirits went into the rock, ground, and water holes at places that have become sacred landscape locations (Fig. 2.1 ). Dreamtime activities are recorded in song, ceremony, myth, and rock art. Some rock art is thought to have been made by these ancestral heroes, or the art is seen as “shadows”—

Fig. 2.1 ( a ) and ( b ). Eel Dreaming, northern Australia. This rock art site is situated near a water-hole said to be the home of serpentine ancestral beings marking events in the time of the creation, the period in the past poorly described as the Dreamtime. ( a ) The nearby cliff is composed of color-ful bands of strata suggesting serpents. ( b ) Paintings of these beings occur in great numbers, and in some cases follow the lines of stratigraphy that they enhance, thereby con fi rming the presence of the serpentine supernaturals that the stratigraphy suggests


the marks left on the rocks when the ancestral heroes returned to it. In these ways, the rock art and the landscape have become integral to each other, con fl ating time and place. Further, Wandjina “shadows” are said to have had a continuous represen-tation since the Dreaming, evidenced by the thick layers of pigment that have accu-mulated as these fi gures have been repainted through time. Clan territories that are linked to ancestral activities in the Dreaming are often centered around a rock art site (Walsh 1988 :35–36). In sum, the landscape itself is imbued with mythic/historic and metaphoric/philosophical/sacred meanings, replete with symbolic references important to human life. Concepts of time and space connected by oral traditions unify time and places and their associated supernatural powers, forging a synthesis between people and their landscapes.

In regard to the Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest, Alfonso Ortiz (1969 :18–25) of San Juan Pueblo presents a complex picture of how the spatial organization of the northern Tewa world is integrated with the spiritual and social levels of existence. Each village represents the center from which the Tewa world expands, marked by hills and mountains. While mythic events are ascribed to speci fi c landscape features and places, this linkage is a fl exible one that can be moved around as people move about the landscape. In the Southwest, for example, the concept of the “center” is an abstract idea, one not tied in an absolute sense to a speci fi c place. The “center” can be simultaneously a shrine in or near the village, a stone in the vil-lage plaza, or the village itself. If the village moves, so do all the centers. Place is changeable depending on the perspective of the viewer. This perspective is reminis-cent of Bohr’s ( 1987 :24) observation from physics that there is an essential depen-dence of every physical phenomenon on the standpoint of the observer.

Within Pueblo landscapes in general, topographic features, with which rock art may be associated, are con fi rmations of events that dynamically integrate the mythic past and supernatural realms with an ongoing present. “The mere presence of carv-ings and paintings on rock heightens the sense of place for the Zunis, it reinforces their perception of themselves as a people intimately linked to their particular land-scape, a landscape where powerful beings dwell and where signi fi cant events of the past took place … augmenting their social cohesiveness and social identity” (Young 1988 :238). In fact, oral traditions linked to place and rock art together may function to collapse time (Young 1988 : 113–19). In this way, rock art functions in several roles simultaneously. The linear Western view of time is replaced in favor of a con-cept of cyclical time, the historical present being a constant repetition of the mythi-cal past (Geertz 1994 :48). Young notes that underlying Zuni philosophy is the fundamental unity of everything, and Zuni time lacks linear rigidity but is circular and fl uid instead. The past, present, and future may be ritually coalesced: “Although they [the Zunis] may introduce a myth as having occurred ‘a long time ago’ or ‘in the beginning,’ they do not envision the events of the myth as over and done with, situated at a single point in a linear fl ow of time; instead, they perceive them as ever-present, informing the here and now” (Young 1988 :117). Between mythological time and space and the here and now, Young sees what she refers to as a dialectic interaction. This is the indigenous world that rock art inhabits.

Beyond these generalizations, in the American Southwest, there are very speci fi c ethnographic accounts of the meaning of rock art sites and the imagery they contain.


It is useful to examine these as background against which to compare Western per-spectives. The Zuni, for example, maintain oral traditions about a site at some dis-tance from their town where petroglyphs cover the walls of a deep canyon head above large pools of water at a place called Hantlipinkia (Stevenson 1904 :34–43; Young 1988 :1–6). Contemporary Zunis have a strong mythic link to this place, even though the meanings of the petroglyphs, which are ancient, are indeterminate or vague at best (Fig. 2.2 ). Major events are said to have occurred during the mytho-logical time when the Zunis were in search of the center place, including the birth of the second set of war gods and the formation of the clans. Importantly, current ritual reinforces this link: Hooped drumsticks used in ceremonies connected to ini-tiation into the Bow Priesthood are said to be the original ones used at Hantlipinkia (Stevenson 1904 :588). These drumsticks thus validate the continuity between mythic time and contemporary ceremonies, as, in turn, they reinforce Zuni connec-tions to their past, sacred landscape, and the petroglyphs (Schaafsma 1997 :15).

Other Southwest rock art sites with strong ongoing mythic connections include eighteenth-century Navajo paintings and petroglyphs at the con fl uence of the Pine and San Juan rivers in northern New Mexico (now destroyed beneath Navajo Reservoir). As at Hantlipinkia, supernatural events described in several myths came

Fig. 2.2 Ancestral Pueblo petroglyphs covering the walls of a narrow canyon head west of Zuni, New Mexico. The original meaning of most of the fi gures is unknown, but today the petroglyphs and the topography and waterholes contribute to the site’s current signi fi cance as a shrine marking a series of important events described in Zuni oral traditions


together in a landscape once marked by rock art, home of the Hero Twins (Schaafsma 1980 :310–312, 1992:35). The rock art and the place itself con fl ated past and pres-ent, mythic and “real” time, forging a link between the ordinary and the spirit world. Before Navajo Dam was built and the landscape fl ooded, prayer pilgrimages were made to this location. In the canyons to the south, where paintings of the supernatu-ral ye’i remain, it is said that these paintings were made by the ye’i themselves after they had made the earth ready for mankind. They then left, but before going away, they put their images on the canyon walls “like a Xerox” so that they would not be forgotten (Schaafsma and Tsosie 2009 :18).

For the Keresan and Southern Tiwa Pueblo people of the Rio Grande Valley, the petroglyphs and their volcanic setting on the 17-mile long West Mesa escarpment on the edge of Albuquerque are an important focus, as they maintain a role in religious life, facilitating communication with the supernatural realm. Prayers are offered at shrines near the petroglyphs and at the volcanoes at times of community rituals or for personal reasons (Evans and Stof fl e 1992 ) . During a walk through the petroglyphs in 1993, Phillip Lauriano, a Southern Tiwa elder from Sandia Pueblo, described to me how the rock art commemorates or signi fi es regenerative, protective, and living forces in the landscape. Plants used in healing and religious rituals are procured from this area. In their landscape setting, the petroglyphs are a protective force that wards off violent weather, fl oods, and too much rain. Within this perceptual context, the Pueblo leader stressed that one must have not only a strong relationship to the land but correct thoughts. He regarded the petroglyphs as important repositories of infor-mation—“a book of knowledge”—providing cultural feedback for young people coming back home after they have been out in the world. In his words, “The petro-glyphs keep the traditions.” He later stated, “The petroglyphs are the nerve center of Pueblo culture, religion, and tradition. They are there to guard, to protect, to teach, to advise, to doctor, to cure. When anything is planned in the way of ceremonies, there are certain areas where you make your announcement in the form of a prayer. And that is channeled into the petroglyphs, into the hopper, so to speak, somewhere beyond the great divide in a reservoir of strength and power, and the spiritual is awakened. It authenticizes (sic) the ceremony” (Lauriano 1998 :8).

Finally, there an additional point of interest in this discussion. As a Southern Tiwa elder, Phillip Lauriano’s perception of rock art as a “book of knowledge of traditions” stands in dramatic contrast to that of his Northern Tiwa linguistic cous-ins in Taos, for whom, as described previously, rock art is regarded with apprehen-sion. Although the Taos view deviates from that of other Pueblo peoples in the Southwest, it alerts us to the fact that as scholars, we should not expect standardized responses from indigenous communities about the signi fi cance and the interpreta-tion of ancient imagery with which to guide ethical approaches and interactions with rock art. We are put on notice that native views today have been impacted by centuries of contact and that this has signi fi cant implications in the ethics debate in regard to ancient rock art.

Today American Indians are increasingly sharing their perceptions of rock art with outsiders. Older rock art, regardless of its original intent or distance in time, may take on new meanings by later peoples and be regarded as the work of ancestors


or even supernaturals from an earlier age. It may be cited to validate ideas or current claims about the past. In many cases, such sharing is for the purpose of reestablishing identity or assuming stewardship of a real or perceived cultural heritage. Current revitalization movements by American Indian groups in regard to trails in the Desert West are a good example (Darling and Lewis 2007 ; Darling 2009 ; Stof fl e et al. 2009 ) . The Southern Paiute and Chemehuevi are incorporating rock art locations into the reconstruction of the Salt Trail traditions as markings along the trails that reestablish relationships between these people and their traditional landscapes. A similar effort is current among the Akimel O’odahm who are reexploring tribal ties to ancient des-ert trails marked with rock art in the southern Arizona desert (Darling 2009 ) . The trail networks, tied to cognitive perceptions of landscape, are recounted in songscapes that, in turn, are said to have led to the reproduction of “song marks.” Hohokam petroglyphs along the trails are regarded as examples of such marks that, in turn, are viewed as marking an event described in the song or that embody the spiritual essence of the song (Darling 2009 :62–72). While the historical/cultural links between the Hohokam of precontact times and the Akimel O’odham of today are unclear (Turner 1993 :50), the legacy of Hohokam petroglyphs is not contested by any other tribal group. How the archaeologist or rock art researcher deals with ethnographic interpre-tations when faced with contradictions between the archaeological record and tribal perspectives depends on the context in which contradictions are brought to the fore. We will examine some of these cases in more detail in Chap. 4 .

The point of the discussion at hand, however, has been to examine the contrasting worldviews and differing perceptions of time and space between the scienti fi c para-digm of the West and those of indigenous cultures. Con fl icting views as elucidated here are thrown into the spotlight as landscapes and the rock art within it are threat-ened by an increasingly encroaching Western civilization and its developmental demands. Ancient petroglyphs perceived as embodying ongoing spiritual power and agency in the present stand in contrast to the view of old, inert designs on rocks valu-able only for their use as a scienti fi c “resource” that can be “preserved” to these ends by adequate recording. Such con fl ict gives rise to major ethical considerations.

When Worlds Collide: How Do We All Respond? I will never forget standing on the edge of a noisy Albuquerque boulevard under a broiling sun facing members of an impatient, visiting congressional subcommittee just in from Washington, D.C. I and others were trying to describe to them the potentially damaging effect that the pro-posed Paseo del Norte, a major thoroughfare, would have on the integrity of the monu-ment as it breached the petroglyph-laden escarpment and dividing the monument with traf fi c, fencing, and pavement. We were met with blank, uncomprehending stares, then arguments, such as they were, from these East Coast urbanites. There was no room for this hastily contrived sidewalk encounter for a dialogue and communication of the understanding crafted in countless meetings between scholars, the National Park Service, the Albuquerque Open Space, and the American Indian people for whom Petroglyph Monument held sacred signi fi cance. You cannot explain differing worldviews and ethical responsibilities in light of these differences in 10 min. The fact that this was a “sidewalk symposium” in itself is also revealing. Negative thoughts

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5822-7_4


about a 6-lane highway with noisy city traf fi c dividing sacred land were not worth serious consideration. And where was the voice of Phillip Lauriano? This whole place had once belonged to his people for whom cultural and spiritual ties remain in force.

Because rock art commonly involves huge tracts of land (read “real estate”), rock art sites pose signi fi cant problems in the face big moneyed interests and development (Schaafsma 1998 ) . Issues related to development involve large amounts of money, corporate power, and legislators oblivious to native concerns. Who in this mix is even concerned with intercultural ethical strategies? In 1998, Verne Huser wrote, “In 1990, as houses were being built to the foot of the sinuous lava escarpment near the northwest edge of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Congress established Petroglyph National Monument ‘to protect the cultural and natural resources of the area from urbanization and vandalism.’ Parts of the area had been abused for decades as a dumping ground and shooting gallery, the petroglyphs frequently serving as targets. Soon development interests began lobbying for roads through the sacred landscape protected by the Monument. Since the National Park Service would not, by law could not, allow a road, New Mexico Congressional delegates introduced bills in 1997 to delete 8.5 acres from the Monument. At this moment, the Monument lies open to legislative vandalism: Paseo del Norte, a spatially disruptive, noisy, six-lane highway, could be built through that sacred landscape, not only accelerating urban-ization but violating the integrity of the Monument and of the National Park System, a road that would serve no park purpose but would degrade and erode the Monument’s values. The monument is a holy place, not a commodity” (Huser 1998 :4).

It all happened. The super highway of progress knows few constraints. The issues surrounding

Petroglyph National Monument illustrate the existence of wide range ethical prob-lems on a mega-scale. Today, residential development is pushed to the very edges of Petroglyph National Monument, as property lines crowd the base of the escarpment where the petroglyphs are located. Pueblo visitation to the shrines embraced by the monument are now in unwelcome view of prying Anglo eyes, if Pueblo visits and offerings are made at all.

While the establishment of the monument has brought some success in regard to rock art’s protection, Petroglyph National Monument is only one example of land-scape issues that highlight many of the problems raised by the encounter of indigenous versus Western worldviews, pushed by an expanding economy. Because large tracts of landscape everywhere are subject to development by private, corporate, or govern-ment powers, these sites are constantly threatened. In essence, we see in this con fl ict the dominant culture, propelled by the “need” for limitless economic development and “growth,” consuming lands sacred to the native peoples and threatening their identities. In many ways, land development comprises a second stage of conquest.

The many dimensions of native concerns and means of knowledge explored here are certainly beyond the ken of most Euro-Americans and certainly well out of the range of members of the committee from Washington mentioned earlier, sweating uncomfortably on an Albuquerque sidewalk. Where in this scenario and others like it is the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978? Enacted to “protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express,


and exercise the traditional religions of the American Indian, Eskimo, Aleuts, and Native Hawaiians, including, but not limited to access to sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom to worship through ceremonials and traditional rites” (American Indian Religious Freedom Act as amended 42 U.S.C. 1996). Although whoever crafted this statement had eagle-bone whistles in mind, in regard to sacred objects, said objects could include petroglyphs. This act, however, has never offered any assurance of protection. No regulations pertaining to it were ever issued (Tribal Energy and Environmental Information Clearinghouse: http://teeic.anl.gov/lr/dsp_statute.cfm?topic=11&statute=183 ).

As anthropologists and archaeologists work with American Indians and their informed tribal members, awareness expands in this arena fraught with con fl icting worldviews. As rock art scholars, we have grown to feel comfortable in dealing with the importance of the landscape context of rock art sites, and for the most part, we are cognizant of concepts of sacred places. Having reviewed the philosophical and mythical foundations of the Judeo-Christian/Western tradition that account for the concept of secular space and Newtonian linear time, we are now in a better position to evaluate how these Western perspectives impact our perceptions of others’ cul-tures and ideologies. The degree to which we are aware of paradigms on both sides of the fence, however, affects how we respond to the need for greater sensitivity toward native values. To quote Preucel ( 1991 :28), “ … there is the project of under-standing what happened in the past in terms of meanings and subjective intentions. This involves developing a subject/co-subject relationship between the interpreter and past actors, which only seems to be possible through a hermeneutic exercise.”

As discussed earlier, the Western scienti fi c paradigm values information for its own sake. With all due regard for the massive recording efforts by rock art researchers in efforts to mitigate loss in advance of the perennial threats of vandalism and natural deterioration, rock art documentation is well justi fi ed. But there are other more com-plex situations. Although scholars do not attach supernatural signi fi cance to these “data,” compiled and housed in boxes and buildings, when cultural resource manage-ment projects “clear the land” of its archaeological remains to permit development and exploitation, there are serious ethical issues raised for consideration. In such cases, it is dif fi cult to escape the parallels between “boxing up” rock art and transport-ing the records to the hallowed halls of research centers and removing Yahweh from the mountain and transporting him to the temple. Desancti fi cation of the landscape is the result in both cases, leaving it open for any kind of use and exploitation.

http://teeic.anl.gov/lr/dsp_statute.cfm?topic=11&statute=183

http://teeic.anl.gov/lr/dsp_statute.cfm?topic=11&statute=183


I once overheard an archaeologist conducting a tour of a rock art site for the general public, telling the group: “It can mean anything you want it to mean.” Coming from an archaeologist, who theoretically was poised to offer some informed idea of intended/original signi fi cance of the images from the position of an academic, this was de fi nitely misleading. Figures do/did have intended meaning. It is true that the multi-vocality of many images and their metaphorical implications allow readings of diverse but related clusters of meanings. Thus, American Indians themselves will differ in their interpreta-tions of speci fi c images or symbolic content. While the answer you get may depend on whom you ask and on the knowledge of that individual, meaning is not a willy-nilly guessing game. To open up interpretation to a general public of Euro-Americans har-boring foreign mental templates was an assertion—albeit unconscious—of cultural dominance, beyond being just simply irresponsible.

Rock art, unlike many other archaeological remains, persists as a highly visible legacy. Its presence in the landscape through centuries and even millennia allows for numerous encounters by many culturally diverse peoples—archaeologists being among them—and rock art is thus subject to interpretation and reinterpretation over and over again. In fact, among indigenous peoples, rock art may even generate oral traditions on down the line as it is reinterpreted by later generations. The mere fact of its existence evokes responses from its viewers, including those for whom there are no known historical connections. The rock art artists, however, had real meanings and speci fi c intent when they created this imagery, and it is the goal of the archaeologist to use the means and methods at his disposal to offer some reasonable hypotheses about what the rock art tells us about the people that created it. These goals are met with varying degrees of success, as we try to determine the purposes the rock art served, its social implications, and how it pertains to the worldviews of its times. Throughout the twentieth century and into the current one, various interpretive models have been laid on the table in regard to the numerous art styles and complexes painted and inscribed on stone over thousands of years by the peoples of North America. How do Western scholars, far from the cultural matrices that produced these visual information sys-tems, begin to understand what is represented? What analytical strategies does he/she

Chapter 3 The Interpretation Game and Ways of Knowing the Past

22 3 The Interpretation Game and Ways of Knowing the Past

bring to bear on these issues to arrive at reasonably “objective” or “impartial” con-clusions, and thereby meaningfully contributing to an understanding of speci fi c “pasts”? In spite of a myriad of dif fi culties, it is the responsibility of the scholar to be explicit about methods used to interpret rock and to justify his/her conclusions, meet-ing the challenge with the best analytical skills and information available consistent with the goals of the archaeological discipline.

Granted, interpretation of the archaeological record, including what we see pic-tured in rock art, is at best beset with pitfalls. As if profound differences in world-views and regard for landscapes were not enough, it is also possible that what we seem to be viewing in rock art is not at all what was intended. Is an apparent hunting scene showing a man shooting a mountain sheep a narrative portrayal of a good hunt, or is it a metaphor for shamanic death and trance, as David Whitley ( 2000 ) contends? Huge challenges exist due to the symbolic and metaphorical nature of representational images, acquired meanings that shift and change through time and space and from culture to culture. Such is the dilemma. While more information appears to be accessible if the content is representational or at least partly so, inter-pretation of content or understanding intentionality is particularly dif fi cult when the rock art under study is abstract or geometric in nature.

How then do ethics fi gure into this picture? Is the ideal archaeologist free from his/her own cultural biases—biases that structure and limit the presumably “objec-tive” interpretive endeavor? When there are cultural/historical relationships between rock art and contemporary American Indians, there is an ethical imperative today to consult with living heirs, but collaboration in itself is fraught with its own set of problems (Watson 1991 ) . Although an image may carry with it cultural baggage only readily perceptible to members of the cultural group that produced it, even then, there may be no complete agreement. It is essential to distinguish between past and present. What if current traditional knowledge and oral tradition contradict cul-tural and temporal data determined by archaeological investigations? Or what if interpretations supplied by native colleagues today are at odds with ethnographic data recorded and published a hundred years ago or more? Which “traditional” knowledge does one heed—that in the old ethnographies or that that is current? Is reconciliation of such disparities necessary? Can information derived from oral tra-ditions and archaeological research be presented as equal but different? If observa-tions derived from rock art studies are perceived as “threatening” to the native image or status quo, should they be suppressed? If archaeological data are withheld, how then can one be ethically responsible to both the indigenous and archaeological communities simultaneously? In an M.C. Escher-like transformation from scientist to social worker, are not scienti fi c standards subject to compromise? Where do ethi-cal considerations reside?

On other ethical fronts, what if Western cultural values deny what is portrayed in rock art, and this denial is used as a tool of cultural imperialism? And fi nally, what if native people pirate the imagery of each other, thus engendering another kind of cultural aggression? Before discussing in more details these topics pertaining to interpretation, it would be helpful fi rst to review brie fl y some of the history of rock art research and the theoretical foundations in which past research has been

23Interpretive Approaches

grounded. There have been evolving interests and changing approaches to the study of rock art, beginning before the 1960s and during the development of rock art research through the ensuing decades (see Schaafsma 2013 ) .

Interpretive Approaches

In the American West, rock paintings and petroglyphs were described by various scholars and members of exploratory and archaeological expeditions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1893 , Garrick Mallery included images in the landscape in his discussion of “pictography,” astutely observing that, as opposed to other “pictographs” he described, rock art had the unique characteristic of being fi xed in place, although being “less susceptible of interpretations” (Mallery 1893 :I:vii). In fact, however, rock art’s signi fi cance was often subject to unbridled interpretation, and Julian H. Steward, a pioneer in giving credibility to rock art research, devoted several pages to enumerating popular misconceptions (Steward 1937 :407–441), and some of these still prevail.

Rock art research during the greater part of the twentieth century was oriented toward data gathering and classi fi cation. Mapping time and space and the establish-ment of an empirical record were the goals (Steward 1929, 1937 ; Heizer and Baumhoff 1962 ; Heizer and Clewlow 1973 ; Wellmann 1979 ; Schaafsma 1971 , 1972 , 1975, 1980 ; Cole 1990 and see Nissen 1995 :68–69). In the mid-twentieth century, a concerted effort toward rock art data collection was fueled in part by government-sponsored archaeological “salvage” projects that included rock art recording prior to building dams in the San Juan/Colorado river system beginning in the late 1950s (Fowler 1959a :Part II:505–527 and 1959b :Part III:42–80; Fowler et al. 1959 :16, 159–61, 342, 532–534; see also Day 1963 ; Gunnerson 1957 :75–76; Lister 1959a, b ; Schaafsma 1963 ; Turner 1963 ) . At this point in the history of Southwestern archaeology, rock art documentation hastened on an unprecedented scale, perhaps because of an increased awareness of the enormity of the record, and the loss that was about to ensue, as dammed rivers fl ooded the arid Southwestern canyons inscribed with imagery ( Schaafsma 2013 ) .

The initial approaches to rock art were those common to investigations in a new fi eld of inquiry. Grounded in the concerns of the time, research was directed toward questions of chronology, and cultural boundaries, and the categorization of rock art into meaningful groupings that shared chronological and stylistic similarities, hence cultural identities. These appeared to be relatively straightforward tasks. The recon-struction of life ways was not the focus of these studies, and interpretive efforts related to recent rock art were essentially limited to published ethnographic material (Schaafsma 1963 ) .

For much of the mid- to late twentieth century, this work was ideally perceived as an “objective” and certainly a “neutral” enterprise on the ethics scale, with the bulk of the rock art studied being ancient and lacking direct connections to living peoples. Eventually, however, the vast amount of information collected raised new questions regarding the broader aspects of culture histories and interactions and


how rock art sites functioned and even the sticky issue of meaning encrypted by the images. These more dynamic concerns open doors to a less certain playing fi eld of hypotheses generated by the archaeologist, and ethnographic sources were more frequently employed as a means of expanding insights into the rock art past, a topic to which I will return.

Meanwhile, a problematic methodological posture that severely limits the pos-sibilities for understanding the meaning and function of rock art is one recently taken by some Southwestern archaeologists that seeks “emancipation” from the eth-nographic present (Doyel 1983 :47–48). Subscribers to this approach maintain that such detachment allows the examination of archaeological data “free” of the con-straints that knowledge of contemporary cultures and peoples might impose. The goal is a “clean” etic perspective, and by extension, one based in positivist “econo-think” (Hall 1977 ) .

These considerations lead us squarely into the processual/post-processual debate (Preucel 1991 ) . Patty Jo Watson delineates the binary opposition de fi ned by proces-sualists (Binford) and post-processualists (Hodder) exempli fi ed by “science versus history, nomothetic versus idiographic, explanation versus understanding, knowl-edge versus meaning, objectivity versus subjectivity, and claims of value-free method, data and results versus actuality of value-laden method, data, and results” (Watson 1991 :269). These dichotomies in themselves de fi ne the space in which the ethic polemic resides when ethnographic data are taken into consideration. Watson ( 1991 :269) notes that both Binford and Hodder were interested in extending the implications of their archaeological fi ndings—Binford primarily concerned with subsistence systems and Hodder with symbol systems. As for this dichotomy, there is something eerily familiar with the law-driven perfection sought by processual-ists—as described earlier in this discourse exempli fi ed by the exquisite design of the cathedral’s interior, and the “imperfection” of nature, in this case, the very people exempli fi ed by the ethnographic record. Thus, we fi nd ourselves trapped in the same old polarity of our own making.

As Robert Hall points out in a critique of “econothink,” “linking all human behavior to food procurement results in a process of compression that overlooks an array of concerns of interest to anthropology.” Further “cognitive archaeology begins with the assumption that we cannot really interpret prehistory without mak-ing a conscious attempt to understand the nature of humans as symbol-using social animals affectively involved in a perceived world that they have helped to create” (Hall 1977 :515 in Preucel 2006 :149–150; see also Zubrow 1994a :108). In contrast, the processual model in effect reduces human beings to the status of seemingly nonthinking entities, whose behavioral patterns are wholly determined by the ther-modynamic systems in which they reside (Saitta 1991 :55). In turn, this one-sided and simple approach to the human past is subject to ethical criticism and review.

Processualism is ethically questionable by the single fact that it excludes the indigenous voice, handing the whole stage to the archaeologist who, in turn, is not exempt from his/her own ethnographic biases. In other words the cognitive pro-cesses of the archaeologist, also products of a speci fi c cultural context, in fl uence or limit his/her research, Zubrow ( 1994b :189). Further, “Knowledge is culturally

25Interpretive Approaches

processed information, and it is both represented and the basis of action. Prehistoric natives represent[ed] knowledge according to a set of cultural rules when making material objects. Similarly, archaeologists represent knowledge according to a mod-ern set of cultural norms and process the information according to another set of cultural rules when they interpret the material objects” (Zubrow 1994a :107; Schaafsma 2013 ) . Denying the value of ethnographic information also has other more negative agendas: It is another strategy for obliterating other world views and cosmologies, thus reinforcing complacency in the “correctness” and limitations of our own philosophic position. In other words, if ethnographic information that relates to the cultures under investigation is cast aside and ignored, we are free to remake the past in our own terms, and it becomes a mirror of ourselves.

There are further related concerns. While objectivity is the emic goal of the archaeologist, numerous factors including prevailing interpretive paradigms may distort such an ideal. Paradigm shifts in regard to rock art interpretation fall within the parameters of those within the larger pattern of the archaeological discipline, including the recent shift from the processual school to the post-processual era as discussed above. Understandably, the interpretive models or strategies embraced or the goals at hand are often in fl uenced by what is popular or deemed currently accept-able at the moment, thus directing the interests of any investigation. Topics of inter-est may include archaeoastronomy, shamanism, hunting magic, gender studies, warfare, Mesoamerican connections in North American rock art, etc., any of which take on the status of “fads” when the research so directed exceeds the limits of the data. Since scholars do not operate in a social vacuum, every investigator is under community pressure of some kind by his/her immediate peers and superiors or the discipline in general, in regard to the path chosen. Whitley and Clottes ( 2005 :173) correctly note that Heizer and Baumhff’s hunting magic explanatory model was proposed when Binford’s theoretical vision of an economic base for all human behavior dominated the discipline in the 1960s.

An interpretive dilemma remains. Because a large percent of rock art is ancient, often with no known or well-established cultural heirs, archaeologists and rock art researchers have tended to view it as a phenomenon apart from living legacies, quite divorced from any known tribal connections. In the absence of direct ethno-graphic associations, what resources does the twenty- fi rst-century scholar have at his/her disposal to address the questions and meanings posed by a complex of fi gures left on stone centuries or even millennia in the past? What strategies can be brought to bear to construct reasonable hypotheses that offer explanations for what is now seen, absent the accompanying rituals and oral traditions in which such pictography was often grounded? Even without immediate heirs, selective and careful use of ethnographic material may provide valuable guidelines to interpreta-tion, if only on a general level. Within the cognitive realm, rock art reveals not only behavioral patterns in regard to ritual and cosmology, but the distribution of imag-ery in the landscape has the potential of revealing past patterns of economic and social behavior, as well as values ascribed to places, and signi fi cant topographic features. Judicious use of ethnographic data as an avenue into other cognitive uni-verses cannot be discounted.


Because any reference to ethnography is fi xed in time, and culture is constantly changing, change as a factor has to be taken into consideration (Birth 1990 :550). With this in mind, when rock art is relatively recent and has a direct relationship to ongoing cultural traditions, interpretation of landscape imagery is greatly facilitated by consul-tation with ethnographic texts and, if possible, living heirs. Ethnographic information promotes the identi fi cation of symbolic and metaphorical components in visual texts that may include everyday images that would be otherwise misinterpreted or over-looked by archaeologists. In the American Southwest where protohistoric Pueblo and Navajo rock art manifests a close relationship in style and content to contemporary ritual imagery, direct consultations were (and are) only occasionally undertaken, how-ever, in part because of the history of reticence on the part of Southwestern tribes to share information with the anthropological community (note: Parsons 1936 : frontis-piece). Nevertheless, notable exceptions exist (Chavarria and Mendoza 2012 ; Hays-Gilpin and Schaafsma 2010 ; Schaafsma and Tsosie 2009 ; Young 1988 ; see also Sekaquaptewa and Washburn 2004, 2010 ) . Collaborative enterprises such as these dramatically illustrate how shared information dissolves barriers and enhances inter-cultural communication, promotes interpretation and respect for alternative world-views, and helps avoid errors and misconceptions. While collaboration keeps archaeologists on track, a good fi t between living cultures and the recent past is cru-cial, nevertheless, to fruitful ethnographic engagement.

Oral Traditions and Inclusion/Goals and Confusion

Among the strategies for interpreting rock art imagery, accessing cosmological con-structs esoteric to Western archaeologists, or understanding sacred landscapes are varied uses of oral traditions. Oral traditions, in addition to sanctifying and thus legitimizing social order in the present, on occasion have contributed considerably to an understanding of both rock art content as well as the place in the landscape where it occurs. Accordingly, oral traditions have implications within the purview of NAGPRA and land claims and other territorial issues such as access rights and indigenous site management.

Outstanding examples of the role of oral traditions that relate to rock art in the American Southwest are the previously described Zuni site of Hantlipinkia (Stevenson 1904 :34–43; Young 1988 :250–251) and the junction of the Pine and San Juan Rivers described in Navajo mythology as the fi nal home of their war gods at the time of creation (Schaafsma 1963 : 63–64; 1992:35). Likewise, oral traditions complement archaeological information about painted images of Navajo ye’i in Northwestern New Mexico. Seen from within their own inherent perspectives, both the archaeo-logical data and oral traditions in this instance converge on the issue of Navajo ori-gins (Schaafsma and Tsosie 2009 ) . Viewed from within these vastly different paradigms, however, the time frames and events associated with these paintings entail vast differences. These differences dramatically illustrate the contrasting goals inher-ent to archaeological research and Navajo mythology with its humanistic concerns of

27Oral Traditions and Inclusion/Goals and Confusion

ethnic origins and identity. The fi xation on “speci fi city” and absolute date, places, and events inherent to science is not a value ascribed to traditional narrative and myths that sanctify place and ethnic origins. As pointed out by Navajo tribal member William Tsosie, “Oral tradition from the orthodox Navajo traditionalist has many versions because it comes from many perspectives. When events that are related occurred, not just one person, but many were there to witness them—this is where the different versions come from. In the Navajo world, it is good to hear as many versions as one can … ” (Schaafsma and Tsosie 2009 :15). In addition, the narratives concern-ing the Navajos creation do not comprise a single story but a kind of “boundless, sprawling narrative with a life of its own, so to speak, fi xed in its actual limits only by what might be recited during a particular performance” (Zolbrod 1984 :19).

The past, however, in terms of speci fi c places and absolute time is the purview of archaeologists. In contrast, oral traditions are commonly fi lled with symbols, meta-phors, and provide road maps for correct living and guidance in the present, emerg-ing from a central core of basic values. It is the central core of basic values within a narrative that counts and not the details of setting, geography, and so forth. The core values are remarkably steady and give guidance to people’s lives, whereas the indi-vidual stories are subject to a high degree of variation in exterior details (Schaafsma and Schaafsma 1996 :173). Likewise, Tessie Naranjo ( 1995 :249) from Santa Clara Pueblo states that in Santa Clara stories that trace their migrations through time from the Place of Emergence, rather than pinpointing speci fi c places and speci fi c times, movement through time is their essential aspect. Changes in details are not crucial, and no single account is expected (Schaafsma and Tsosie 2009 ; Zolbrod 1984 ) . If oral traditions are “miscast” into an historic Western mold that seeks to pinpoint temporal and spatial absolutes, one needs to be cognizant of the fact that this process deprives oral traditions of their native creative dynamic functions that serve multiple cultural ends. This alone raises further ethical considerations, as sto-ries are divested of their intended signi fi cance by an insensitive dominant culture. Indigenous groups advocating their oral histories as historical “facts” appear to be promoting a perception forged in the caldron of enculturation.

The scienti fi c search for absolutes in time and space is not served well by oral traditions that by their very nature is fl exible and changing. Serving the dynamic fl ux of the present, they are open to revision, and the goals in their telling differ considerably from those of archaeologists. Confusing the goals of traditional knowledge with those of the archaeologist results in misunderstandings that give rise to and promote dif fi cult ethical dilemmas. Science and oral traditions out of their intended contexts and viewed as “the same thing” create a recipe for disaster. While information available in oral traditions can parallel, support, or add a human-istic dimension to scienti fi c inquiry, when reconciliation between the two is demanded such a demand thereby creates an unreasonable goal. When this hap-pens, the archaeologist has a choice, in which case, “stepping aside” and compro-mising scienti fi c inquiry is one possible response, but it also raises the “ethical” fl ag in regard to the archaeologist’s own responsibilities (Blinman 2008 and see Chap. 4 , this volume, for a more extended discussion on this particular issue; see also Chacon and Mendoza 2012 ) .

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5822-7_4


In casting additional light on this topic, David Cooper is careful to distinguish between “truth” which is only approachable and “truthfulness” which is a moral issue (Cooper 2006 :135). He then asks, “… should the virtues of truthfulness be compromised by archaeologist when the exercise of these virtues con fl icts with the interests of non-professional parties?” (Cooper 2006 :135). Further, “If archaeolo-gists have formed, on the basis of their investigations, genuine beliefs about the past, they cannot—assuming they are rational—at the same time give credence to ones that contradict these beliefs” (Cooper 2006 :133). Of speci fi c concern is the matter of “inclusion,” de fi ned by Cooper ( 2006 :131) as the practice of including in archaeological work, from the fi eld to the dissemination of the results, the work of persons or groups outside of the profession. Inclusionist practices are in concert with “postcolonial guilt” that mandates that input from indigenous groups be viewed as equivalent to scienti fi cally derived knowledge in the realm of its “truth value” (Cooper 2006 :131). For the archaeologist, to concede to alternate views of the past that contradict his/her fi ndings challenges the issue of “truthfulness” that Cooper spells out. He goes on to note that if one believes “that no statement about the past has greater validity than any others, since they are all ‘mere’ interpretations that simply re fl ect the particular predilections of individuals or group, then archaeologi-cal practice is futile. There can no more be a disciplined attempt reasonably to interpret the past than there can be to interpret a Rorschach test drawing.” Further, “if this is true, archaeologists may as well ‘shut up shop,’ for they would be in a position like that of someone who mistakenly takes the Rorschach drawing to have a signi fi cance independent of the motley of meanings read into it by whichever people are asked to ‘interpret’ it” (Cooper 2006 :135).

Regardless of these dif fi culties, the epistemological challenge of NAGPRA with its ethics of inclusion mandates a consideration of oral histories, folklore, and the like in establishing the cultural af fi nities of archaeological materials, and deep-seated ethical problems result. Consideration of oral traditions leads to neither “truth” nor “truthfulness” when “archaeological truths” are sacri fi ced for indige-nous “truths” (see Chap. 4 regarding rock art at Comanche Gap and Hueco Tanks State Park as case studies). Mason ( 2000 ) argues that these mandates alter the stan-dards of evidence in archaeological reasoning. In effect, “ Like religion, you believe oral tradition or you don’t. And although, as with religion, there may be pieces of history embedded in particular oral traditions, they must be teased out by adherence to the rules of rational inquiry. But the possibility of so doing does not thereby con-fer equal epistemological status on the two ‘ways of knowing’” (Mason: 2000 :263). Mason ( 2000 :256) considers the negative implications when oral traditions are treated as historical data “having parity with the methods, data quali fi cations, and metaphysical stance of Western historiography.” As if in response, Roger Echo-Hawk ( 2000 :267–268) suggests that oral traditions be viewed as “oral records,” a verbal adjustment to make them appear more in line with Western models of “fac-tual” history with similar time/space constraints. Further, the uncritical inclusion of indigenous oral traditions as history introduces the factor of “desired knowledge” that sets them apart from the archaeological goals of constructing an objective account of the past (Webmoor 2007:230).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5822-7_4

29NAGPRA and Other Formal Encounters

Archaeological knowledge cannot and should not be warped to fi t oral traditions, and likewise, mythologies cannot be crammed into archaeological frameworks. They are not the same thing, and any such attempts, the integrity of both is destroyed. Ethical considerations cut both ways. Traditional knowledge was never intended to be scienti fi c knowledge—a search for absolutes in space and time. Traditional knowledge has different goals and functions and originates in very different episte-mologies from that of the Western world.

The quandary is that real-time problems emerge when archaeological and rock art data con fl ict with traditional knowledge that, in turn, underwrites the legitimacy of established patterns of social organization, tribal histories, and territorial rights. In such instances, archaeological data may be viewed as threatening indigenous people’s intellectual control of their heritage, even though the heritage of concern may be the result of a reinvention of the past. In such cases, where archaeological assessment is in con fl ict with oral tradition, publication or other public access to the information may be suppressed (see Chacon and Mendoza 2012 ; Cooper 2006 :132, 144). While spokespersons for traditional narrative, beliefs, etc., might demand a withdrawal of archaeological information that contradict them, it may also be argued that archaeologists should not subscribe to revisionist traditions in con fl ict with their own goals, and that these issues should not be disguised by “a fl accid rhetoric of ‘respect,’ ‘openness,’ and ‘inclusiveness’” (Cooper 2006 :145) in the face of hard data. These problems have not been resolved.

One of the threads of concern that has entered the conversation on ethics, and inherent to consultations with native peoples, is a perceived need among some archaeologists to use interpretation as a means to social action. For the presumed bene fi t of indigenous groups, uncritical acceptance of oral traditions, presented as historical fact in the face of contradictory scienti fi c knowledge, misleads and is tantamount to telling lies. In fact, a stance viewed as ethical as it pertains to the indigenous side of the issue may be unethical in the anthropological camp. In spite of this, information and conclusions based in Western scholarship may be errone-ously perceived by social activists as “an archaeology of colonialism,” negatively contrasted with an “archaeology of service” to contemporary native societies (see also Oakes 2012 ) . In such cases, social ‘justice’ takes precedence of science, art history, and other objective pursuits and thus the Escher-like transformation of the archaeologist as described earlier in this chapter. This results in the introduction of “desired knowledge” contradictory to and thus compromising the scienti fi c goal of an objective reconstruction of the past (see Chacon and Mendoza 2012 for a simi-lar conclusion).

NAGPRA and Other Formal Encounters

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) mandates consultation with indigenous groups in regard to archaeological remains, and in recent years, rock art has been a factor in these engagements. In Australia, the Native


Title Act was established in 1993 to deal with similar issues of heritage management. Within this framework, the interpretation of rock art in regard to meaning, place, and ownership is an issue that impacts land claims and has implications for site management and preservation.

Within various politically charged contexts, paid native consultants have a need to respond, although their knowledge about the issues at hand may vary consider-ably. Not all of the persons so engaged may necessarily have a cultural/historical linkage to the rock art under consideration. As a result, formal consultations between archaeologists and tribal groups can carry with them ethical challenges that may promote reinventing the past or the assertion of “desired knowledge,” endeavors that may contradict archaeological knowledge, and thus detract from archaeological goals. Interpretations and other information elicited under these conditions are sub-ject to rhetoric and political pressures (see also Chacon and Mendoza 2012 ).

To illustrate some of the problems inherent to consultations with tribal groups, I review here a rather normal and relatively noncontentious example of the consulta-tion process in regard to rock art that does not involve any extreme issues. Nevertheless, it has several dimensions worthy of consideration here. The case in point is a study of Basketmaker rock art in the Falls Creek Shelters on the National Register of Historic Places in Southwestern Colorado (Powell et al. 1998 ) . This particular example was not done in conjunction with NAGPRA but in accordance with the Department of Interior standards and guidelines (36 CFR Part 68) for sites on the National Register with reference to the Historic Preservation Act. The pri-mary concern of this study and cross-cultural engagement (the consultation was not legally mandated in this case) was site management. The rock art is identi fi ed as Basketmaker II–III in age (usually dated between ca. 400 BCE through 700 CE), although earlier radiocarbon dates 1490–710 BCE were obtained (Powell et al. 1998 :12), discrepancies that need not concern us here. All tribes now resident in the general region, including the Rio Grande Pueblos, Hopi, Zuni, Navajo, Jicarilla Apache, and three Ute Tribes, were questioned as to the signi fi cance of images and accordingly how the site should be handled.

The Falls Creek Shelters study exempli fi es several concerns, not the least of which is the time gap involved between the rock art and the heirs to the Basketmaker legacy. The Rio Grande Pueblos, Zunis, and Hopis are the historical heirs to this rock art, but they are culturally disconnected from it today. Up front, it is important to establish the difference between historical continuity and cultural continuity and how these distinctions affect the relationships between American Indian consultants and the archaeological legacy at stake. Historical continuity through time and cul-tural continuities may not be one and the same. Because cultural changes and shifts in beliefs can and do occur within a historical continuum, cultural change is part of the historical process. In fact, within the long history of Ancestral Pueblo people in the Southwest, signi fi cant changes in rock art iconography document concomitant shifts in cosmology and belief systems (Schaafsma 1980 : 105–162, 243–299; Schaafsma and Schaafsma 1974 ; Schaafsma and Young 2007 ) . These well-docu-mented changes signi fi cantly distance contemporary Pueblo people from the early Basketmakers and the cosmological framework that prevailed in the centuries


immediately before and after 1 CE. That such a temporal distance exists, punctuated with iconographic shifts, has signi fi cant implications on the ethical front for col-laborations with contemporary Pueblo groups from the Rio Grande to Hopi.

As for the other consultants, it should be noted that the preponderance of the evi-dence indicates that the Southern Apacheans (including the Navajo) were not resi-dent anywhere in the nearby region until the mid-1600s CE (C. Schaafsma 1996 :44), or for at least a thousand years or more after the paintings in question were made. The Utes, who can trace ancestral presence in Western Colorado back to the Archaic, are well removed from Basketmaker rock art on cultural grounds.

The input on the part of the consultants was for the most part notably and under-standably vague, due to the fact that these people were being asked to comment on iconography that is clearly not part of anyone’s current religious context. Interpretations, nevertheless, were suggested by one Jicarilla Apache consultant, and the Zuni and Hopi offered other readings, based on their current ritual/religious paradigms. On this basis, Powell et al. ( 1998 :20–24) suggest that some of the images are material expressions of esoteric knowledge. It is also noted that “many of the consultants contacted during this project were reluctant to communicate about the rock art images at the Falls Creek Shelters, except to say that they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) tell us anything, and that it might be inappropriate to replicate the images in some or all contexts.”

More speci fi cally, however, the Zunis and Hopi proposed that the masklike elements or faces were kachinas or other sacred personages, in spite of the fact that extensive archaeological research indicates that kachinas and related cosmo-logical imagery are not present in the Ancestral Pueblo rock art repertoire until hundreds of years after these paintings were made (Schaafsma 1994 ) . Due to Spanish concerns about idolatry and competition with Christian saints, followed by persecution, today images of kachinas—rain-bringing supernaturals—among Rio Grande Pueblos are regarded as “sensitive,” and as such, it is felt that they should not be subject to public display. Oddly, in this case, however, from Hopi and Zuni perspectives, there is no reluctance to reproduce kachina imagery today, and the archaeologists suggested, probably correctly, that the perceived “sensi-tivity” in regard to these particular paintings may have been enhanced by the fact that they occur in a burial cave (Powell et al.: 1998 :26–30). It was further pro-posed that the images included symbols for chicken pox, leprosy, and other deadly diseases and that the rock art served as a warning to those who might enter the shelter (Powell et al. 1998 :30). In conclusion, however, in spite of including a few token drawings in the report, Appendix D with complete rock art record with forms and drawings was withheld from public distribution due to the “sensitivity” of the faces. As a result, access to the data documented during the course of this study was restricted and therefore scholarly standards compro-mised, in spite of the fact that these paintings, including the faces, had been published previously as drawings (Daniels 1954 :87–88; Schaafsma 1980 : Fig. 89; for color photographs and drawing, see also Cole 2009 :Figs. 58a, b and 59c). Are the inconsistencies between the rhetoric and the publication history of this site subject to ethical concerns and comment?


While the lack of strong cultural continuity between the paintings and the tribal consultants may have been a mitigating factor in regard to expectations on the part of the archaeologists in the case of the Falls Creek Shelters, there is still the potential issue of social pressure where consultations are involved. In an acrid chapter entitled “Anthropologists and Other Friends,” Deloria ( 1969 :85) points out the imbalance imposed when teenage Indians upon being questioned about their culture are forced into the role of “an instant authority” on the topic at hand. While presumably teenagers were not part of the process at Falls Creek Shelters, Deloria’s observations are nevertheless relevant. The individual interrogated under these circumstances is pressured to live up to the situation, by the obvious (but often unjusti fi ed) expectations that he/she, by virtue of their American Indian status, will automatically contribute meaningfully to a dialogue for which he/she may well be ill-prepared. If the individual being consulted is a historical heir, the pressure is even greater and may result in interpretations with little validity in order to satisfy the inquisitor. In addition to the lack of expected knowledge, in some cases, the need to withhold secret information places an additional burden upon the person being questioned. As Deloria notes, “the status acquired in the game is heady.” The moral aspect of imposing authoritative status onto individu-als just because they represent neighboring American Indians but who have no connections to the rock art is highly questionable, and it could be argued that a degree of unfair racial pandering and ethical posturing on the part of archaeolo-gists is involved. In conclusion, awareness is needed in regard to the potential for new ethical issues that may arise by virtue of the consultation process undertaken for other ethical considerations.

The discussion does not end here. Another question concerns the goals of collaboration. As for management concerns of the Falls Creek Shelters example, who decides in such a multicultural milieu? Will the rock art be protected because of its value to archaeologists and its research potential? Or does it deserve protection because, although it has no contemporary religious role among the regional tribes, it is regarded as sacred? An additional challenge to the idea of preservation in general that came up as a result of this study is the apparent general consensus among Indians in the American Southwest is that rock art subject to natural deterioration should not be preserved anyway (Powell et al.1998:29, fn.). On a social front, however, if the paintings are perceived as sacred (because of the burials), should the images be inaccessible to a prying white visiting public that does not understand them, or alternatively, from a Western perspective, is controlled visitation a useful means of educating the public about a past in the midst of which they unknowingly live? Interpretive stories for the public can present multiple views of the past. While cross-cul-tural respect does not necessitate agreement, should all views be presented with sources clearly labeled? Because of the nature of management issues, decisions such as those pertaining to preservation, for example, are forced to comply with either one side or the other.

Inadequate communication is problematic on all fronts. In the Southwest there have been cases involving formal consultations; rightful heirs made no claims to the


rock art under consideration or were less vociferous than more aggressive tribes who sought to claim the legacies of other tribes for political reasons in the present (see McPherson and Fahey 2008 ; Schaafsma 2013 ) . Morally problematic in these cases is that the voice of the scholar/consultant is often suppressed and viewed as less than equal, in favor of the native claimants. Such cases avert solutions based in objectivity or eschew ethical the solutions that NAGPRA and other institutions were designed to provide.

Impassioned advocates of NAGPRA argue that the lack of consultations with the appropriate heirs is said to alienate descendants from their heritage, thus dis-enfranchising them. They accuse archaeologists of stealing “culture, language, images and things,” to promote their careers, describing them as cavalier and doing “great harm” (Bendremer and Richman 2006 :114). Accusations of such disregard commonly overlook the signi fi cant differences in the views and para-digms operative between anthropologists and native communities and their dis-tinctive claims to different kinds of knowledge. Such critics portray anthropologists as imperialistic or of maintaining colonial agendas with indigenous people, against whom they assert their rights to control their history, culture, and the intel-lectual property. Anthropologist Richard Bendremer and bioethics scholar Kenneth Richman attempt to fortify their rhetoric with a quote from Vine Deloria Jr. to the affect that “anthropologists were the only group he had ever known who ‘had their brains sucked out of [their] skulls’” (Bendremer and Richmond 2006 :97,114). Are not these words subject to ethical review? What if the situation were reversed? Elsewhere, Deloria ( 1969 :79) again describes anthropologists in an equally libel-ous manner. None of these emotionally driven and divisive statements are condu-cive to resolving the ethical issues and establishing common ground or, alternatively, accepting the fact that multiple views of the past serve different ends where archaeologists and indigenous people hold contradictory views. In some cases, the quest for common ground as such is a chimera (See Oakes 2012 and Chacon and Mendoza 2012 for similar fi ndings).

As a footnote to this discussion, however, it is critical to acknowledge that between the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington did, in fact, carry out an intensive colonialist ethnographic program—a kind of applied anthropology—the goal of which was to gain cultural information so that the American Indian “studied” could be better controlled and integrated into the dom-inant culture. Probably the investigations at Zuni by Matilda Coxe Stevenson ( 1904 ) is the most egregious example of this kind of behavior on the part of anthropologists. Cultural properties, including many sacred objects, were stolen, and the Zunis were bullied by this aggressive woman, this case appearing to bol-ster Vine Deloria’s accusations. This nineteenth-century “portrait of the ethnogra-pher at Zuni” is not generally applicable today, and it is time to move on.

In summary, this chapter touches on the great number of variables that come into play in these cross-cultural dialogues—many of which are unanticipated—and each case has to be dealt with on an individual basis. There are no blanket rules.


Closing Doors

A deeper issue latent in discussions concerning consultations is the contrasting phi-losophies concerning “rights to knowledge” that exist between American Indians and Western scholars. Because most rock art lacks a close connection to privileged knowledge within ongoing indigenous cultures, this issue is less prevalent than among ethnographic studies. Nevertheless, research on rock art of the recent past that does have close cultural connections with contemporary native religions may pose more immediate ethical considerations. The Western tradition of scienti fi c inquiry by its very nature fosters the right to ask questions and opens the door to unrestricted investigation to anything unknown. A signi fi cant factor that limits access to the past, however, is the indigenous need for secrecy.

When engaged with anthropologists, tribal groups may ask for bans on the release of certain kinds of information that, if disseminated, would threaten the ongoing integrity of their social institutions. The need for secrecy is a major issue that is often well understood by anthropologists, and the Hopi and other Southwestern Pueblos have been explicit in this regard (Brandt 1980 ; Brown 1998 :197, fn. 11; Whiteley 1993 :139). “Indigenous resistance to the promiscuous dissemination of knowledge, sacred or otherwise, lies behind emerging con fl icts over secrecy” (Brown 1998 :197). A potential concern arising from published interpretations of Pueblo rock art created within the last several hundred years is that it could reveal information that within the fabric of Pueblo communities is limited to members of certain societal organizations. Within Pueblo religious structure, secrecy and knowledge are tantamount to power, and ritual knowledge underlies order and rank in Pueblo religious hierarchies. Contrary to possible expectations, “Elizabeth Brandt ( 1980 ) argues that the primary motivation for closing religious knowledge to outsiders and for objecting to the collection and permanent storage of this information by non-Pueblos is to prevent it from cycling back to Pueblo individuals who are not authorized to possess it. Strict compart-mentalization of knowledge is necessary to maintain the community’s religious hierarchy and ultimately the integrity of traditional institutions, which are based on theocratic principles. Of equal importance is the conviction that in the wrong hands, religious knowledge loses its power or assumes destructive forms” (Brandt 1980 in Brown 1998 :198).

Simply put, ceremonial and ritual knowledge is power, and that power can be “owned.” A complicating factor is that contextual understanding and reporting that clari fi es the meaning of any imagery may expose beliefs and practices regarded as secret, but formerly described in the early ethnographies. Needless to say this in itself has generated a culture of resentment toward anthropologists. Peter Welsh points out that researchers, for a variety of reasons, are commonly on the receiving end of criticism (Welsh 1999 :29; see also Deloria 1969 :78–100), even by their own colleagues (see Whiteley 1993 ) .

In sum, when rights to secrecy by American Indians con fl ict with Western ten-ants of “academic freedom” and the perceived right to conduct “pure research,”

35Closing Doors

better communication and understandings between all parties are essential so that satisfactory resolutions are possible. The words “respect” and “sensitive” are terms commonly and politely utilized by American Indians and their advocates as deter-rents to warn archaeologists against investigating native knowledge that is restricted within their own communities. Confusing, however, is the fact that these same terms may also be generically employed at times by native consultants to cover up a lack of “expected knowledge” and thereby save face. As in the case of the Falls Creek Shelters rock art previously described, the perception of the need for secrecy can be inappropriate invoked. At the end of the road, negotiations are necessary on a case-by-case basis, because so many variables are at stake.


There are many ways to rob the archaeological past. Robbery is not limited to pothunting—the literal stealing of material objects and selling them into oblivion. This kind of blatantly unethical activity not only divests the past of its material belongings, but divorced from their cultural contexts, stolen goods lose their poten-tial for contributing to the essential questions of time, function, and meaning.

Rock art has its own nonmaterial legacy that can be robbed by misinterpretations motivated by false claims of cultural authorship and the desire to reinvent the past or to promote meanings tailored for social “acceptability,” all of which serve needs in the present. The interpretation of rock art is “not up for grabs,” however, and for archaeologists, rock art interpretation is tricky business. In more cases than not, sug-gestions as to the meaning and function of rock art cannot be proven, but it is the responsibility of the researcher to generate hypotheses and offer proposals accord-ing to what best fi ts the data, with the goal of explaining events, values, and cogni-tive systems operative in the past. This all may sound fairly straightforward, but interpretations of ancient pictorial “texts” are complicated by various means, some of which were discussed in the previous chapters. Obfuscating factors range from simple interpretive faddishness to the deeper concerns of the broad paradigmatic differences reviewed at length in Chap. 2 . What is of concern here are insidious moral factors bearing on interpretation that lead to the suppression of rock art’s content in order to placate various parties, whether they be indigenous communities or peers in the academic community. Once the archaeologist steps out of his role as scientist and assumes that of social activist, complex ethical problems arise.

Sanitizing Meaning

There are two particular themes in the ancient imagery in the landscapes of the American West that bear detailed examination in this regard. One is the explicitly shamanistic content of a number of different rock art traditions; the second per-tains to warfare and ritual violence. Denial or suppression of imagery pertaining to

Chapter 4 Robbing and Reinventing the Nonmaterial Past

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38 4 Robbing and Reinventing the Nonmaterial Past

either of these themes shares a common goal that is to establish acceptability in the present. Whether on the part of either American Indians themselves or scholars, in order to sanitize and recreate a past that conforms to current Western standards the enterprise of sanitization results in cultural divestation and cultural cleansing and robs the past of meaning.

Does ethical practice—as viewed in the present—demand that archaeologists lie or distort in order to recreate “acceptable” views of the past? What about the ethics of adhering to scienti fi c evidence? As for downplaying of the evidence of con fl ict and ritual violence, perhaps we cannot even agree as to whose valued social ideals are we talking about—those of the dominant culture or those of Native Americans who have assumed those of the dominant culture? To examine these issues in more depth, we will move on to the contentious issues of shamanism and secondly war-fare and con fl ict as manifested in rock art of the American West. The issues involved present two very different kinds of challenges in the face of ethical critique.

Shamanism and Its “Ethical” Detractors: An Analysis. Ethnographically, practiced on a wide front in North America, divine knowledge acquired through the visionary experiences of shamans as they gained access to the supernatural realm was fundamental to many indigenous religions (Brodzky et al. 1977 ; Cordy-Collins 2010 ; Eliade 1964 :297–336; Furst 1977 ; Hultkrantz 1987 ; Irwin 1994 ; Liljeblad 1986 ; Park 1934, 1938 ; Vastokas 1977 ) . “Like the ecstatic trance, divine election, animal transformation, bird-like fl ight of the soul, knowledge of the worlds of the spirits and the dead, mastery of fi re, rebirth from the bones, the magic arts of curing, and the guardianship of traditions and the psychic and physical equilibrium of the community … remain typical of shamanism wherever it has survived within a soci-ety’s religious system, or even as the system itself”—these are the essentials of shamanism (Furst 1977 :2). A number of noteworthy hunter-gatherer American Indian rock art traditions, some of them thousands of years old, contain imagery consistent with shamanic themes and practices, and thus, shamanic interpretive models have been proposed for these depictions (Boyd 2003 ; Hedges 1976 ; 1982b , 1992, 1994 ; Francis and Loendorf 2002 :21–33; Kirkland and Newcomb1967:65–80; Loendorf 1994 ; Schaafsma 1994b ; Turpin 1994a, b, 2010, 2011a, b ; Whitley 1988, 1992, 1994a, b, 1998, 2000 ) .

Shamanism was fi rst described among the arctic and subarctic peoples of the Old World—the word itself derived from Russian Siberian Tungusic “saman.” (Furst 1977 :1,n1). It has been proposed that the earliest evidence of shamanism is found in the paintings of Upper Paleolithic hunters from the caves of France (Narr 1959 [as cited in Norwak and Durrant 1977 ] ; and recently, Clottes and Lewis-Williams 1998 ) . Clottes and Lewis-Williams propose that shamanic practices were part of a multicomponent belief system, arguing that their shamanic interpretive model in regard to these caves goes beyond conjecture, citing the paintings’ contexts and the visionary aspect of the art (Clottes and Lewis-Williams 1998 :79–112). According to Joan Vastokas ( 1977 :93), shamanism has persisted “in its most ancient form among a fairly large number of non-agricultural, hunting societies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including various north European and Siberian, as well as American Indian peoples.” Critical to this discussion is the observation that “ele-ments of shamanistic practice and worldview survive in most prehistoric, historic,

39Sanitizing Meaning

and contemporary religions” (Vastokas 1977 :93). Shamanism, recast and renewed, survives as an element in the major world religions today (Eliade 1964 :12; Vastokas 1977 :95).

Throughout the world, shamanistic experience has been given visual expression in a variety of media including masks, sculptures, paintings, imagery on costumes, drums and other performance paraphernalia, as well as through theatrical performance (Furst 1977 ; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975 ; Wilbert 1977 ; McNair 1977 ; Vastokas 1977 ) . Through art, shamans give expression to their experiences and provide a means to a collective understanding of the ecstatic journey, thus validating their experiences and their acquired powers. Vastokas ( 1977 :105) notes, “Among many North American peoples, creativity is interpreted as a personal gift from the spirits and as a talent derived through mystic, visionary experience.” It is therefore only reasonable to pro-pose that identi fi able shamanic themes giving form to the unseen in rock art are, in fact, just that and that this art was executed by shamans themselves.

The Rock Art

While there were many motivations for marking rocks with images over thou-sands of years, it is not surprising to fi nd some speci fi c rock art traditions, particu-larly those of hunter-gatherers, for which shamanic models offer the most satisfactory interpretation. At the same time, the exact forms and symbolism to which shamanic origins can be ascribed vary along cultural lines and aesthetic norms, thus accounting for shamanic themes within a variety of rock art styles and cultural traditions. Well-reasoned arguments for the shamanic origins of rock art and other visual texts are found on a global front ( Clottes and Lewis-Williams 1998; Furst 1977 ; Lewis-Williams 1981, 1986 , 1987; Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988 ; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1972 , 1978; Turpin 1994a, b ; Vastokas and Vastokas 1973 ; Vastokas 1977 ) .

In recent decades, extensive rock art research in California, the Great Basin, Northern Plains and on the Colorado Plateau, and elsewhere in the arid West has produced a copious body of literature arguing for shamanic origins of a diverse body of styles or traditions (Boyd 2003 ; Hedges 1976 , 1982b, 1985, 1992, 1994 ; Francis and Loendorf 2002 :21–33; Kirkland and Newcomb 1967 :65–80; Loendorf 1994 ; Schaafsma 1994b ; Turpin 1994a, b , 2010, 2011a, b ; Whitley 1988, 1992, 1994a, b ; 1998; 2000 ) . Some of the traditions discussed are abstract, while others include a variety of representational fi gures.

Citing ethnographic support, Whitley ( 2000 :89) has offered the opinion that all rock art in the Great Basin states was created by shamans “to illustrate the super-natural events and experiences of their vision quests.” Further, “Throughout the region of the California Tradition, shamans produced rock art at the conclusion of their vision quests to illustrate the spirits they had seen and the supernatural events, such as curing, rainmaking, and sorcery they had participated in during their altered states of consciousness. The shaman’s rock art site was a sacred place that served as his portal to the supernatural…” (Whitley 2000 :74–75).


While Whitley’s monolithic approach and other broad generalizations regarding shamanism models have been justi fi ably challenged ( Hedges 2001; McCall 2007 ) , in the American West, there is additional supporting ethnographic documentation linking rock art to shamanism either directly or as a source of power for these reli-gious practitioners (Blackburn 1975 ; Hudson and Lee 1984; Hudson and Underhay 1978:58; Liljeblad 1986 :644–45; Lowie 1924 :295–96), Park 1934, 1938 : Zigmond ( 1986 :409). According to Francis and Loendorf ( 2002 :111), among Shoshonean peoples of the Great Basin, rock art was created the morning after a vision quest experience in order to preserve it, although unfortunately they do not cite a speci fi c reference for this information. They do note, however, citing Applegate ( 1978 :50–51), Gayton ( 1948 :109, 240), Hultkrantz ( 1987 :55), and Kelly (1932:190; 1939:152), that extant rock art sites might be visited or consulted to renew connections to the supernatural and refresh a shaman’s memory. To ignore these, data raises the specter of hidden agendas on the part of researchers, a topic to be addressed shortly.

Abstract non fi gurative elements in rock art have been explained as universal hal-lucinatory entoptic images seen by persons in trance or altered states of conscious-ness (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988, 1990 ) . First proposed by Reichel-Dolmatoff ( 1972, 1975 , 1978) on the basis of Tukano art and ethnographic data, it was quickly adopted as a ready explanation to account for abstract rock art in general (Schaafsma 2013 ) . Needless to say, the applicability of this interpretive model for abstract imag-ery is only one of many possibilities (Greer and Greer 2003 ; Quinlan 2000 ; Quinlan and Woody ( 2001 ) ).

In regard to a number of representational rock art styles, however, rock art con-tent is often explicitly shamanic, or at least a shamanic model provides a productive explanatory framework for what we see and cannot within reason, therefore, be arbitrarily discounted (Figs. 4.1 and 4.2 ). Included here is the rock art of the Northern Colorado Plateau Tradition (Schaafsma 2013 ) , the Pecos River Style in Texas, and the Dinwoody Tradition in the Northern Plains (Boyd 2003 :45–66; Francis and Loendorf 2002 :19–33; Kirkland and Newcomb 1967:37–80; Schaafsma 1980 :61–80, 105–4, 163–181; 1986, 1994b, 2008 ; Turpin 1994a, b, 2010, 2011a, b ; Zintgraff and Turpin 1991 ) . Overall, these rock art traditions are spectacular, outstanding in their complexity and in the rendering of detail, and powerful in their aesthetic projection. The time and effort invested in these productions raises further questions in regard to the social and religious roles of rock art as well as the role of the shaman as artist and communicator of the dimensions of the spiritual realms to members of the authoring ethnic group (Turpin 2011a :54–55).

Each of these traditions is rife with visual metaphors regarding shamanic trance, symbolic death, and supernatural travel. Their component styles illustrate close relationships between the human and all other life forms and the shaman’s ability to share in occult animal powers. The portrayal of fl ight metaphors, animal spirit help-ers, and transmogri fi cation visually con fi rm these close relationships (Schaafsma 1994b ; Turpin 1994a, b ; Whitley 2000 ) .

Unlike the component styles of the Northern Colorado Plateau Tradition or the Pecos River Style, for which archaeological evidence is the sole interpretive avenue, proposed shamanic origins for Dinwoody Tradition rock art in the Bighorn and


Wind River Basins of Wyoming are well supported by Shoshonean ethnographic evidence and archaeological materials found in association with the petroglyphs (Francis and Loendorf 2002 :68–123). Among the Shoshone and other tribes of the Great Basin/Northern Plains interface, vision-questing traditions in general are well documented (Francis and Loendorf 2002 :112–113; Irwin 1994 ) . Francis and

Fig. 4.1 Barrier Canyon Style rock painting, eastern Utah. The shamanic themes, exempli fi ed by this composition that includes birds, snakes, fl ight metaphors, and transmogri fi cation, are typical components of these paintings

Fig. 4.2 Pecos River Style painting showing ascending and diving fi gures viewed as portrayals of shamanic travel


Loendorf ( 2002 :123, 194–95) speculate that nearly all of the rock art in the Bighorn and Wind River Basins originated in visionary experiences and postulate that the recent complexity represented by the Interior Line Style “… may mean that sha-manistic practices reached their zenith immediately before Euro-American contact” (Francis and Loendorf 2002 :123). In summary, with shamanic practices that feature vision questing and direct communication with the spirits are well documented eth-nographically throughout the Americas and with numerous rock art styles in diverse regions of the American West displaying imagery strongly shamanic content, it is reasonable to propose that some rock art had its origins in shamanic beliefs and ritu-als. In fact, it would seem unreasonable to propose otherwise. To do so, one leads one to suspect that there are other factors at work.

Eviscerating the Record: Western Biases, Values, Ethics, and “Shamanic Avoidance”

The term “shamanism” is used here in a general sense to apply to ritual practitioners involved in vision quests and journeys to the spirit realm to acquire their special powers. Characteristics of this shamanic enterprise were enumerated previously, noting that these are pictured in a number of American rock art traditions. It is not insigni fi cant, perhaps, that the popularity of shamanism as an interpretive model for rock art coincided with the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s that “produced a plethora of opinions on shamanism and altered states of consciousness” (Turpin 1994a :77). For a while, the 1960s turned the tide away from what had previously been negative views of shamanism and its presumed link to a state of psychosis. While shamanic models for interpreting certain rock art styles have therefore enjoyed acceptability in recent decades, within the history of anthropological research, shamanism has not always been viewed kindly by Euro-Americans. Currently, there has been a recent resurgence of negativity in favor of more “accept-able” interpretations in line with Western thinking, and that is what this discussion is about ( Kitchell 2010 ; Cole 2004 ) .

What should be made of this? As stated previously, the interpretive issue here is not simply “misinterpretation” but consciously choosing to avoid certain interpre-tive avenues, due to ethical considerations de fi ned by our own cultural biases . Avoidance is a safe route to take, eschewing scholarly responsibility, while assuring acceptability among colleagues. Ironically, it can be argued that these “ethical” strategies grounded in Western, or preferably Christian, values that are from a schol-arly point of view are “unethical.”

Backed by a substantial history of misconceptions and ideological bias, a nega-tive attitude concerning shamanism has not only persisted, but the idea of the prac-tice of shamanism in any form in the Western Hemisphere has been challenged (Kehoe 2000 ) . Alice Kehoe advocates that the term be restricted to circumpolar practitioners who use the beating of a skin-covered drum to invoke trance, or fol-lowing Kehoe, “intense concentration.” In the process, the drum becomes the


metaphor for a magic animal, the mode of conveyance into supernatural space (Kehoe 2000 :66). Since American Indians lacked the metaphor of riding an animal to the spirit realm, Kehoe argues that they did/do not practice shamanism (as she de fi nes it). In other words, for Kehoe, the means of “getting there” is more impor-tant than the “trip,” a perception that seems to miss the whole point entirely.

Taking a wider view, Kehoe’s “purist” de fi nition of shamanic practices, in turn, has been challenged by Alana Cordy-Collins ( 2010 :140, 152). Referring to “cultur-ally lobotomizing episodes,” in Western history, Cordy-Collins ( 2010 :139) reiter-ates the well-known sequence of events that takes place when in the process of [Christian] conversion, in which shamanistic elements were not only demoted but demonized. The legacy of this cultural baggage on the part of the West has created a residue, even if unknowingly, in the minds of many earlier ethnographers and perhaps even today in the attitudes of some students of rock art.

Traditionally in the Western world, shamanism and shamans themselves have been or are associated with witchcraft and sorcery and described in a derogatory manner. In early Medieval Europe, as mentioned previously (see Chap. 2 ), this was in part due to the competition that these religious practitioners posed in the face of Christianity (Russell 1972 ) .

Later, shamanic practices were couched within the rubric of “primitivism” by religious historians and anthropologists (e.g., Elmer R. Service, A Pro fi le of Primitive Culture 1958 ) . Noss ( 1949 :14), for example, supports these views with a long quote from Maddox ( 1923 :101–2) that is a disparaging portrayal of a Blackfoot shaman. The use of “primitive” as a descriptive term in earlier anthropological literature casts a variety of negative aspersions against the people so labeled (Radin 1937 ) , and as far as their shamanic practices go, a cloak of either irrationality or even mad-ness (for more on the overuse of “primitive,” see Kehoe 2000 :91–95).

Ethnologists as late as the mid-twentieth century failed to distinguish between an involuntary schizophrenic condition characteristic of some members of arctic and subarctic populations, referred to as “arctic hysteria” or even less informally “run-ning amok,” and the religious practitioners resident within these same societies who engaged in self-induced trance states in order to gain spiritual powers (Nowak and Durrant 1977 :17–21). Thus, shamanism was perceived by numerous investigators as tied to unstable psychological states or even linked to certain types of psychologi-cal disorders: “The Tungus, in common with many other peoples of the Far North … are af fl icted with the psychic instability called arctic hysteria…. The frequency of hysteria in the population as a whole appears to be related to the fact that custom does not disapprove of it: in fact, it could be said to be rewarded…. Hysterical per-sons are felt to be close to the spirit world, and professional shamans are largely drawn from those persons who are the most unstable” (Service 1958 :104). Further, shamans with their esoteric powers were also frequently regarded with suspicion or feared or equated ith sorcerers, even in their own communities, and these indigenous attitudes, communicated to ethnologists, added to the pall already surrounding these individuals in the minds of Westerners (see Service 1958 :194).

In the second half of the twentieth century, a number of studies began to explore the roots of shamanism based in targeted research that compared differences between

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the involuntary slip into altered states of consciousness (ASC), characteristic of unbalanced mental states, with the voluntary entrance of the religious practitioner into a trance state or a shamanic state of consciousness (SSC). Noll ( 1983 ) , for example, reviews the “schizophrenia metaphor” of shamanic states, citing studies by Kroeber ( 1940 ) , Devereaux ( 1956, 1961 ) , and Silverman ( 1967, 1975 ) . Noll roundly attacks this interpretation, concluding that evoking a medical model is unfounded and clouds a real understanding of shamanic practices, thus releasing the practicing shaman from the stigma of insanity. As opposed to the psychotic, research by Noll and others describe shaman leaders as balanced functioning members of their communities with unique cognitive capacities who established “harmonious relations between environ-ment, people, and supernaturals” (Noll 1983 :454; see also Furst 1977 :25–28; Shweder 1972 in Nowak and Durrant 1977 :24–25). Moreover, based on his recent extensive ethnographic work in highland and lowland South America, Chacon reports that, “In over two decades of conducting anthropological research, I have had the pleasure of knowing and working closely with Kuna, Cotacachi, Otavalo, Yora, Yanomano, and Achuar (Shiwiar) shamans. My experiences with traditional healers have been, with few exceptions, very positive. As a matter of fact, some shamans appear to be more mentally and emotionally balanced than many individuals in the Western world” (Richard Chacon, personal communication 2012).

Nevertheless, it is the implication of trance and supernatural out-of-the body experiences that appear to be the most objectionable features of shamanism pin-pointed by Western rationalists, who thus seek alternative explanations to account for the proposed shamanic iconography of rock art (Helvenston and Bahn 2002 ; Kehoe 2000 ; Kitchell 2010 ) . In a general denouncement of this paradigm, regard-less of its appropriateness to speci fi c cases, they perceive themselves as releasing indigenous people from notions they falsely regard as “primitive.” Further, the sha-manic journey (SCC) and altered states of consciousness are also regarded by the Western world as being irrational. Eliade ( 1964 :493 n.28), for example, notes that “in all probability, Schmidt denigrated states of ecstasy because, as a good rational-ist, he could not grant any validity to a religious experience that involved ‘loss of consciousness.” A related sticky point in the current shamanic debate concerns the well-documented use of drugs toward these ends (Cordy-Collins 2010 ; Eliade 1964 :220–223; Harner 1973 ; Nowak and Durrant 1977 :22–24; Wasson 1968 ) , an activity that is often held in negative regard. Overall, the effect has been to minimize the importance of drug-induced spiritual travel (Kehoe 2000 :64–65) and seek alter-native paradigms for rock art, divesting it of its likely shamanic origins in order to “protect” the indigenous people and their works from associations that they regard as degrading.

Rock art functions that are regarded as “reasonable” or practical by Western schol-ars are often promoted in lieu of more esoteric functions based in religious ecstatic experiences. As one of the most vociferous naysayers in regard to any link whatsoever between rock art and shamanism, Kehoe ( 2000 :71–80) fi nds her own acceptable alter-native explanations for rock art well within a Western paradigmatic framework—among them child’s play, territorial markers, or art for art’s sake. Interpretations “acceptable” to scholars grounded in Western materialism include those possible


meanings to which they can directly relate and those of which they approve. For exam-ple, Kehoe offers the opinion that the eland, identi fi ed by Lewis-Williams (1987) as a spirit animal in South African San belief and rock art, was probably painted “simply because it is so a striking a fi gure in the veld landscape” (Kehoe 2000 :72). This is purely a Western value that strips the eland its cultural context and spiritual meaning (see Campbell et al. 2010 :110). Similarly, Kehoe argues that rock art is primarily doodling by children, although, as a rational alternative to shamanism, she concedes that it also functioned to mark territories (Kehoe 2000 :71–75–77).

In dramatic denial of any serious import rock art might have (other than mark-ing territories), Kehoe ( 2000 :72) dispenses with rock art and shamans thusly: “Proponents of this theory [that rock art was created by shamans to depict what they saw in trance] are convinced that all these paintings and pecked-rock pictures come out of religious beliefs that contrast with our Western religions: beliefs in spirit animals hallucinated by shamans…. In other words, here again is the hoary Western assumption that if you aren’t a literate, city-dwelling citizen of a major nation, then you are unsophisticated, emotional, primitive, and unable to fi gure out the difference between dreams, hallucinations, and reality . There’s no room in these grand theories for children making pictures to pass the time while their mamas are picking berries” (italics mine). In essence Kehoe’s attempts to cast American Indians in an emic view of ourselves is only one step removed from early twentieth-century evocations of the idealized Greeks as a model for interpret-ing the Maya past (more on this presently).

More speci fi cally, within this testy environment, a shamanistic interpretation of both the ancient Barrier Canyon and Basketmaker rock art has recently come under fi re (Cole 2004 :65–66; Kitchell 2010 ) . Both styles are rife with shamanic imagery, and lacking living legacies, the content itself is the primary evidence upon which suggestions of shamanic origins are based (Schaafsma 1994b ) . Counter arguments offered by Cole and Kitchell, however, do not negate the shamanistic content and by extension the proposed shamanic origins for the rock art in question. These advo-cates of non-shamanic origins for this rock art argue that it is part of a more generally collective expression of “stored imagery” derived from broadly shared myths and traditions that reinforce social alliances (Cole 2009 :42–43; Kitchell 2010 :836–838). As a result non-shamanic interpretive approaches by “ethically responsible” archae-ologists expunge the meaning of the art, reducing it to palatable, simpli fi ed, and sani-tized explanations grounded in myth, narrative, group rituals, and other social niceties devoid of the abhorred ecstatic trance experiences.

In Kitchell’s opinion in particular, it seems that shamanistic art of necessity implies irrationality and a lack of controlled and conscious awareness and that a visually communicated, culturally determined, and calculated use of metaphor was beyond a shaman’s ken. The implication is that “irrational” shamans could not have produced this art. As recently observed by Francis ( 2005 :194), we are not comfort-able thinking about a lack of boundaries between the visionary or dreamed world and the “waking” world, the here and now and the supernatural realms in Native American religions, because, “as noted by Irwin (1996[sic]), this aspect of Native American religion has been downplayed, in part because our culture


perceives it as irrational.” Among American Indians of the Northern Plains, dreams and visions are not only important but central as a source of knowledge and in form-ing traditional Plains worldviews and religious identity (Irwin 1994 :3–4, 18–19). Observations by Irwin ( 1994 :19) provide a good response to Kehoe: “Theoretical knowledge, typical of the dominant culture, often reveals particular kinds of rela-tions among abstract, intellectual precepts, whereas the dreamer’s knowledge has a strong experiential, emotional, and imagistic base. Dream knowledge for Plains visionaries is framed as an existential encounter that participates in alternate modes of awareness and is not dependent upon ‘philosophic reasons.’ Irwin’s work has received notable praise by Vine Deloria Jr. for his in-depth and perceptual and respectful analysis of the dream or vision quest (Deloria in Irwin 1994 :vii–x). Further, visionary dreams motivate behavior and shape belief and cognitive pro-cessing and thus experiences and their interpretations. Irwin points out that in modern [Western] consciousness, dreaming has taken on the sense of “prerational” associated with “primitive” instinct and emotion “beneath the threshold of rational conceptualization” (Irwin 1994 :10).

As if in prescient response to Kehoe, Irwin emphasizes that for traditional Plains Natives, there is a unifying continuum between the dreamed and the world as lived. “In the contemporary, nonindigenous culture, the distinction between waking and dream-ing is largely a consequence of culturally reinforced rational theories of mind and has resulted in a bifurcated worldview for most Euro-Americans” (Irwin 1994 :18), thus illuminating some of the bases for the conundrums encountered in this discussion.

Ethnographically, there are many paintings derived from vision quests and the shamanic journeys. Aside from the rock art mentioned earlier, shamanic art does not necessarily take the form of putting imagery on rocks, but the mere existence of all of this art counters claims made by scholars who deny that shamans made art to communicate their experiences. Irwin ( 1994 :211–236) devotes an entire chapter to the “visionary arts” where he points out that other than enactment, to communicate the visionary experience, the use of visionary images is the most expressive means of communicating the “dream” experience, that is, what has been learned and seen in trance. Because this knowledge concerns visionary mate-rial, what better means to convey this information than by imagery itself? (Irwin 1994 :211), and skill in craft production and painting are powers received in visions. Many images are derived from vision experiences among the Ponca, as seen in both small clay fi gurines and in petroglyphs (citation to Howard 1965 in Irwin 1994 :214–15). Further visionary imagery and its power are expressed in paintings on robes, lodges, on shields, and instruments used in ritual. Outside of North America, a richly painted Goldi shaman’s costume from eastern Siberia is another case in point (Vastokas 1977 :99–105). Animals and designs in this case represent the animals’ spirits which the owner of the costume controlled, and spi-rals and concentric circle portals to the Other realms to which he traveled. This particular costume is signaled out here because of the close correspondence between it and elements of the Barrier Canyon Style. Elsewhere in Siberia, sha-mans’ costumes picture skeletal features, and in North America as well, shamanic imagery is rife with references to skeletal features and death, dimensions of the shamanic journey as previously described (Furst 1977 ) .


In sum, there is no shortage of ethnographic art in numerous media and from diverse cultural contexts that depict essential elements of the shamanic journey. In the American Desert West, the rock art with shamanic content is, for the most part, ancient and thus must be studied on its own grounds.

In returning to the issue of ethics and rock art interpretation, while recognizing that no approach for interpreting ancient rock art in the Great Basin or on the Colorado Plateau can ever be proven to be “correct” in terms of “Absolute Truth,” the ostensible goal of the archaeologist is to provide models and interpretive hypoth-eses that best address the topic, taking into consideration all relevant evidence. In the preceding discourse, I have reviewed a number of factors that have led Western scholars to reject shamanism as an “acceptable” interpretive model. To deny sha-manic origins for particular hunter-gatherer rock arts in compliance with so-called social critique in the present is antithetical to the scienti fi c enterprise when sha-manic elements dominate the art. Further, denial of a past in which shamanic strate-gies were operative robs the American Indian past of a rich cultural legacy. As David Whitley observes in regard to California rock art: … the complex yet logical and symbolic coherency of the beliefs concerned with making this art [reveal that among] Native California cultures—cognition, symbolism, and beliefs were every bit as complex as our own Euro-American ‘civilization’ even though different from it (Whitley 2000 :122). Whitewashing a shamanic past, including that in our own “pagan” roots (see Ratsch and Muller-Ebeling 2006 ) , may be viewed as a form of cultural imperialism by contemporary followers of the Abraham movement.

War and Con fl ict and the Taking of Human Trophies. The second conten-tious issue pertains to warfare and ritual violence. Elements of con fl ict and the tak-ing of human trophies are explicit in the archaeological record in the Americas (Chacon and Mendoza 2007a, b ; Chacon and Dye 2007 ; LeBlanc 1999 ) , and in the American Southwest, pictorial evidence is testimony to both in the rock art, kiva murals, and in Mimbres ceramic decoration (Cole 2009 :250–251, Figs. 109d, 111a, 66a-e; LeBlanc 1999 : Fig. 2.7, 123, 140; Schaafsma 2000, 2007a, b ) .

It is not surprising that the recognition and exploration of indigenous and ritual violence in the Americas has given rise to numerous reactions and ethical issues (Chacon and Mendoza ( 2007b :222–32)). Native aversion to warfare themes as dis-played in rock art and other archaeological contexts often re fl ects the desire to be seen in a more positive light by a paternalistic dominant culture that de fi nes the terms of acceptability without consideration of indigenous values. Conversely, a warrior past may be endorsed by descendants proud of their warrior heritage (Carocci 2012 ; Anonymous, in The Shiwi Messenger 2000 ) . Downplaying con fl ict can lead to ethical concerns as well in regard to contemporary issues of identity and oral traditions (Ogburn 2012 ) . Native consensus should not be expected.

Warfare and ritual violence, like shamanism, are topics often avoided, the report-ing of which at times has been condemned by anthropologists, even in the face of solid evidence. As noted by Chacon and Mendoza ( 2012 :9–11, 14–15), reporting on violence may have potentially adverse effects on native communities, negatively impacting relationships between indigenous peoples and the dominant society, thwarting preferred idealized views of the past. Fantasies of idealized pasts are not


uncommon on both sides of this issue: Idealized characterizations of indigenous people have a long legacy in Western thought (Chacon and Mendoza 2012 :4), and many American Indians themselves subscribe to a similar paci fi stic vision of their cultural heritage. Recently, various native voices have asserted that descriptions of their pasts as fraught with the universal phenomenon of con fl ict are damaging ele-ments of colonialism (Means and Wolf 1995 ; Montejo 1993, 1999 ; Tlapoyawa 2003 ) . Delusions of a “paradise lost” and “noble savages,” or nearly bloodless con fl icts (Means and Wolf 1995 :16) are challenged, however, by an honest look at the data that archaeology has to offer (Chacon and Mendoza 2007a, b ) .

In this section I will consider some of the evidence in Pueblo rock art for con fl ict and trophy-taking, as well as some responses to these data. Not surprisingly, imag-ery of warriors and visual metaphors and poetic allusions to human trophies (see Bunzel 1932 :676,678; 1933 :131–34) con fl icts with popular preconceptions of the “peaceful Pueblos,” a contemporary myth promoted by Ruth Benedict in 1934. Today, the view of a peaceful Puebloan past may be touted by Puebloans them-selves. Benedict models the “Apollonian Zuni” as classic examples of a digni fi ed, rational, and peaceful society, as she minimalizes the evidence of violence manifest by scalps taken in combat by emphasizing their rain-bringing ritual functions (Benedict 1934 :58, 73; see also LeBlanc 1999 :22 for commentary on Benedict). The mere mention of the ritual use of scalps as rain fetishes, however, alerts us to more complex concerns, bringing into focus the need to contextualize evidence of violence and trophy-taking so that these activities may be fully examined within their ample cultural frameworks, and thus eschewing simple, value-laden Western dichotomies of “peaceful” versus “warlike” or “good” versus “bad.”

Imagery of con fl ict is prominent in various rock art styles at various points in Ancestral Pueblo history beginning with the Basketmakers around 2000 years ago and in Ancestral Pueblo sites from ca. 1200 CE to Spanish contact (Schaafsma 2000 ; 2007a, b ) . After ca.1350 CE, portrayals in rock art and kiva murals of war-riors, weapons, and shields and symbolic references to scalping, that include meta-phorical morning star icons and other supernaturals that appear as a symbolic packet, indicate that con fl ict and its trophies have become ritualized and incorporated into Pueblo cosmology.

Among the ritualistic themes in both Basketmaker and in related Fremont rock art are portrayals of human heads and artifacts made of fl ayed head skins or scalps assembled for ritual use (Fig. 4.3 ; Schaafsma 2007a :90–101 ). Some are in the hands of elaborate ceremonially attired fi gures, and actual artifacts of this nature have been recovered (Kidder and Guernsey 1919 :Pl. 87; Howard and Janetski 1992 ) . That violence was prevalent among Basketmaker populations in the Four Corners region is underscored by evidence of massacres, including evidence for the taking of head trophies in a number of excavated caves, leading to the conclusion that “lethal con fl ict was a part of Basketmaker life” (Hurst and Turner 1993 :169). Nevertheless, reticent to ascribe the artifacts or imagery of same to violence, some archaeologists offer the interpretation that commemorations of ancestors and lin-eage and the promotion of fertility issues account for this pictography, interpreta-tions appearing to be generally more consistent with the interests of agriculturalists


(Lipe 1993 :9). There is, however, no corroborating evidence that this was the case nor is there any known evidence to support the practice ancestor worship and the curation of ancestral remains in the American Southwest.

As our own folkloric idealized past has been projected paternalistically onto the Pueblos and their ancestors, so it was with the Maya. Digressing for the moment in order to gain a broader perspective on early twentieth-century archaeologists, the prevailing romantic allusions to the Western past, and how they were then projected onto the American past, it may be useful to brie fl y review some opinions of early leading Mayanists. Even in the face of blatantly militaristic iconography, Morley ( 1913 :63; 1946 ; Kidder 1959 :782) and Thompson ( 1954 ) promulgated a fantasy vision of the classic Maya civilization as comprised of peaceful theocracies dedi-cated to the arts and sciences. Their great architectural achievements were consid-ered to be ceremonial centers, which except for ritual occasions were vacant. In this idealized vision of the Maya world, there was no warfare, and “all intellectual activ-ity was devoted to the chronicling of the heavens and time, and in which the peas-antry supported the elite merely in exchange for the knowledge of agricultural timing that any seasoned farmer has already mastered” (Schele and Miller 1986 :19). Further, “The Maya were considered the Greeks of the New World, and the Aztecs were seen as the Romans – one pure, original, and beautiful, the other slavish, deriv-ative, and cold” (Schele and Miller 1986 :21). In 1986, in a groundbreaking work fully addressing the iconography revealing the role of blood offerings and human sacri fi ce, Schele and Miller state, “As this new understanding of the Maya has emerged … the Maya have fallen from their pedestal; in doing so, they become a

Fig. 4.3 Petroglyph of a Basketmaker II fl ayed head skin. The incised loop on top indicates ritual use. San Juan River, Utah


part of the community of man, the builders of a civilization that included both the darkest and the most brilliant possibilities of human behavior” (Schele and Miller 1986 :15). Gould ( 1990 ) asks why the early Mayanists subscribed to their benign views, suggesting that these were escapist fantasies fueled by an aversion to politi-cal and military developments in Europe at the time. In this, we are reminded of the questions posed by Graves ( 1994 ) in regard to the impact of contemporary issue on our perceptions of the past (see Chap. 2 , p 9). Certainly, the construction of and adherence to such a picture of peace and intellectual achievements would have pro-vided a comforting platform of hope for a better future devoid of the atrocities of con fl ict. Such fantasies serve a social purpose, however unreal, and we are reminded once again of how our contemporary preconceptions and cultural biases contribute to our interpretations of the past, an issue alluded to in earlier chapters.

Nevertheless, the well-documented evidence for warfare and con fl ict in North America and in the Mesomerican past has emerged as a highly volatile issue in the ethics debate (Chacon and Dye 2007 ; Chacon and Mendoza 2007a, b , 2012; Cojti Ren 2004 ; Deloria 1969 ) . In a backlash, and in spite of the blatantly militaristic themes pictured in Maya iconography, a number of revisionist writers (Means and Wolf 1995 ; Montejo 1993, 1999 ; Tlapoyawa 2003 , among others) accuse scholars addressing con fl ict and war as engaging in “a malicious colonial legacy determined to denigrate and dehumanize indigenous cultures, societies, and histories” (as reported by Chacon and Mendoza 2007a :222). In a somewhat more balanced view, Cojti Ren ( 2004 :5) acknowledges the existence of violence in the Maya past but asserts that in modern portrayals of the Maya, these views overshadow all other dimensions of Maya society. While this claim is certainly able to be challenged, he further maintains, “The archaeological image of the Maya constructed as the culture of the other affects how non-Indigenous populations, corporations, and government institutions perceive us and treat us, as well as how we perceive ourselves” (Cojti Ren 2004 :11). In other words, he maintains that a view of a warlike past is damag-ing on all sides.

Antonio Chavarria from Santa Clara Pueblo carries this discussion further, artic-ulating the complexities of the issue. Recognizing that all people are faced with con fl icts, the Pueblos included, he states in regard to land claim cases that acknowl-edging and reporting on warlike behavior in the past could be threatening to “the economic and political realities of the moment. Just trying to hold onto their often tenuous, semi-sovereign, status is often cause enough for avoiding characterizations that labels the tribe as con fl ict ridden” (Chavarria and Mendoza 2012 :409). Chavarria also notes that this is problematic, since “by painting the Pueblos as peaceful, we also run the risk of completely stripping them of any type of agency in their respec-tive histories” (Chavarria and Mendoza 2012 :409). This exempli fi es well the mod-ern ethical quandaries facing indigenous peoples as well as scholars, whose reporting could be used by unscrupulous politicians against the tribes.

Nevertheless, numerous aspects of the archaeological record of the American Southwest, including the rock art, document a Pueblo past fraught with con fl ict—con fl ict spurred by drought, its impact on the economy, and resulting social stress (Haas 1990 ; Haas and Creamer 1993, 1996, 1997 ; Kuckelman 2010 , LeBlanc 1999 ;

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Schaafsma 2000, 2007a, b ) . Haas and Creamer ( 1996 :210–11) decry the lack of consideration given to the role of warfare in regard to population aggregation that took place on the Colorado Plateau in the thirteenth century. This phenomenon, which includes retreats to defensive cliff dwellings in rock shelters of dif fi cult access, is supported by the presence of fi gures of shields painted on the walls of these shelters, for which I have hypothesized, based on ethnographic comparisons, a function of defensive magic (Fig. 4.4 ; Schaafsma 2000 :9–27). Haas and Creamer point out that explanatory arguments in regard to these sites are usually based in economic factors without regard for the con fl ict that ensues when resources become scarce. They argue that warfare has to be factored into the equation along with eco-logical/economic concerns if we are ever going to understand patterns of human behavior (Haas and Creamer 1996 :211; LeBlanc 1999 :22–23).

As LeBlanc details the circumstantial evidence for defense and strife, the very content of visual documents in the form of rock art and kiva murals made by Pueblo people between ca. 1350 and 1600 contains the ideological perspective through which the spoils of con fl ict was viewed (Fig. 4.5 ; Schaafsma 2000, 2007a ) . Displaying multitudes of warriors ensconced within rich symbolic con-texts makes it evident that not only was con fl ict a part of life but that it had taken on cosmological signi fi cance as it played into the role of rainmaking—the latter a perennial Pueblo concern. The adoption of enemy scalps taken in battle was a means to this end as the victors converted them into rainmakers (Schaafsma 2000 :127–150; Stephen 1936 :97; Stevenson 1904 :39, 205–207; Bunzel 1932 :679, 764; 1933 :131–34). Scalps were/are not considered grisly war tokens, but they were incorporated into reciprocity-based rituals associated with their roles as rainmakers and as critical contributions to assuring agricultural fertility and well-being of the community.

Ethnographic documents, including oral histories, ritual poetry, and mythologies, indicate that con fl ict and ritual violence were closely integrated with the cosmolo-gies fundamental to maize-based societies over a large geographic region that includes Mesoamerica. The ritual conversion of enemy scalps by Pueblo Indians into beings with rainmaking powers took place within a broader conceptual

Fig. 4.4 Thirteenth century forti fi ed cliff structure in southern Utah with painted shields, Grand Gulch, Utah. Similar sites are distributed throughout the Four Corners region in southern Utah and northern Arizona


framework of based on a demand for reciprocity between the human world and the supernatural rain-granting powers. This packet of symbolic associations in Pueblo cosmology is well grounded in a Mesoamerican-derived Venus/maize/fertility com-plex (Sprajc 1993 ) based in the need for reciprocity prevalent among maize agricul-turalists. This reciprocal system, rife with metaphors, demands blood sacri fi ce in return for rain and agricultural fertility. Among the metaphors is an analogy between head-taking and harvesting ears of maize (Taube 1992 :50).

Ignoring this complex ideology divests not only the Pueblo past but that of American maize farmers in general, of a signi fi cant cultural legacy and complex heritage, and enables the dominant culture to reduce the views of ancient con fl ict, and scalping in particular, to simply “barbaric” practices of the “other.” To avoid that, we have also seen that con fl ict is often downplayed in discussions of Southwestern archaeology and evidence of ritual violence subjected to a “preferen-tial interpretation” in an effort to “control” the past so that it conforms to contempo-rary Western ideals. That, however, compromises the role of the archaeologist in contributing to knowledge of the pasts he/she studies, such compromising being an ethical problem in itself.

An additional factor for consideration here is that the reduction of tribal con fl icts during the post-contact period appears to have led to the loss of indigenous knowl-edge itself regarding at least some of the symbolic and metaphorical associations pictured archaeologically. In consequence, today the same images may have acquired new meanings, or their interpretations are somewhat altered. Assessing problems such as this brings to the forefront of the discussion the unrelenting phe-nomena of change. While universally operative, change has had a rapid effect on the values espoused by American Indian populations in the “pressure cooker” of

Fig. 4.5 Weapon and shield-bearing warriors pictured in the Galisteo Basin of New Mexico by the Southern Tewa Pueblo people between ca. 1350 and 1525 CE. In addition to the warriors themselves, the panel contains a rich suite of cosmological symbolism related to warfare, scalping, and rain such as the eagle-feathered morning star icons


contemporary American society. Problematic is that the visual testimony of warfare rendered by Pueblo artists in the past may be challenged by their very descendants who now desire or even need another self-image. A Taos friend, perturbed at my book Warrior, Shield, and Star , said defensively, “We were never warlike until you guys came along.”

A related revisionist view is that scalping, a widespread practice in precontact times and very much in evidence in the rock art repertoire, is one such issue (Bishop and Lytwyn 2007 :39–40; Emerson 2007 :139; Milner 2007 :196; Lambert 2007 :215–18). As described previously, in the American Southwest, rock art, backed by archaeological fi nds, provides plenty of evidence for the taking of head trophies, all of which negates various self-serving charges on the part of some native Americans that scalping was initiated in North America by English colonists around the time of the French and Indian war (Chacon and Dye 2007 :6; Chacon and Mendoza 2007a :223). While atrocities were many at the hands of the Europeans, they did not introduce scalping. We recall here the earlier mentioned accusations that interests in and reporting on pre-Hispanic warfare by anthropologists are part of a “malicious colonial legacy.”

I have already commented on the potentially damaging effects in the present on commentary on warfare in the past. But to return to the issue from another angle—should the rich legacy of warfare imagery and evidence for trophy-tak-ing be suppressed in Southwestern rock art because today it might be viewed as denigrating? To whom is it denigrating? Historically, having taken a scalp was a requirement for membership in most Pueblo warrior societies—having taken a scalp validated one’s worth as a warrior and protector of village and land. All of this is delineated in detail in a number of ethnographies, but if its ethno-graphic data or related rock art interpretations were to be expunged for the sake of creating an “acceptable image” to outsiders, then a signi fi cant piece of Pueblo cosmology and hence understanding would be lost—to the world as well as to the heirs of these traditions. Further, today many Pueblos are proud of their war-rior legacy, and that pride continues into the present. In 2000, a local Zuni newspaper, The Shiwi Messenger , reported a Veteran’s Day celebration honor-ing of recent veterans, linking them with Zuni’s traditions of their ancestors: “Historically, the Ashiwi (Zuni People) have been characterized as well-orga-nized, highly motivated fi ghters. The complex organization and structure of warfare was manifested into Zuni culture through the Bow Priesthood—these ‘war chiefs’ led Zuni warriors into battle. In general, the Ashiwi avoided vio-lence and warfare as much as possible, but would fi ght strongly and willingly in defense of their people and their sacred lands when necessary” ( The Shiwi Messenger 6(13):12). Citing military engagements since 1540, it is also acknowledged here that involvement in the US military carries on “the tradition of our ancestors.”

Another perspective on American Indian warfare occurs in the historic rock art of the Northern Plains that has its own spiritual dimension. During the post-contact period, tribes on the Northern Plains have left a voluminous rock art record of their exploits in con fl ict inscribed in their landscapes in graphic narrative form known as


Biographic Tradition (Keyser 2004 :65–67). This rock art accounts for the majority of Northern Plains rock art sites and documents exploits in war by “warriors—men of courage and skill who sought powerful spirit helpers … and paid homage to those spirits by recording their deeds performed in fi ghting and horse raiding” (Keyser 2004 :10–11). Both protohistoric Pueblo and Northern Plains rock art run contrary to the contemporary revisionist views advanced by Russell Means and Marvin Wolf ( 1995 ) who attempt to downplay American Indian violence (as reported by Chacon and Mendoza ( 2007a :6)).

Idealized misrepresentations by American Indians and Euro-Americans alike destroy this native heritage. Recognizing that the New World was not a “para-dise lost,” Chacon and Mendoza, addressing the larger view, ask how we may reconcile recorded warrior traditions, including pride in a warrior past, with revisionist perspectives currently in vogue. To deny such a past eviscerates it. They conclude that “to deny voice to this warrior tradition of self-sacri fi ce is to plunder the most ancient and valued systems of belief to be found within these proud cultural traditions” (Chacon and Mendoza 2007b :228). Indeed, in Elizabeth Arkush’s review of the edited volumes of Chacon and Dye ( 2007 ) and Chacon and Mendoza ( 2007a , b), she argues effectively that to understand past societies and people, warfare must be considered, noting that an intellectual battle fi eld has arisen over these issues (Arkush 2008 :560). She goes on to say, “These works testify to the presence and importance of war in human histories all over the globe,” and further, “they allow us to say something meaningful about its causes, its effects, and its relationship with society and culture over time” (Arkush 2008 :560).

As scientists, ideally archaeologists are committed to research devoid of value judgments. If archaeologists are going to study the iconography of warfare and report on it, it is incumbent upon an investigator to contextualize as fully as pos-sible themes of con fl ict or trophy-taking and to come to terms with what is pic-tured in its larger cultural contexts. All cultural threads are articulated, and if you pull out one of the threads, the fabric becomes distorted. War and ritual violence are inseparable from economic issues, politics, cosmologies, and religion (see Chacon and Mendoza 2012 for similar conclusions). Romantically sanitized over-lays onto warlike pasts that create unrealistic but “acceptable” views devoid of con fl ict may satisfy concerns in the present and appear to protect the indigenous image, but as Chavarria has pointed out, this too is problematic. In fact, it fosters the demeaning paradigm of paternalism and submission. Suppression of informa-tion contributes to ignorance and lack of understanding, fostering simpli fi ed inter-pretations, misinterpretations, and even denial of what is represented. Insertion of the need to bow to a messy middle ground of interaction between modern indig-enous concerns and the dominant culture, as recommended by some anthropolo-gists, foists the role of social activist onto archaeologists, introducing a new raft of ethical concerns (more on this presently).

55Change: Superimposed Meanings and Rock Art’s Roles…

Change: Superimposed Meanings and Rock Art’s Roles in Reinventing the Past, “Desired Knowledge,” and Searching for Identities

At this point we might a ask, “Who values the past anyway, and for what reasons?”

In the West, we value information for its own sake. Is the desire to understand the past in its own terms “as it happened” only a scholarly Western value, cast in almost material terms, as information is collected and stored in written tomes or museums? Is this knowledge of the human experience useful beyond scholarly debate? Can we gather lessons that enable us to better address the future or cultures different from our own? For indigenous people, rock art is a useful medium for reinventing the past for purposes related to the present. When such reinvention con fl icts with archeo-logical knowledge, how does this matter? In what contexts?

Things have agency by virtue of the fact that they affect people, and eye-catching rock art has numerous effects on those who view it. One way of understanding rock art through time is the “social life of things” approach (Preucel 2006 :15), recogniz-ing that rock art by virtue of its persistence in the landscape through time accumu-lates a biography of its own in the course of which meanings shift through time. The meanings that ancient rock art holds for observers are diverse and subject to change, depending on the observers’ distance in time and culture from the imagery in ques-tion, available knowledge, needs, beliefs, and values. It can be manipulated toward various ends. Fixed in the landscape, petroglyphs, and rock paintings are a useful tool for constructing perceptions of histories or, rather, for the reconstruction of “changing pasts.” American Indians approach rock art with varied goals, some of which have already been discussed.

If we had access to how any given ancient rock art site was understood by native peoples over the course of centuries or even millennia, we would discover a fascinat-ing variety of interpretations and reactions noteworthy in themselves. Superimpositions, evidence of the acquisition of stone from petroglyphs or scraping paint from painted images, or ancient vandalism are physical evidence that interactions took place. Where information as to the motivations involved to be available, it would provide a great deal of insight into social dynamics or views of the supernatural held by previous observers of these sites. Importantly, these responses to rock art have nothing to do with the original intent of the imagery by the people who made it.

Cultural Appropriation and Reinvention. Ethical quandaries exist when American Indian views of rock art con fl ict with archaeological knowledge. These views commonly involve matters of “ownership” and interpretation and are moti-vated by contemporary social or political interests. Today, because the invasion and conquest of the Western Hemisphere by Europeans had such a disruptive effect, there is a current desire and need on the part of indigenous people to reestablish their


pasts for the purpose of validating contemporary identity and connection with place. This process commonly includes the reinvention of the past, and rock art is easily manipulated to these ends. In such endeavors, tribal members often connect rock art sites to oral traditions in attempts to verify a former presence in landscapes with which their relationships were transitory or even nonexistent. Such claims may involve the appropriation of rock art that was created by totally different eth-nic groups. The past is thus distorted as a new one is invented, and in so doing, one ethnic group threatens the cultural legacy of another. In some cases, these claims are backed by legal threats. In any case, native reinterpretation in such instances demands that the past be divested of its original signi fi cance for contemporary interests. This in itself is cultural thievery. Archaeologists in some instances have even been complicit in this kind of appropriation, as the past is divested of its origi-nal signi fi cance.

A particularly egregious example of this kind of appropriation, embracing sev-eral ethical issues, is a recent claim by Comanches to late precontact Pueblo rock art (ca. 1350–1525 CE) at a location in the Galisteo Basin (Blinman 2008 ) . It is useful to delineate this in some detail. Unfortunately in this case, the name “Comanche Gap” was af fi xed to a nearby pass in the volcanic dike in the 1880s by Anglos when a railroad was constructed through the gap in the dike bearing the petroglyphs (Lippard 2010 :86, fn.12). In a published interview, Eric Blinman ( 2008 :58) relates his experience of bringing a group of Comanches to this site, where large spectacu-lar images of a variety of warriors, including shield-bearing warriors brandishing weapons, kachina warriors, and morning stars dominate the petroglyph inventory (see Fig. 4.5 ). The supernaturals depicted and the associated cosmological symbol-ism are all well-known fi gures in rock art in the vicinity of Pueblo IV sites through-out the Rio Grande Valley, and many are prominent among the Hopi today (Schaafsma 1975 , 1992, 2000, 2007a ) . Further, this suite of war-related iconogra-phy is lavishly pictured in the kiva murals of Pottery Mound, a Pueblo IV site (ca. 1350–1500 CE) south of Albuquerque, where the images are so similar to those at Comanche Gap that I have suggested they shared similar warrior societies (Schaafsma 2007c :144, 157). In sum, the iconography at Comanche Gap is well published, and the Pueblo origins of these petroglyphs are beyond dispute.

In the wake of Blinman’s site visit with the Comanche, however, he states: “Interesting contrasts emerge where the archaeologists simply need to step aside. Comanche people have kept stories alive about the rock art at Comanche Gap with-out anyone having seen the rock art in generations. We helped a group of Comanche elders visit the site, and they quickly departed from the archaeological script that attributes the rock art to Pueblo people. In their stories, the images are ritual Comanche symbols authored by Comanche artists at a formative time in Comanche history” (Blinman 2008 :58). Although it is interesting to take note of the reaction of the Comanche to these petroglyphs, which in all their warrior splendor were very much to their liking, it is unethical to accept the Comanche perspective without a reference to the abundant archaeological data that establishes their Pueblo origins. While a great deal of ambiguity may exist around origins, age, authorships, and so forth of much rock art—rock art issues are rife with these kinds of uncertainties—that


is not the case here. A bow to the Comanche without any caveats in the face of overwhelmingly solid archaeological evidence to the contrary raises the ethical alarm in regard to the dissemination of misinformation to both the archaeological community and readers from the general public of El Palacio , a popular periodical of the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe. Equally signi fi cant, however, is that, by accepting and broadcasting the Comanches’ story, the article also disenfranchises the descendants of the Southern Tewa Pueblo people whose Galisteo Basin ances-tors made these petroglyphs.

Before leaving this discussion, it is essential to add that the fi rst appearance of the Comanche in the Southwest was at Taos in 1706, and by the 1740s, they were raiding Galisteo Pueblo. If the Comanches today actually do have stories about these petroglyphs, it is likely that they stem from those years, by which time the petroglyphs themselves were already 200 years old. If the Comanches’ account to Blinman has any validity at all, at best, it has to have reference to their early appropriation of these petroglyphs well after they were carved by the Southern Tewa residents. That this whole thing smacks of a latter-day instance of aggres-sion by Comanches into Pueblo territory deserves some re fl ection. Paradigms are loathe to change!

Another instance of rock art appropriation in the American Southwest is a recent claim by the Southern Tiwa tribe of Ysleta del Sur near El Paso to a painting in Hueco Tanks Sate Park, that appears to be, by all comparative standards, historic Mescalero Apache origin. At some point in recent history, however, a series of Tiwa names was written on the rock below the painting, and these names were used as evidence by the Tiwa to legally substantiate their claim to a copyright to the fi gure that was appropri-ated as a logo for their Speaking Rock casino (Brown 2003 :83; Schaafsma n.d. ) . With a lack of contest from the Mescalero on this matter, these historically displaced Tiwa maintain that the design has deep religious signi fi cance for them as a tribe “symbolizing the key to the return to mother pueblo (Isleta south of Albuquerque) by the last tribal member alive” (Brown 2003 :83). Such cases illustrate how the power of colorful oral tradition bene fi ts contemporary tribal interests militating against the archaeological data and scienti fi c knowledge (see also McPherson and Fahey 2008 and Kreutzer 2008 for a parallel case regarding oral tradition and its in fl uence in the NAGPRA process). Alternative data may be suppressed.

Changes in the perceived meanings of rock art may occur rapidly. Shifts in mean-ing in regard to certain images or rock art panels, regardless of age, may take place quickly even among tribal spokespersons regarded as authorities. While the image is static, interaction with it is not. How does one as a scholar deal with a tectonic shift in meaning? In these events, it is usually extremely helpful to examine the underlying causal factors—the agents of change—that have lead to new interpretations and con-sequently the roles that the rock art plays in the present. The example discussed so far involves the need for establishing identity, but there is more to be said.

Among the Southwestern tribes, the Hopi in particular over the last 50 years or so have a notorious record for reinventing their past as they seek to trace their clan migra-tions since the “time of origin,” and in the course this endeavor, rock art has played a major role. In so doing, any image, regardless of age or cultural af fi liation, is subject


to reinterpretation as a Hopi clan symbol, to the point where clan identities are viewed as being the prime signi fi cance that rock art holds for the Hopis, overriding original intended meaning, symbolic content, and worldviews. In addition, if these allegations were credible, they would change the view of prehistory constructed by archaeology, not only on the Colorado Plateau and neighboring regions but throughout the entire Western Hemisphere, as these claims have no geographic bounds.

It appears that Frank Waters’ Book of the Hopi ( 1963 ) may have instigated this interpretive “movement.” In tandem with his Hopi collaborator, Oswald White Bear Fredericks, Waters published assertions along these lines backed by all kinds of inaccurate illustrations of rock art, the signi fi cance of which matters little in this context, except to underscore the imaginative ingredient of the enterprise.

Earlier discussions of Pueblo or Hopi rock art do not focus on clan symbols as an interpretive route (e.g., Parsons 1939 :358–60), the only exception being the well-known and unique site of Tutuveni, also known as Willow Springs (Colton 1946 ) . At Tutuveni, a location along the Hopi Salt Trail, over the past few hundred years, individual Hopis have carved their clan marks into boulders to record their partici-pation in this dangerous pilgrimage to the salt shrine at the bottom of Grand Canyon (Bernardini 2009 ) . Tutuveni is, nevertheless, unique among petroglyph sites, and the clan symbols left there do not document migrations.

Edmund Nequatewa ( 1936 :34) notes in legends of Hopi migrations that the peo-ple would mark the land as they went with their houses and pottery “in order to have some kind of mark in this country.” Rock art is not mentioned by Nequatewa, but the idea of “leaving a mark” sets the stage for the later revisionist view that adds rock art to the discussion. In 1971, eight years after the publication of Waters’ book, however, Harold Courlander, in recounting a similar phase in the mythic history of the Hopis, states that Spider Woman told them, “Wherever you stop to rest, leave your marks on the rocks and cliffs, so that others will know who was there before them” (Courlander 1971 :32). As a fi nal notation on this topic, I can personally attest to the fact that, in 1956, I was privileged to be a member of a small party accompa-nied by a Hopi kachina clan leader who was exploring Tsegi Canyon for a site that would conform to of a former clan location as described in oral traditions. Site situ-ation, a fi r tree, and architecture were among his concerns, and rock art (although present) was not even mentioned.

In summary, for the Hopi today, rock art in the landscape reinterpreted as clan symbols exerts social power in that it denotes intellectual “rights” to place, “docu-menting” clan histories. An assertion of identity is the fundamental issue in this discussion, and Hopi legends and reinventions are not expected to coincide with archaeological knowledge. As observed by E. Charles Adams ( 1984 :241), “It is a responsibility of the Hopi to keep their oral histories alive. It should not be impor-tant to the internal workings of the culture that Euro-Americans have other opinions about the same events.”

Beyond identity, other motivations for changing interpretations also exist. In the well-known case of Prophecy Rock at Hopi, Armin Geertz ( 1994 :257–319) details the changing interpretations of a petroglyph composition at Hopi probably created in the nineteenth century. Clan symbols are not part of this case, but a brief review of


this saga is worthwhile as it is a good document of other kinds of social forces at work that can impinge on the interpretation of rock art today outside of an archaeo-logical framework. The petroglyph itself is of little consequence beyond providing a visual “sounding board” against which differing interpretations have been directed.

The original meaning and intended function of this panel of imagery is unknown. Early interpretations, the fi rst being around 1875, cast the fi gures in a narrative, secular framework. This was followed by other literal approaches that perceived among these enigmatic fi gures a locomotive or a wagon. In 1955, however, David Monongya, a Hopi from Oraibi, interjected more symbolic and prophetic content, saying that this petroglyph depicts the Hopi lifeway tied into the Emergence and “Traditionalist” prophecy about the future ending with an apocalypse (Geertz 1994 :260–261). As Geertz explains ( 1994 :7), prophecy is a dynamic cultural strat-egy, a “narratological phenomenon” and means of de fi ning contemporary events within a “traditional” context. In 1968, Thomas Banyacya, another self-styled Hopi spokesman, built on Monongya’s interpretation. By that time, there had accrued a popular audience of hippies and eventually New Agers, in which the petroglyph became a vehicle for promoting a prophetic message fueled by the interaction of malcontent outsiders and Hopi Traditionalists. The scale of this “movement” was international. The Hopi Traditionalist Movement at the end of the twentieth century was comprised of a Hopi political faction, in which certain spokesmen found satis-fying roles as “prophets” for a New Future. The innovative Traditionalists, allied with various Euro-American ecological and religious movements and special inter-est groups, were hardly “traditional,” however. Their ties to the petroglyph and its presumed “message” were a means of personal gain, politics, and notoriety for the Hopis interpreting it (Geertz 1994 :259–276). Notably, all of the various interpreta-tions had accompanying drawings of the petroglyph, all of which differ signi fi cantly, and three of which were made by Banyaca himself over a period of time (Geertz 1994 : Figs. 17, 20, 21).

Overall, the interpretive history of this petroglyph was much more complicated than I have managed to describe here, but the issue demonstrates the interpretive instability, the power of imagery, and misusage to which rock art is subjected, in this case toward personal aggrandizement.

In another, but much less complex exemplary case study of the manipulation of meaning in rock art, M. Jane Young ( 1988 :221–226) describes an interpretive switch in regard to a historic rock art panel near Zuni, which also illuminates motivations behind changing interpretations by indigenous people. In brief, in 1980 she was told by the Zuni tribal historian that a group of elements that included of a star, crescent, a long zigzag line, and an owl depicted night-spying expeditions on the Navajo as related in a Zuni folktale (see also Roberts 1932 :151–52). A year later, following a visit to the site with an archaeoastronomer, the same Zuni colleague said that these petroglyphs represented the supernova explosion from 1054 CE! Eventually, the Crab Nebula became associated with the zigzag alone and not the star (Young 1988 :226). This wholesale change in interpretation dramatically illustrates the need to recognize that anthropologists and other outsiders have an interactive, dynamic role, contributing to revisionist views. When the new contributions are regarded as


valid, their acceptance may be motivated by a desire to identify with Euro-American values, in this particular case “… emphasizing that science is not the sole property of Euro-Americans” (Young 1988 :227). Young also notes that although the Zunis are familiar with many publications about Zuni, which they regard as “containing many lies,” they also incorporate much of what they read into their oral traditions (see Demarest and Wood fi ll 2012 for additional examples of how Amerindians adapt to accommodate Western sensibilities).

This chapter has highlighted agents of change and factors that impact interpreta-tions of rock art that diverge from meanings intended by its creators. We are left with a variety of possible contemporary interpretive manipulations, some of which are generated within the archaeological community to conform to its own self-man-dated standards of “acceptability,” while others are the result of the interactions between archeologists and indigenous groups. Finally, indigenous communities themselves reinvent the signi fi cance of the rock art of their own pasts and that of others for bene fi ts in the present. These diverse responses to old imagery serve as cautionary tales, alerting archaeologists engaged with native consultants to the com-plexity and variety of strategies and motivations behind reinventing the past. Such engagements are ethnographic in nature and may not illuminate questions concern-ing the past and the original meaning and function of the rock art under study. The propensity for invention is problematic and can even be forced when consultants under formal consultations and as mandated by NAGPRA are expected to respond to rock art in a responsible manner and for which knowledge is limited. Meanwhile, in many ways the rock art past is susceptible to losing its meaning and signi fi cance, and in the interest of the archaeological discipline, it is up to the researcher to keep things on track and maintain a focus on the past without being de fl ected by contem-porary issues.


Bumper stickers saying “I brake for petroglyphs” give one pause. They are loaded with implications—a fl ip public statement advertising the group “identity” and recreational interests of the Euro-American driver. In a rather materialistic way, rock art sites have become the destinations of weekend “collecting expeditions.” This discussion is not about the blatantly unethical thievery of image-laden rocks. Outdoor-oriented folks “collect sites,” visiting and photographing as many as possible, and if a new site is “discovered,” a stampede is certain to follow. Rock art trips give hikers and other outdoor a fi cionados a focus. Rock art “interest groups” and avocational archaeologists across the country are motivated by a number of factors, including the amassing of photographs, and thus, social status accrued in proportion to the number of sites visited. These considerations have a number of positive spin-offs such as attracting dedicated persons committed to site protection and recording. This picture, is worth a deeper look.

The subject of rock art and ethics was addressed in a series of papers published by the American Rock Art Research Association in 1999, some of which touch on public interests (Hyder 1999 ) . In the 1960s in the American Southwest, avoca-tional archaeologists were steered by professionals toward rock art recording in lieu of excavating, in an effort to establish a venue that would provide the inter-ested public with nondestructive but productive engagements with an archaeologi-cal “resource.” Site recording by enthusiastic nonprofessionals has been a major success, and excellent archives documenting rock art have been established, thereby expanding access to rock art information. Site stewardship programs and programs for educational public outreach have also been developed. Preemptive site protection of the rock art legacy from the inevitable handful of vandals within the ever-increasing public is a laudable goal.

Chapter 5 The Use and Reuse of Imagery: Ownership, Banning, and Commodi fi cation

62 5 The Use and Reuse of Imagery: Ownership, Banning, and Commodi fi cation

Image Appropriation

The popularity of rock art has also resulted in a multitude of reuses of rock art imagery, raising ethical concerns. People want to “acquire” it and to “own” it. The essays in Hyder ( 1999 ) point out that all over the world, rock art images are appro-priated for various uses on items of Western origin and that this practice is not going to go away.

It is important to be aware that both indigenous and Euro-American artisans appropriate rock art imagery, much of which is religious in scope, toward commer-cial ends. Such re-usage has a long history. With a few minor exceptions beginning in the fi rst decade of the twentieth century under the in fl uence of the Indian trader (Valette and Valette 2000 :13), Navajo weavers began incorporating ceremonial fi gures in blankets made for sale at trading posts. In spite of a negative attitude on the part of some Navajos, in order to promote sales, Navajo ye’i (holy people) and yei-bi-chai dancers and even whole sand paintings appeared in Navajo weaving by around 1910 (Amsden 1934 :Pls. 52c, 53,54; Maxwell 1963 :Figs. 20, 3l). Amsden complained that these productions created in response to monetary inspiration “… are but an invasion of the temple by the money-changers …” (Amsden 1934 :106). In the late 1920s or 1930s, complex fi gures important in Zuni religious life were constructed as mosaics on Pueblo jewelry. In addition, similar pieces are believed to have been especially commissioned such as a Shalako altar set (Bird-Romero 1999 :166–69). It is also noteworthy that among the small group of pieces illustrated in the Bird-Romero essay is a Navajo ye’i bolo tie replicated by a Zuni craftsman (Bird-Romero 1999 :166), image-borrowing thus crossing indigenous ethnic bound-aries. This is not uncommon.

In the previously mentioned controversial case from Hueco Tanks State Park, all indications are that Apache rock art was appropriated and replicated as a tribal logo at the Ysleta casino where it appeared on parking meters, above the entrance and in other signage, and as a sculptural piece on the grounds (Fig. 5.1 ). The fi gure is said to have deep religious meaning for the Ysleta (Brown 2003 : 83; Schaafsma n.d.). Beyond cultural appropriation, at issue here as well is the observation that regard-less of its purported religious importance, the Ysleta were not hesitant to use it in a strictly commercial, self-promotional context.

Who owns rock art? Does anyone? Acknowledging that some rock art is subject to tribal claims and holds religious in signi fi cance, it remains to be asked if ancient imagery divorced from the ethnographic present is the legacy of not only American Indians in general but the heritage of humanity. Should it be copied, reproduced for commercial use, by whom, for what purposes, or to which destinations?

Arguably, however, the process of copying, and thus moving indigenous rock art images from their landscape contexts into the world of Western material culture, results in radical changes as to their signi fi cance. Further, copied imagery “trans-ported” away from the landscape and plunked down in a variety of new places and media propels it into new roles in its new settings. In recent years, the appropriation of rock art and its commodi fi cation has gone viral in Western societies around the

63Image Appropriation

world. Rock art is replicated as tattoos, on T-shirts, socks, jewelry, key chains, din-nerware, linens, rugs, wall hangings, logos on stationery, brochures, milk cartons, and on highway overpasses (Fig. 5.2 ). What happens when rock art is resituated as body decoration and home décor, on knickknacks, or even on vehicles? Around the necks or bobbing from the ears of Euro-American rock art enthusiasts, these icons

Fig. 5.1 ( a ) Likely Mescalero Apache rock painting from Hueco Tanks State Park. ( b ) Its recent reuse as a logo for the Speaking Rock Casino by the Pueblo Indians of Ysleta del Sur, Texas


are transformed into items of personal social identity, signaling that the wearers are “members of the rock art club.”

To Euro-Americans, however, everything is secular, and the borrowed images become trivialized eye-catching motifs. One of the major issues in this cross-cul-tural experiment is the fact that many of the appropriated American Indian motifs are linked to religious beliefs and supernatural power and even secret knowledge. In such cases, is reuse appropriate? Who decides? As indicated above, even indigenous people themselves are not clear on this subject. Image appropriation may involve tampering with intellectual property upon which ethnic groups still have a claim. In addition is the issue of intangible “property,” the inherent power that may be ascribed to an image (Young 1985 ; 1988 : 159–94), and this can be even more problematic. In many cases, the representation of an image is tantamount to a command that the power represented invests the image itself (Schaafsma and Tsosie 2009 :25–26). Considered logically, how does that work, for instance, on a dinner plate? Or a tat-too? Does context make a difference? Committing these symbols to alternative uses

Fig. 5.2 Ancient and recently appropriated rock art imagery for modern use in new contexts by Euro-Americans: ( a ) Fremont images on a T-shirt, ( b ) a post-1350 CE Pueblo face reproduced as jewelry, and ( c ) a pre-1300 CE Ancestral Pueblo fi gure on a milk carton

65Image Appropriation

while not “owning” the ideas that they encompass opens the doors to ethical dilemmas. Beyond secularization and trivialization, the new venues may be regarded as demeaning or imperialistic. There have been various repercussions and responses by indigenous groups.

In the American Southwest, William Weahkee, a Cochiti Pueblo member expressed concern that the 17,000 thousand Pueblo images documented (presum-ably he is referring to those within Petroglyph National Monument) should be shielded from exploitation that allows non-Indians “to make pro fi t all the time” and not give back to Indian people (from USPTO Hearing 1999; US Patent and Trademaker Of fi ce, pp. 24–29). Weahkee did not hesitate to express his opinion about the thoughtlessness with which non-Indians use petroglyph for their own purposes. He stated, “these things are tied in with song. They’re tied in with ritual. They’re tied in with things that we cannot divulge because what happens when we divulge something like that [is that] it’s always exploited at our expense. Nothing comes back to the tribes” (Weakhee in Brown 2003 :82). Although Weahkee makes the point that rock art imagery is part of a much large spiritual world that is inac-cessible to outsiders and expresses a concern about the sacred nature of the rock art motifs, his dialogue also includes the notion of “compensation.” It appears that Weakhee, himself, was open to considering the rock art in the Rio Grande Valley as a material resource with a price tag.

Michael Brown points out that in Australia, exact copies made by whites of rock art designs on T-shirts were deemed to be so offensive that copyright laws were put into place to protect the designs. The result was the creation of similar but fake designs or caricatures. These, in turn, that were regarded by the Aborigines as a “bastardization” of their indigenous imagery, much of which has religious signi fi cance. As a result the Australian Aborigines have argued for “ownership of the ‘look and feel’ of its cultural products and thus a protection of indigenous art styles as such, in which case the real and counterfeit would no longer be legally separable” (Brown 2003 :89–90). Nevertheless, a valid point for consideration in this whole debate is the fact that the “look and feel” of this iconography, regardless of its accuracy, is also a means of cultural identity. Use of it in any form by Westerners may be perceived as thievery.

Intellectual property as such is well recognized among American Indians whose cultures have devised formal methods of maintaining it, including pre-scribed forms of intertribal exchange. Brown ( 2003 : 89, 93–94) has pointed out that within American Indian Plain tribes, intellectual property in the form of per-sonal songs, blessings, and even visions are bought and sold, wherein payments in material goods are exchanged for spiritual knowledge. The indigenous tradi-tions and rules that govern these exchanges cannot be reconciled, however, with information exchanges outside of the indigenous social contexts within which they traditionally operate. New Agers “buy” the intellectual property of American Indians in much in the same manner that they purchase material goods. They “buy” what they regard as spiritual knowledge without having any in-depth cul-tural connections to whatever they manage to run off with in the wake of weekend workshops (Echo-Hawk 1997 ; Kehoe 2000 : 81–89). These workshops are often


billed as offering understandings from Native peoples that have been centuries in developing, and frequently, they are taught by persons regarded as peripheral by the group the teacher proposes to represent. Deloria ( 2003 :55) has described these New Age workshops as presenting “a smorgasbord of religious experiences derived from any tradition willing to advocate its beliefs and whatever experi-ences could be packaged for sale to American consumers.” It is no accident that the accelerated appropriation of rock art imagery by non-Indians and New Age interests in Native Americans coincide in time.

It is ironic that at the same time that rock art imagery is being utilized in the commercial domain, appropriated in New Age contexts, or duplicated as items of identity by non-Indians, there has been some resistance to reproducing “sensitive” images in scholarly and public outreach venues. This is contradictory business. We have already encountered an example in which ancient images interpreted as kachinas were excluded from a report on Basketmaker rock art (Powell et al. 1998 ) . In regard to public outreach, the situation worsens. Until recently, rock art books with petroglyphs on the cover of ancient human fi gures lacking any appar-ent ritual associations whatsoever were banned by the gift shop at Petroglyph National Monument. While this is no longer the case, currently, Petroglyph National Monument continues to refrain from promoting petroglyphs of kachinas and other supernatural beings on their web site, eschewing mention of religion and alternative cosmologies in other promotional venues except in the most gen-eral way with interpretive information on the rock art. The fact that a highly signi fi cant proportion of the petroglyphs at the monument consists of kachinas and other fi gures of religious import, ignoring them has the negative effect of eviscerating the content of this rock art as it is presented to the public. The result is a puerile portrayal of Pueblo culture, as visitors are urged to discover petro-glyphs along the trails in the spirit of a kind of exploratory treasure hunt. Likewise, children are urged to fi nd their “favorite” animal. While the local Pueblos may be content with this approach as it discourages prying in regard to their religion, at the same time, it is also another form of disrespectful cultural dominance. One result of withholding background information on the complex worldviews of the Pueblos as expressed in the rock art (see Chap. 2 ) is, of course, that (1) it does not admit to or teach tolerance or respect for diversity and differences in worldviews and (2) it leads to unquestioned appropriation with no moral barriers to alternative usages for the eye-catching images by outsiders.

Complicating these issues is the fact that in the American Southwest, experience has shown that what is regarded as “sensitive” fi nds no consensus, even among com-munities within which the imagery in question has relevance. Such is the case with kachinas in that considerable disagreement exists among the Pueblos themselves on public displays of kachina images or even in regard to public performances. As a dramatic illustration, Joseph Suina, a Keresan Cochiti Pueblo elder, has recently describe being shocked by witnessing a kachina dance in a Hopi plaza, confessing that “my worldview was turned completely upsidedown” (Suina 2002 :212). Public kachina dances in Western Pueblos, the thriving business in their carved reproduc-tion for sales to outsiders by the Hopi, and numerous books featuring kachina

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5822-7_2

67Boundary Issues

images of all types exist, in contradiction to the objections among some Eastern Pueblos to rock art reproductions of photos and drawings of these same beings (Schaaf 2008 ; Wright 1973, 1985 , among others). In his proli fi cally illustrated book, Gregory Schaaf describes the work of no less than 1,600 Hopi kachina carvers. Even in the Rio Grande Valley where kachina images have been hidden from view due to a long period of Spanish oppression (C. Schaafsma 1994 ) , kachina imagery (but not the kachinas themselves) is publicly displayed on dance costumes in some northern Tewa villages.

Boundary Issues

The fact is that commercial, public outreach, and scholarly venues have put rock art imagery fi rmly within the public domain. While issues surrounding public exposure of religious imagery are controversial, attitudes are diverse, and differences may even be politically motivated. There is no consensus and there probably never will be. In addi-tion, the fact that most rock art lacks connections today with ethnic groups raises the following question: At what point does rock art become the heritage of all of us?

There are boundaries nevertheless, because as heirs to colonization, our own ancestors did not make the rock art in the Americas, in Africa, or in Australia. Boundaries, however, are elusive. They vary in perceivability and permeability and exist as negotiable obstacles. They differ in reach and function in different realms. On the broadest front they circumscribe systems of beliefs held both consciously and unconsciously, obstructing conceptual leaps into alternative/foreign worldviews and blocking other roads to knowledge. On the other hand, boundaries may be de fi ned, formalized, and protected by religious societies within indigenous com-munities themselves protecting knowledge and its associated powers.

We have dealt here with secrecy and intellectual property and imagery appro-priation in discussions regarding the interactions between indigenous people and members of Western cultures. In returning to the issue of reaching across cultural boundaries and the appropriation of images to which we are not heir, is this wrong? The question has been addressed, but more remains to be said. As opposed to perceived “theft” or “appropriation,” does the use of indigenous imagery by members of Western cultures constitute a “dynamic participation” (Lever 1999 :24)? We are here. Boundaries cannot be established to isolate people from their broader physical and cultural environment. To be in fl uenced by these images in any manner is a process by which Westerners become af fi liated and identify with place in one way or another and in so doing begin the process of constructing a new identity, even if inadvertently. Are not Euro-Americans at all different from Europeans? While our interaction with these valued icons signi fi es an acceptance of some kind, conversely, it is unlikely that the utilization of these images signi fi es any ideological change. But if the goal is not to become a wannabe, is there a deeper agenda? By virtue of our mere presence at rock art sites, we are articulat-ing with the land and the imagery, even if our perceptions are beclouded with pre-


occupations that barricade us from full access to the experience. Interlaced with our fascination with prehistoric images and our explorations of places that we have nearly destroyed, is there a need and search for identi fi cation with place and landscape or the exploration of something, a kind of knowledge perhaps, inherent to imagery in landscapes, a critical message about to be erased forever in human-ity’s memory? Are we desirous of something on the verge of being lost, just as the landscape painters of Europe were overwhelmed with an avid interest in the land-scape they were losing after the advent of the industrial revolution? This is an issue dealt with by various art historians, some of whom regard landscape paint-ing as a reactionary art (Solnit 1989 ) .

Or are we hopelessly barricaded from that which we seek by our mental con-structs and well-programmed preconceptions? Do we become preoccupied with abstract locations—in the United States, is the place we are at “private real estate,” is it BLM, NPS, USFS, or is it managed by the Bureau of Reclamation? What land are we “reclaiming” and for what purpose? What are the UTM coordinates? Is there a site number in a statewide system? Can we overlook the fact that all these letters and numbers are barriers to our perceptions, superimposed on indigenous cultural landscapes that account for the images we are viewing? Scales and camera technol-ogy further interfere with our minds as we record these sites.

We need to be aware of these issues. As for the imagery itself, art historian and political activist Lucy Lippard makes

the following relevant observation in regard to images and archaeological construc-tions: “Certain forms have survived the…millennia as the vehicles for…a vital expression. The concentric circle, the spiral, the meander, the zigzag, the lozenge or diamond shape, the line in the landscape, the passage and labyrinth, and welcoming, terrifying shelter are still meaningful to us, even if we cannot cite their sources and symbolic intricacies. These forms seem to have some basic connection to human identity, con fi rming bonds we have almost lost with the land, its products and its cycles, and with each other. Symbols are inherently abstract. Certain images, rooted then uprooted, can still carry seeds of meaning as effectively as the most detailed realism, even to our own individualist society, estranged as it is from nature” (Lippard 1983 :10–11). It can be argued that just as rock art had power for those who made it, it also has the power “to transform and renegotiate popular perceptions … about the past” ( Dowson 1999 :13).

We cannot deny that rock art affects us in many ways. Clear borders between cultures cannot be drawn and policed—cultural interaction is and has been a con-stant process. Although some may argue for protecting or shielding Native cultures from exploitation by the dominant culture, interaction is unavoidable, and building protective walls is unfeasible. In his book Who Owns Native Culture ? Brown ( 2003 :252) summarizes the situation as follows: “Advocates of Total Heritage Protection fail to offer a comprehensive vision of what the world will look like after they have imposed the institutions of surveillance, border protection, and cultural puri fi cation that some call for. They talk of respect, cultural survival, and economic justice for indigenous communities. These are admirable goals. All of us should work to advance them. Nevertheless, history suggests that the legal regulation of

69Boundary Issues

culture is at best a fruitless enterprise and at worst an invitation to new forms of manipulation by the powerful.”

Today, as rock art imagery escapes traditional boundaries, the high technology of Western civilization enables its unbridled reproduction, sharing, and dissemination by mass media upon which there are few or no restrictions. Outside of its cultural boundaries, rock art’s signi fi cance is subject to recon fi guration and its meaning threatened. Public education is needed more than ever to bridge cultural gaps, sup-porting the cultural integrity of rock art origins. Advancing cross-cultural under-standings of alternative worldviews in regard to rock art can be done judiciously, negotiating with indigenous groups. Wholesale suppression of information by pub-lic outreach programs, even in the interest of “protecting” indigenous groups, ulti-mately fosters continued misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and boundary maintenance.


McGuire ( 2003 :ix) has de fi ned North American archaeology for the most part as a colonialist practice: “the study of the conquered by the conquerors.” Certainly, this terminology throws a gloomy blanket of guilt upon the entire archaeological enter-prise. This kind of dichotomy produces a kind of uncomfortable and problematic standoff in this inevitable interface and its resulting ethical dilemmas.

Among the Hopi of the American Southwest, one of the ways of confronting unapproved, unethical, or undesirable behavior is through the theatrical plaza per-formances of ritual clowning. The performing clowns are regarded as “quasi” inhab-itants of the supernatural world or personi fi cations thereof, granting them more than ordinary power. As they dramatize departures from what is deemed acceptable behavior, they provide psychotherapeutic release through mockery, caricature, ridi-cule, and thus laughter (Wright 1994 :ix-x, 3–4). Hopi clowns have been referred to as “practical ethicists” as they deal with problematic situations ( Hieb 1979 ) . Although frequently based on village incidents, for over a century, targets of these performances have included bad and strange behavior of members of the dominant culture (Wright 1994 :106). Similar critique in the form of recent cartoons by Zuni artist Phil Hughte ( 1994 ) is directed at Frank Hamilton Cushing and Matilda Coxe Stevenson, ethnologists resident at Zuni at the end of the nineteenth century. While the cartoons are aimed at the past, they serve as a model that warns against any such actions that might occur in the present. Imagery and performance objectifying the undesired are forms of “instant messaging” that are both clear and unarguable.

In contrast, lengthy discussions such as this are clumsy by comparison, and they lack the sharp ethical dichotomies that characterize the Hopi plaza dramas. Like many of the common clowning themes, however, this discourse grapples with the interface between indigenous peoples and Western culture and some of the prob-lematic situations that confront us today. Like clowning, too, that spells out these situations, it has produced no resolutions, although in the Hopi case, the “bad guys” sometimes get trounced by the “good kachinas.” Hopefully, however, the preceding chapters have identi fi ed and clari fi ed the nature of some of the many issues at stake that confuse mutual understanding between native people and Euro-Americans and

Chapter 6 Discussion

72 6 Discussion

engagements with rock art. A wander through the maze of these considerations makes it clear that issues have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis and that what is regarded as “ethical” or “unethical” has to be seen in context.

The issues reviewed here are not frozen in time. Concerns, problems, and atti-tudes are an ongoing dynamic fl ux. At this moment, we are heir to several hundred years of problems, during which time indigenous peoples and cultures have been subjected to atrocities and more insidious means of conquest. Thankfully, indige-nous groups now have a voice in the rock art arena.

As reviewed here, among the many concerns are the profoundly contrasting epis-temologies that native versus Western groups bring to bear on the rock art legacies as well as the landscapes in which they are located. The relentless incursion of the for-eign Western world into what have been indigenous landscapes brings us face to face with rock art, often long forgotten, and today we have reached the point at which we must address the results of this encounter. Rock art in a landscape perceived as sacred is regarded very differently than rock art in terrain viewed as secular and exploitable. Also, there are problems of interpretation wherein the rock art data run contrary to “desired knowledge”—on either side of the divide. Problematic is the propensity for divesting the past of meaning as interpretations are avoided to bene fi t political con-cerns in the present or when rock art of one cultural group is claimed by another. Because visual imagery is attractive, rock art has promoted the indigenous construc-tion of oral histories and revisionist perspectives that run counter to scholarly inquiry. Finally, the commodi fi cation of rock art imagery toward new ends has been consid-ered in regard to the ethical implications that necessarily follow. I will attempt here to synthesize some of the problems considered in the previous chapters.

Roles and Goals in Colliding Worlds

What are “ethics” anyway? In general to be “ethical” is to be in conformance with the accepted principles of right and wrong that govern the conduct of a group or members thereof. An “ethic” is an evolving and changing set of principles, guiding actions, or sanctioning conduct “often encoded in the standards of a profession” (Wylie 2003 in Colwell-Chanthaphonh et al. 2008:2). “Ethics” is a fi eld of inquiry and study of how standards and principles affect our research and conduct in differ-ent situations (Colwell-Chanthaphonh et al. 2008:2), a de fi nition in line with this discussion. As is evident in the previous chapters, ethical considerations are works in progress, and a large body of literature has recently emerged that addresses the challenges that archaeologists in general face as we collaborate with Native American colleagues in regard to the past.

As archaeologists, we devise strategies for discovering what rock art can tell us about the past via what we observe through Western-based scienti fi c strategies. Scienti fi c “truth” or an approximation thereof is our goal. Problems arise when interpre-tations of the past run contrary to the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples, and although we aim to avoid egregious offenses, archaeology in its scienti fi c/humanistic

73Roles and Goals in Colliding Worlds

pursuit is not a form of applied social anthropology. Nevertheless, some anthropolo-gists argue for “liberalism” focusing on “justice for the “oppressed,” thus mixing social concerns and science in a search for common ground, and when social ethics are mixed with a search for factual evidence, the situation becomes complicated (Washburn 1998 :109–112). Washburn, in summarizing his thoughts on cultural anthropologists that became “activists in behalf of the ‘oppressed’ people they stud-ied against their oppressors,” states, “They have, I would assert, set anthropology back in many ways: within the university, where the scholarly claims of anthropol-ogy are increasingly questioned, and with the political community, where their agenda is welcomed only by the radical left” (Washburn 1998 :112). In such an envi-ronment, archaeologists and public outreach programs (and I have cited examples) may compromise their data or avoid making it public. Others advocate epistemologi-cal adjustments to the discipline, arguing that since archaeology spans science and the humanities, it is an apt realm for such “adjustments.” In what ways do (or should) we “adjust” fi ndings or hypotheses strongly backed by scienti fi c inquiry?

Related to the topic of mixing social ethics with anthropology, as I have previ-ously noted, there are attempts by anthropologists, archaeologists, and American Indians themselves to suppress discussion of topics regarded as offensive. The pro-motion of idealized views and suppression originates with both sides and is fur-thered by scholars responding in supposed deference to indigenous groups. If one is willing to withhold information about the past that is by Western standards viewed as “degrading,” then the risks of losing the past loom large as the political climate takes over science. In so doing this deprives indigenous people of their heritage within which these same activities—shamanic practice, warfare, or human trophy-taking in particular are perceived very differently from the way they appear in Western frameworks (Chacon and Mendoza 2012 :4–8). Contextualization of seemingly contentious subjects is essential, as context provides a basis for under-standing behavior that is antithetical to or extremely foreign to Western standards (Chavarria and Mendoza 2012 :408). Further, the omission of topics distasteful to Western standards is a form of ethnic cleansing (Brown 2003 :90) propelled by a Western intolerance for worldviews and cosmologies incompatible with Abrahamism or molded by romantic notions. Chacon and Mendoza ( 2012 :4) note that idealized views of indigenous cultures have a long history in the West, “in stark contrast with the Western world’s long and tragic history of devastation wars and pervasive materialism.” As described previously, it has been suggested that emotionally fueled idealization of the “other” may be provoked as relief to our own strife-ridden present.

In the face of the conundrums presented here, the archaeologist has three choices if his/her fi ndings are not in sync with “desired knowledge,” regardless of the source of dissatisfaction. He/she can honestly adhere to what the data allow, remain silent, or misrepresent the past. If the archaeologist turned social activist engages in data manipulation to suit the present, his approach is still fraught with imperial-ism. The avoidance of certain rock art content because it is distasteful to some Western scholars results in trivialization, thus degrading its signi fi cance and sani-tizing the past, as it molds that past in accordance with the tenants of Western

74 6 Discussion

culture. We have seen that at times American Indians, motivated by political concerns, or in other cases, simply because they have acquired Western values, may concur with these practices.

In sum, with some well-documented exceptions, in general, the idea that oral histories will amplify an understanding of rock art and other archaeological data should be approached with extreme wariness, and in even where they are deemed somewhat useful, “archaeologists need to exercise greater caution than current calls for such augmentation typically recommend” (Mason 2000 :263). Even the Zuni oral traditions about Hantlipinkia cited in Chap. 2 represent an overlay in regard to a site that undoubtedly had a different meaning for the people who carved the rock art in this distinctive topographic spot over a thousand years ago or more. As a working endeavor, reconciliation, compromise, and modifying the way we approach knowledge to accommodate traditional narratives are not compatible with the goals of archaeological research. The ethical question is raised concerning the intellectual rights of archaeologists. In other cases, in which archaeological knowledge con fl icts with traditional knowledge in ways that threaten the status quo of indigenous people such as their social organizations , ensuing ethical considerations are not easily resolved if practical solutions are demanded on both sides, as in land claims cases.

Ethically driven interpretations mixing social concerns with science approach a fi xation on the present akin to oral traditions that also serve present interests (Schaafsma 1991 :60). Thus, paradisiacal realm of “common ground” remains a fan-tasy envisioned by politically motivated social scientists. Archaeologists as scien-tists—albeit scientists whose interests overlap with the humanities—are not social workers. Because they are not social workers, they have no obligation to mollify native stakeholders when rock art data, as viewed through the lens of archaeology, disagree with indigenous perspectives.

There are no blanket rules. On occasion, con fl icting views stemming from differ-ing epistemologies eschew the need for consensus, and the presentation of parallel views may work. In as a successful solution to the problem in 2000, an exhibit in the museum at Kakadu National Park in Australia presented both the aboriginal views of their rock art and landscapes along with those of archaeologists. This was suc-cessful in that it enriched both ways of perceiving what the rock art has to offer. An acceptable ethical solution was achieved by presenting both perspectives, without the need, in this particular case, to forcefully promote one view over the other.

It has been observed many times that the only constant around is change itself. If archaeology is “the science of behavioral change” (Schiffer 2001 :28), it is not, therefore, the study of the present in the past. Contemporary indigenous groups are not identical to their ancestors. While the use of ethnographic data as a springboard for the interpretation of a great deal of rock art in the American West is and will continue to be extremely useful (Francis and Loendorf 2002 , Schaafsma 2000, 2009 ; Schaafsma and Taube 2006 ; Schaafsma and Tsosie 2009; Whitley 2000 , Young 1988 ) , time and change distance contemporary indigenous groups from ancient rock art in their environments to varying degrees. The amount of change varies signi fi cantly and depends on the amount of time being talked about, as well as loss of traditional knowledge and the degree of acculturation. This then

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75Ethics, Preservation, and Global Heritage

distances the ethnographic present from archaeology, even in cases in which continuity (but not unchanging continuity) exists (Washburn 1998 :109). In short, the inevitability of “change” gives archaeologist a platform grounded in the past on which to stand, regardless of its proximity to the present, and a fi xation on the present by indigenous groups—for whatever reasons—can lead to misinterpreta-tions of the past.

Uncritical acceptance of interpretations from “stakeholders” outside the scholarly community is open to criticism within the discipline and its goals as a science. Critical evaluation is needed at every step. Changes through time may account for shifts in original meanings of images. While an icon persists, its signi fi cance is fl exible and may shift slightly or change radically according to new needs and situations. Also information is sometimes simply lost. A complicating factor is that scholars may have access to information on the past through old ethnographies unknown to contempo-rary members of descendant communities heir to the rock art under investigation. While this may put scholars in an awkward position in regard to indigenous collabora-tors, this is becoming less the case, as contemporary tribal members read these eth-nographies as well. Today, indigenous people have been signi fi cantly in fl uenced in the interpretation of their rock art by their interaction with the Euro-American commu-nity, and examples of change exacted on American Indians views were discussed in Chap. 4 . The archaeologist has not only the right but the responsibility to evaluate these variables and decide “what best fi ts the data” among offerings made by native consultants (see Chacon and Mendoza 2012 for similar conclusions).

Ethics, Preservation, and Global Heritage

Rock art entails both the past and the present and manifests different kinds of power. For Western scholars it is a portal to the past—a wealth of information about ancient peoples and other cultures, their cosmologies, and religions. It is a unique medium in the world of art, an inspirational visual heritage of humanity. Through rock art one can trace histories and cultural process. In the secular world of Euro-Americans, the “power” of rock art lies in the “stored knowledge” it contains as an archaeologi-cal “resource” and as an artistic legacy. The need and desire to protect these cultural treasures as repositories of knowledge is for the most part unquestioned, but even here, we are faced with intercultural con fl icts. Native opinions that rock art should be allowed to deteriorate through natural processes were expressed in the case of the Falls Creek Shelters. But there are other much more controversial examples.

For indigenous people rock art contains its own intrinsic powers. Rock art images are viewed not as inert but as embodying active forces. Engagement with these forces may involve superimposing new images over the old, eradication, or the acquisition of an image’s perceived power by removing small quantities of stone or paint to use toward positive or negative purposes. Within the Navajo Reservation and outlying regions, paint from rock paintings and stone from petroglyphs have been removed for ritual use, sometimes carefully and other times less so (Fig. 6.1a, b ).

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76 6 Discussion

Fig. 6.1 Ancient Ancestral Pueblo petroglyphs from the Four-Corners region, from which small quantities of stone have been removed by grinding and pecking. Areas targeted include the head, headdress, feet, and heart, all of which were/are possibly regarded as repositories of spiritual forces. ( a ) Ancestral Pueblo fi gure, ca. 500–900 CE, Montezuma County, Colorado. The careful, removal by grinding with minimal impact to the fi gure is thought to indicate that the removed material was used toward positive ends. ( b ) Basketmaker fi gures, ca. 200–500 CE, Coconino County, Arizona. Removal by pecking has resulted in varying degrees of damage to the images, and the motivating forces behind this activity are not clear. It could be a way of divesting the images of their power, or alternatively, of acquiring some of it


This practice is, in any case, destructive and operates against the Western preservationist “ethic.” In all examples, from a Native perspective, it is the intrinsic and active power of the image that is at stake here, not the image itself, and this manipulation results in defacement of the original image to varying degrees.

In some instances, wholesale elimination of petroglyphs and rock paintings has occurred with the explicit purpose of destroying their perceived power. In Canyon de Chelly and elsewhere, painted images have been mudded over to this end. A notorious example is found in regard to Basketmaker rock art more than 1,500 years in age along the San Juan River near Bluff, Utah, that has been systemati-cally defaced by chiseling by twentieth-century Navajos (Fig. 6.2 ) . Navajo resid-ing in the vicinity of this rock art (which is on the Navajo Reservation) regarded the images as the source of power being used adversely by witches to cause illness during a fl u epidemic in the mid-1950s (Personal fi eld notes 1990; see also Castleton 1987 :227–229; Schaafsma and Tsosie 2009 : 28–31). As explained by

Fig. 6.2 Two examples of Basketmaker II petroglyphs (ca. 100–400 CE) destroyed by chiseling on the Navajo Reservation along the San Juan River, Utah. These fi gures are said to have been obliterated during the twentieth century because their perceived inherent power was believed to have been acquired by sorcerers to cause illness. Note the contrast in patina between the chopping and the nearby undamaged petroglyphs

78 6 Discussion

Tsosie and con fi rmed by other Navajo consultants, “That ‘power’ in and of itself is conceived as neutral, but once tapped it can be manipulated for any purpose …. Once an extant image has been targeted by an evildoer, for its power, a counter response has been to destroy the image in question, thus voiding it of its potency and rendering it useless. Fear in times of stress, such as periods of epidemics, has promoted the purposeful destruction of rock art on the southern edge of the San Juan River and elsewhere on the Navajo Reservation” (Schaafsma and Tsosie 2009 :28–29).

In the interests of Navajo families who had fallen ill, destruction of the rock art was perceived by relatives as the ethical route to take, being not only acceptable, but commendable and necessary to protect their people. Recently, objections were raised by the nearby Navajo to Euro-American river-runners naming the “damaged” site “Desecration Panel,” because this had negative implications, when in fact their acts had been righteously seeking to end malicious forces being exerted on their kin (P. Schaafsma, personal fi eld notes 2000 ) .

Among the Navajo, as among other indigenous people of the Southwest and elsewhere, illness, especially when it is persistent and resistant to normal Navajo treatments, is perceived as being in fl icted by witches (Kluckhohn 1944 :54). Distrust of certain persons and the employment of supernatural powers to malevolent ends are not unfamiliar concepts to the Navajo, and as pointed out by Kluckhohn, among both the Pueblos and Navajo, “belief in the existence of witches is manifested in expressions of fear of individual, and of places and objects held to be associated with witchcraft” (Kluckhohn 1944 :5). When rock art is among those “objects” and subsequently destroyed, ethical problems and dilemmas ensue, even on the Navajo Reservation itself. In 1979, decades following the chopping of the fi gures along the San Juan, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA) was established to prohibit the destruction of sites on Federal and Indians lands (Frisbie 1987 :368–69). Today, such destruction could theoretically result in criminal penalties and even imprisonment. More to the point, here, however, is should the kind of attack on reservation rock art by Navajos occur today, it is really unknown how this activity would play out under the law.

In this situation, Navajo concerns in the present completely override the Western view of rock art nearly 2000 years old as the “heritage of humanity” which in this case, I suspect, might be regarded by some Navajo as utterly frivolous. Harkening back to the differing perceptions regarding the animate and inanimate between indigenous peoples and those of Western cultures mentioned in the introductory chapter of this volume, this situation exempli fi es the quandaries we face. This event and other similar occurrences reveal the fact that in different cultural contexts, ethi-cal behavior operates according to very different dictates. With all due consider-ation for indigenous concerns, however, we cannot turn our backs on the concerns of archaeologists and our broader responsibilities in concert with Federal authorities to protect the archaeological heritage of this continent.


Herein Lie Many Challenges

There are no united fronts. Paradoxically, as members of the most destructive cul-ture the world has ever seen, we Westerners, with good justi fi cation, are seeking desperately to preserve the past and the information therein. The multitude of approaches to and values ascribed to rock art heighten the challenges faced by the archaeologist to this end.

Today, rock art sites suffer from the impact of over-visitation by the general pub-lic. Simultaneously, and again somewhat paradoxically, public visitation stimulates interest in preservation. In this age of globalization, the rock art legacy pertains to everyone as a document of creativity that continues to move us and as a visual data bank of worldviews, cosmologies, and human concerns over at least the last thirty thousand millennia. Within our Western concern for preservation, there is a growing awareness of the need to protect humanity’s cultural heritage in an increasingly exploitative world economy. In response, organizations have been formed on the international, national, and more local fronts with the aim of protecting rock art and other World Heritage sites of major signi fi cance in concert with developing educa-tional programs and enlisting the input and assistance of local heirs. Globally ori-ented organizations include the 1972 World Heritage Convention of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scienti fi c, and Cultural Organization) with an interna-tional code of ethics designed for the protection of cultural and natural sites. Rock art sites are among those to be administered by and supported by the World Heritage Committee and World Heritage Fund (for more discussion, see Morwood 2002 :276–279). The World Heritage Convention “is based on the idea that ‘the deterioration or disappearance of any item of the cultural or natural heritage constitutes a harmful impoverishment of the heritage of all the nations in the world’” (Morwood 2002 :277).

Among the most signi fi cant world organizations dedicated to prehistoric rock art as such is the International Federation of Rock Art Organizations (IFRAO) founded in 1988. IFRAO holds international congresses on a regular basis and has been effective in promoting the protection and preservation of rock art site in collaboration with indigenous traditional societies. It has been instrumental in securing the return of sites into indigenous possession or care. IFRAO functions as a forum for independent member organizations worldwide; most of which have their own periodicals and pub-lication series and promote a standard of ethics in regard to rock art activity. There are national organizations as well, some of which operate in concert with IFRAO, among them the American Rock Art Association (ARARA), The Australian Rock Art Research Association (AURA), Footsteps of Man, an Archaeological Cooperative Society based in Valcamonic, Italy, the Trust for African Rock Art (TARA), and the Sociedad de Investigations de Arte Rupestre de Bolivia, (SIARB) founded in 1987. The Bradshaw Foundation, founded in 1992 and based in Geneva, carries out its work in collaboration with UNESCO, the Royal Geographic Society, the National

80 6 Discussion

Geographic Society, TARA, and the Rock Art Research Institute in South Africa. Founded in 1974, the American Rock Art Research Association (ARARA) is among the earliest of the national rock art organizations. Among its agendas are promoting a code of ethics, annual meetings, and publications. Publications include an annual vol-ume as well as a quarterly newsletter and emails to members with alerts to the rock art community regarding critical issues that impact rock art sites. The codes of ethics promoted by ARARA establish guidelines for engagement with rock art sites situated in the legal constraints of antiquities laws and preservation.

As this discourse illustrates, a resolution of the interests of indigenous people, scholars, and the general public are among the much broader ethical challenges faced by any organization responsible for the preservation, conservation, and man-agement of rock art sites. The goal of preservation of the material past itself as well as the information that it encodes is a Western value, one also endorsed by many but, as we have seen, not all native communities.

In the American West there are several examples of successful collaborative efforts by all stakeholders in the rock art—academics, the interested public, and American Indians—who have worked together in rock art conservation and site management ( Sanchez et al. 2008). Different issues, however, plague each locality. Con fl icting issues pertaining to Petroglyph National Monument have been reviewed in the previous chapters. At Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, the goal of preservation of rock art is challenged by the rising tide of an urban popula-tion. The expansion of Albuquerque to the foot of the West Mesa escarpment where the petroglyphs are located provoked a con fl ict of interest between development and the petroglyphs in their landscape contexts—a landscape is invested with spiritual powers necessary for the perpetuation of a culture that has taken thousands of years to evolve with its own de fi nitions of truth. Meanwhile, Albuquerque residents eye the monument as recreational space among other things, a use that is contradictory to both native values and archaeological interests. Albuquerque, a city of approxi-mately 840,000 inhabitants, is not going to go away, and future challenges will involve the development of ongoing strategies to deal with Western urban pres-sures, native indigenous values, and the rich rock art legacy in regard to monument management. This situation would seem to offer increased opportunities for educa-tional action, in this case, focused on a need to broaden the perspectives of all facets of the nonindigenous communities that impact the monument. Instead of suppress-ing indigenous values, the validity of alternative views needs endorsement.

In Wyoming, Legend Rock, a sacred Shoshone site targeted by vandalism, has recently been the focus of successful collaboration of many groups—Wyoming State Parks, the Bureau of Land Management, Buffalo Bill Historical Center, the University of Wyoming, and regional American Indian nations, local communities, and interested individuals have been able to arrive at an agreeable management plan. Site preservation and making it available to heritage tourism, while preserving native relationships to the location, are the major goals in this endeavor (Loendorf and McClellen 2008 ) . Continual communication between the involved groups has facilitated agreement on management methods.


In Africa, TARA is dedicated to creating a permanent visual archive “before it is too late” on a continent-wide scale in collaboration with the national government to local committees. Although different problems characterize each area, they are also the same in many ways. In the Tsodilo Hills in Botswana, rock art tourism, develop-ment through conservation facilitated by collaboration was achieved in the interests of the regional San people (Hitchcock 2010 ) with its own publication program.

In Australia, where repainting and the maintenance of sites has been a long tradition, recent very poorly executed repainting of some sites by federally funded novices outside of tradition venues was supported by some Aboriginal groups, but objections were raised by others who complained that all their paintings had been ruined and they no longer had any paintings to use to teach their children their traditions. There was no consensus among the Kimberly Aborigines, and those objecting were unable to promote their views which were censured by the domi-nant culture ( Morwood 2002 :301–05). Moorwood reminds us that rock art research and management do not take place in ethical or political vacuums.

Regardless of age, even the idea of rock art as the “heritage of humanity” has been challenged. According to Watkins ( 2003 :137), the con fl ict in philosophies between science and the American Indian is essentially this: The anthropological view that the Native American past is a heritage to be shared by the entire world denies the American Indian a place in his own past. How can the American Indian past suddenly become everyone’s? Watkins elaborates that anthropological study denies this past by making it the subject of hypotheses that impose order and logic against Native American views. His concerns are well taken. With our Western overlay of rationalism and blitz of high-tech recording, we are oblivious to the understandings of the conceptual worlds responsible for the imagery, each world-view comprising an intact roadmap for being. This discussion has attempted to address some of these issues, recognizing that rock art is much more than a material resource to be saved in a materialistic world.

Whatever differences apply between cultures, that is, between the West and the “other”—from glaring issues such as the taking of human trophies to the more sub-tle differences in “negatively perceived” systems of knowledge—Demarest and Wood fi ll ( 2012 :130–33) argue strongly that the ethical debate is not furthered by avoidance of issues viewed as incapatible with the West: “Neither ethnocentric revulsion nor ethnocentric puri fi cation can substitute for the work of elucidating as best we can, the nature and meaning of the beliefs and practices of other societies. Of course, this is our fundamental goal as anthropologists” (Demarest 2007 :611 in Demarest and Wood fi ll 2012 :313). These authors argue that anthropological educa-tion is the cure—the goal of anthropology (Demarest and Wood fi ll 2012 :131). They further clarify their argument by emphasizing that “we simply need to educate … our own Western elite audiences, agencies, and students…” (Demarest and Wood fi ll 2012 :140). This position, promoting education, stands in direct contrast to the “social worker” approach or the sanitization of other cultures, even though, admit-tedly, we cannot completely escape, even through the educational process, our own cultural biases.

83P. Schaafsma, Images and Power: Rock Art and Ethics, SpringerBriefs in Anthropology, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-5822-7, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

As rock art in fi ltrates our lives on different levels, from the halls of academia to the public sector, it is accompanied by ethical dilemmas. In today’s crowded world, where cultures with contrasting worldviews and con fl icting values come face-to-face, rock art assumes a major role in the archaeological dramas of interaction that are transpiring. Rock art forces into high relief the differences between people and the diversity of outlooks. How is imagery rooted in one worldview dealt with by purveyors of another? As the grand ideas about the universe held by the native com-munities of world meet the grand ideas of the West, heated con fl icts and controversy have ensued, and contentious issues remain as to how to interpret rock art and man-age rock art sites. Borrowing and the reuse of imagery is also a problem.

What may be concluded from all of this? Possibly the primary conclusion is that the ethical issues at stake are complicated and profound, extending far beyond the reach of any possible rules and regulations. Interaction is inevitable. There is no such thing as an idealized mosaic of perfectly bounded protected cultures, and that is not even desirable. Such an improbable locked-in/locked-out scenario is sketched out by Michael Brown with its concomitant necessities of “institutions of surveil-lance, border protection, and cultural puri fi cation” (Brown 2003:252). A myriad of factors are operative in rock art dialogues between the West and indigenous com-munities, the latter varying among themselves. Cultural differences are often buried in the bottom layer of a palimpsest of values and beliefs, partly hidden or overwrit-ten by new perceptions that continue to change, often rapidly. I have made an attempt here to bring some of these issues to the fore.

Unlike the Kakadu exhibit described earlier, this is not always an idealized situ-ation in which opposing paradigms sit quietly side by side for intellectual contem-plation. Real threats abound on all sides in regard to issues of loss of cultural identity, “ownership,” the release of secret information, and the wholesale destruction to sites and their landscape contexts as they are encroached upon by growing popula-tions, vandals, and bulldozers. Finally, as detailed through these chapters, even the integrity of scholarly research is threatened by this engagement.

Conclusion

84 Conclusion

Tensions arise, and heated debates take place as to how to proceed in an ethically responsible manner. Much of this discourse has revolved around the differing per-spectives that we bring to rock art that, in turn, promote such tensions. Blurred boundaries between conceptual systems or moral attitudes, due to centuries of con-tact, exacerbate problems of communication, as does the failure to recognize such cross-cultural effects. The anecdote about Taos perceptions of rock art related in Chap. 2 illustrates such an instance.

There are not two sides to these issues but many sides. Ethical considerations cut both ways, and what appears to be an ethical solution for one may work against the other. Science is one way of knowing the past. From the archaeological perspective and in regard to Watkins (2003), I fi nd it dif fi cult to accept the idea that viewing the past through the “order and logic” of our discipline is unethical. Yet Watkins is cor-rect in noting that this approach also constructs barriers to understanding the infor-mation we seek, an issue also explored by LeBeau III and LaBounty (2010), who point out that concessions on either side are met with resistance. There are no easy solutions, but untruthfulness about what has been learned through the techniques and mental constructs of the archaeological discipline is not one of them.

There is no venue here for plaza dramas by sacred clowns who with sharp insight cut to the quick, de fi ning contentious issues and making fun, producing laughter that disperses tensions. So there is instead talk, writing, and debate. Yet neither can ritual clowning nor can scholarly dialogue produce ready solutions. Hopefully, however, like the hypothesized ritual performance, some of the discussion will con-tribute to a heightened awareness of the underlying causes of rock art con fl icts that can, in turn, be addressed with greater sensitivity.

Surely, this entire debate catches us squarely in a universal kind of trap describ-able in metaphorical terms as Spider Woman’s web, and this is not only a sticky web but a messy one at that. In the fi nal analysis, collaborations between archaeologists and American Indians and indigenous peoples elsewhere in the world have the potential of mutually broadening perspectives, while recognizing that the goals and kinds of knowledge held will differ. Certainly, on these and other similar issues, we are traversing extremely uneven ground. On some fronts, boundaries begin to dis-solve. While “cultural ownership” issues rightfully prevail when indisputable con-nections can be drawn between rock art and contemporary tribal groups, there are many cases where preservation in general would seem to be in everyone’s interest, although even here there is debate. At some point, regardless of cultural relation-ships to the present, images on stone simultaneously enter the realm of a general human legacy. The idea of rock art as cultural property breaks down as time dis-tances the present from the creators of the rock art. Communication through art facilitates an intercultural journey. Throughout, with rock art as a common focus, aesthetics—more properly referenced perhaps as cross-cultural aesthetics—are operative and a common thread between all of us. Rock art as visual dialogue and its potential for communication on a general level crosscut time and cultures; “own-ership” is simultaneously local, regional, and universal. We should not aim for a monolithic outlook. In fact, rock art presents us with an invaluable opportunity for learning, expanding our perceptions beyond our own cultural limitations.

85Conclusion

E nd N otes

1. ( p . 1) As noted by Brown (2003 :xiii), the terms “Indian” and “American Indian” by native Americans themselves as a means of as self-identity—an observation with which I can personally concur—are prevalent, and I will continue this usage in this discussion.

2. (p. 3) The use of the generic term “Pueblo” here includes the Rio Grande Pueblos along with the western pueblos of Acoma, Laguna, Zuni, and Hopi.

3. (p. 2) A pagan is de fi ned variously as someone not a Christian, Jew, or Muslim, one who has no religion, a civilian (i.e., not a soldier of Christ), with ultimate roots in pagus, Latin for a country dweller. Heathen is another term used to de fi ne pagan, a word that relates ultimately to the uncultivated moors or heath.

Acknowledgments

First, I want to express my gratitude to Richard Chacon for inviting me to embark upon the adventure of writing this book and for his support throughout. Thanks also go to Allison Colburne, librarian at the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, for her unfailing and cheerful assistance in my research. Over the years collaborations with Will Tsosie have provided many thoughtful insights into indigenous perspec-tives on rock art. I am also grateful to the late William Weahkee of Cochiti Pueblo and Phillip Lauriano of Sandia Pueblo for their forthright explanations of their views during the many meetings in regard to Petroglyph National Monument. All of the native perspectives have greatly facilitated intercultural understandings that have contributed to this volume. Helpful information was also contributed by Robert Preucel and William Lipe. To Curt Schaafsma, I am indebted for his lack of com-plaints in the kitchen as he granted me time to work, toiling over dinners, while I (happily) sat at the computer. He also willingly listened to readings of various chap-ters, offering me valuable suggestions along the way, and rendered invaluable assis-tance in preparing the photographs for this publication. All photographs are by the author. For any misconceptions and the opinions offered here amidst this conten-tious fi eld of inquiry, I accept sole responsibility.


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Index

A Aborigines , 14, 75, 91 Abrahamism , 2, 83 Aesthetics , 3–5, 43, 44, 96 Akimel O’odahm , 18 Alpert, Barbara Olins , 3 Altered state of consciousness (ASC) , 43, 44,

46, 48 American Indian Religious Freedom

Act , 19, 20 American Rock Art Research Association

(ARARA) , 71, 89, 90 Ancestral Pueblo , 10, 16, 32, 33, 52, 74, 86 ARARA. See American Rock Art Research

Association (ARARA) Arcadian values , 9 Archaeoastronomy , 27 Archaeological Resources and Protection Act

(ARPA) , 88 Arctic hysteria , 47 Ark of the Covenant , 12 Arkush, Elizabeth , 58 ARPA. See Archaeological Resources and

Protection Act (ARPA) Art

de fi nition of , 3 function of , 2 “primitive,” 3 terminology , 3

ASC. See Altered state of consciousness (ASC)

AURA. See Australian Rock Art Research Association (AURA)

Australia , 3, 14, 31, 75, 77, 84, 89, 91 Australian Rock Art Research Association

(AURA) , 89

B Banyacya, Thomas , 63 Barrier Canyon Style , 5, 45, 50 Basketmakers , 32, 52 Bendremer, Richard , 35 Benedict, Ruth , 52 Biographic Tradition , 58 Blinman, Eric , 60, 61 Borders , 78, 95 Boundaries , 3, 8, 11, 25, 49, 72, 77, 79, 96 Bradshaw Foundation , 89 Brandt, Elizabeth , 36 Brown, Michael , 75, 95 Buffalo Bill Historic Center , 90 Bumper stickers , 71 Bureau of American Ethnology , 35 Bureau of Land Management , 90

C California , 43, 51 California Tradition , 43 Center, concept of , 15 Chacon, Richard , 48, 97 Change , 2, 4, 24, 28, 32, 56 Changing pasts , 59 Chavarria, Antonio , 54, 58 Chemehuevi , 18 Christianity , 9, 47 Christian values , 46 Clan symbols , 62 Cochiti Pueblo , 75, 76, 97 Cognitive archaeology , 26 Collecting , 8, 71 Colonial agendas , 35 Colonialism , 31, 52

102

Colorado Plateau , 43, 44, 51, 55, 62 Comanche Gap , 30, 60 Comanches , 60, 61 Commercial purposes , 2 Con fl ict , 18, 19, 31, 36, 42, 51, 52, 54–59, 90, 91 Cooper, David , 30 Cordy-Collin, Alana , 47 Coronado State Monument , 11 Cosmological order , 2, 8 Cosmology , 11, 27, 32, 52, 56, 57 Courlander, Harold , 62 Cultural domain , 76 Cushing, Frank Hamilton , 81

D Desecration panel , 88 Dinwoody Tradition , 44 Doodling , 49 Dreaming , 14, 15

E Echo-Hawk, Roger , 30 Echo-Hawk, Walter , 9 Ethical detractors , 42 Ethnic cleansing , 83 Ethnographic data , 24, 26, 27, 44, 57, 84 Ethnographic present , 26, 72, 85

F Fads , 27 Falls Creek Shelters , 32–34, 37, 85 Flight metaphors , 44, 45 Four Corners Region , 52, 55, 86 Fredericks, Oswald White Bear , 62

G Geertz, Armin , 62 Gender studies , 27 Graves, Michael , 8 Great Basin , 43–45, 51 Greeks , 49, 53

H Hall, Robert , 26 Hantlipinkia , 16, 28, 84 Hays-Gilpin, Kelley , 4, 28 Head trophies , 52, 57 Heritage

global , 2, 7, 85–88 indigenous , 2, 7

Heyd, Thomas , 3 Hohokam , 18 Hopi , 3, 32, 33, 36, 60–63, 76, 77, 81, 97 Hopi Traditional Movement , 63 Hueco Tanks State Park , 30, 72, 73 Hughte, Phil , 81 Human trophies , 51, 52, 91 Hunt, Eva , 11 Hunting magic , 27 Huser, Verne , 19

I Identity , 2, 14, 15, 18, 29, 50, 51, 60–62, 71,

74–77, 78, 95, 97 threats to , 2

Image appropriation , 1, 72–75 Intellectual property , 35, 74, 75, 77 Interior Line Style , 46 International Federation of Rock Art

Organizations (IFRAO) , 89

J Jewelry , 72–74 Jicarilla Apache , 32, 33 Judeo-Christian thought , 11

K Kachinas , 33, 76, 77, 81 Kakadu National Park , 84 Kehoe, Alice , 46–50 Keresan Pueblos , 17, 76 Kiva murals , 11, 51, 52, 55, 60 Knowledge

archaeological , 8, 31, 32, 59, 62, 84 compartmentalization of , 36 desired , 30, 32, 59, 82, 83 expected , 34, 37 loss of , 56, 84 rights to , 36 ritual , 36 traditional , 2, 24, 29, 31, 82, 84

Kuaua , 11

L Landscape

exploitation of , 9 indigenous , 14, 82 power in , 62 rights to place in , 62 sacred , 14, 16, 19, 28, 82 secular , 12

Index

103

Lauriano, Phillip , 17, 19, 97 Legend Rock , 90 Leone, Mark , 8 Lippard, Lucy , 78

M Mallery, Garrick , 25 Mapping time and space , 25 Maya , 49, 54 Means, Russell , 58 Medieval Europe , 47 Mescalero Apache , 61, 73 Middle Ages , 12, 13 Middle East , 13 Mimbres , 51 Monongya, David , 63

N NAGPRA , 28, 30–35, 61, 64 Naranjo, Tessie , 29 National Geographic Society , 89, 90 Navajo , 16, 17, 28, 29, 32, 33, 63, 72, 85, 87, 88 Navajo Dam , 17 Navajo rock art , 28 Navajo ye’i , 28, 72 Nequatewa, Edmund , 62 New Age , 76 Non-material legacy , 41 Northern Colorado Plateau Tradition , 44 Northern Plains , 43–45, 50, 57, 58 Northern Tewa , 15, 77 Northern Tiwa , 11, 17

O Oral tradition , 12, 15, 16, 23, 24, 27, 28–31,

51, 60–62, 64, 84 Ortiz, Alfonso , 15 Ownership , 2, 32, 59, 71–79, 95, 96

P Paleolithic caves , 3 Paseo del Norte , 18, 19 Paternalism , 58 Pecos River Style , 5, 44, 45 Petroglyph National Monument , 19, 75, 76, 90 Post-processualists , 26 Potttery Mound , 60 Power , 1, 10, 17–19, 36, 44, 50, 61–63, 74, 78,

81, 85, 87, 88

Preservation , 9, 32, 34, 85–91 Processualists , 26 Prophecy , 62, 63 Prophecy Rock , 62 Pueblo , 3, 10, 11, 15–17, 19, 28, 29, 32, 33,

36, 52, 54–58, 60–62, 72–76, 86, 97

R Reciprocity , 55, 56 Recreational values , 9 Reinventing the past , 32, 59, 64 Revisionist views , 58, 63 Revisionist writers , 54 Revitalization movements , 18 Richman, Kenneth , 35 Rio Grande Pueblos , 32, 33, 97 Rio Grande Valley , 17, 60, 75, 77 Ritual clowning , 81, 96 Ritual violence , 41, 42, 51, 55, 56, 58 Rock art

acquired meanings , 24 agency , 18 appropriation , 59–61, 71–77 as art , 5, 7, 17, 44, 76, 89, 91, 96 changing meanings , 24–25 commodi fi cation , 72, 82 evisceration of content , 76 as heritage , 7 manipulation of meanings , 63 ownership , 71–79, 95–96 reinvention of meaning , 60 as resource , 7, 9 re-use , 71–79 sensitivity of , 33 as visual dialogue , 96

Rock art interest groups , 71 Royal Geographic Society , 89 Russell, Jeffrey Burton , 12

S Salt trail traditions , 18 Sandia Pueblo , 17, 97 Sanitizing meaning , 41–58 San Juan Pueblo , 15 San Juan River , 16, 28, 53, 87, 88 Santa Clara Pueblo , 29, 54 Scalps , 52, 55 Schizophrenia , 48 Scienti fi c truth , 82 Scully, Vincent , 12 Secrecy , 2, 36, 37, 77

Index

104

Secular values , 4 Service, Elmer R , 47 Shamanism , 27, 42–44, 46–49, 51

avoidance of , 46–58 Shoshonean people , 44 Siberia , 50 Site Stewardship , 71 Social activist , 31, 41, 58, 83 Social ethics , 83 Sociedad de Investigaciones de Arte Rupestre

de Bolivia (SIARB) , 89 Southern Paiute , 18 Southern Tiwa , 11, 17, 61 Speaking Rock Casino , 61, 73 Spirit helpers , 44, 58 Stevenson, Matilda Coxe , 35, 81 Steward, Julian H. , 25 Structural armatures , 13 suppression , 41, 58, 79, 83

T Taos Pueblo , 10 TARA. See Trust for African Rock

Art (TARA) Time

collapsed , 14, 15 linear , 11, 13, 15, 20 mythical , 15, 20

Traditional narrative , 29, 31 Transmogri fi cation , 44, 45 Tribal logo , 72 Trivialization , 2, 75, 83 Trust for African Rock Art (TARA) , 89 Tsodilo Hills , 91 Tsosie, William , 29 Tungus , 42, 47 Turpin, Solveig , 5, 7, 42–44, 46 Tutveni , 62

U Upper Paleolithic , 42 Ute , 32

V Vandalism , 9, 19, 20, 59, 90 Vastokas, Joan , 42 Venus complex , 56 Violence , 41, 42, 51, 52, 54–58 Visionary arts , 50

W Warfare , 27, 41, 42, 51, 53, 54–58, 83

evidence for , 54 Waters, Frank , 62 Weahkee, William , 75 Western paradigms , 11 Western worldview , 11 West Mesa , 17, 90 Whitley, David S , 99, 100 Witchcraft , 10, 12, 47, 88 Wolf, Marvin , 58 World Heritage Convention of

UNESCO , 89 World Heritage Sites , 879 Wyoming State Parks , 90

Y Yahweh , 12, 13, 20 Young, M. Jane , 10, 63 Ysleta del Sur , 61, 73

Z Zuni , 10, 15, 16, 28, 32, 33, 35, 52, 57, 63, 64,

72, 81, 84, 97

Index

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