WHAT DO THESE SYMBOLS MEAN? A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE IMAGES FOUND ON THE ROCKS OF THE
CANADIAN SHIELD WITH SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO THE PICTOGRAPHS OF THE LAKE OF THE
WOODS by Alicia J. M. COLSON *
“Conway (n.d.a and
1978) considered three morphs, from various pictograph sites in Northeastern
Ontario, which occurred in conjunction with each other: an open armed man, his
canine companion, and an animal pelt. Another morph, which Conway identified as
a beaver, existed above the man and his animal companion. He identified these
images as specific star constellations. Rajnovich (1980a:35) asserted that
Conway’s (1978) identification of Orion and Canis Major (see discussion page
64ff) at different sites across the Canadian Shield was problematic. Bear
images, she asserted, either occurred alone or in pairs as she had observed in
the pictograph sites of both Rainy Lake and Lake of the Woods. Pairs of images
also existed at Cuttle Lake (Rajnovich 1980c). She did not discuss canine
images although Conway had identified a canine image existing with a human
figure. She also observed that images described as a “canoe-with-passenger”
motif existed throughout the Canadian Shield but that two styles of this shape
existed at Pukamo Island and Jackfish Lake, two sites in the Rainy Lake region.
She (ibid.) contended that the image from the site on Pukamo Island had “stick”
passengers while a similar image on the pictograph site at Jackfish Lake, had
“open armed passengers.” Unfortunately Rajnovich did not provide any
photographs of either of the images under discussion. She (ibid.) posited that
the differences occurred since the passengers in the canoe were men in one
canoe and Maymaygwayshi in the other (Maymaygwayshi (Vastokas & Vastokas
(1973:48), may-may-gway-shi (Redsky 1972:36), or memenowéciwak (Hallowell
(1992:64) are small hairy creatures, spirits, who living in rocks alongside
lakes and are fond of fish, travel in canoes, and occasionally stole fish but
when they met humans they hung their heads because they “had a soft part to
their nose, only a hole” (Hallowell 1973:48)…” (page 39)
Inspired by a red-painted pictograph site in the heart
of canoe country in what is now known as the Boundary Waters of northern
Minnesota, it is speculated by some that this image is that of a Maymaygwayshi.
They are the "little people" that reside in the rock faces. Sometimes
mischevious, sometimes helpful, it is said an offering of tobacco, and perhaps
a word of respect, will find favor as you pass their way.
Above and below: http://albinger.me/2014/06/08/selwyn-dewdney-norval-morrisseau-the-ojibwe-pictograph-tradition/
The collection and
interpretation of data are intergenerational processes in which each new
generation of scholars amplifies, and modifies the work of its predecessors.
This is clearly a truism; the implications of this are rarely understood and
developed. On the one hand most investigators work within their own paradigm.
This does not render them immune from criticism, set in aspic. This article surveys
the publications of researchers working on the pictograph and petroglyph sites
in the Lake of the Woods area. I establish the approaches which have been the
most popular, previous findings on pictograph sites, and the way materials were
examined. A standard of comparison emerges, to become a yardstick against which
new data can be examined. Much of this article is specifically concerned with
the analysis of the pictograph sites of the Lake of the Woods area, but
references are made to studies of sites elsewhere on the Canadian Shield.
The intuitive (narrative, constructivist, or so called
‘humanist’) approach associated with post-processual archaeology developed as a
reaction against the positivism of the processual archaeologists during the
1970s and 1980s. The intuitive or narrative approach is popular among
petroglyph and pictograph scholars because it enables them to address the issue
of the meaning of an image, even when there is a paucity of detailed textual
records. This is of questionable utility. The strong relativists load their
theoretical discussions with tortuous vocabulary. They claim a great deal but
fail to advance beyond the subjective. Though authoritative and assertive in
tone, their interpretations are exercises in “navel gazing”. The readers, finds
themselves at the whim of each scholar’s intuition. The applications of this
approach cannot be duplicated, since researchers rarely explain how they
reached their findings. A scholar interested in establishing the meaning of
rock images in a more rigorous and persuasive fashion cannot stay there, and
should adopt the analogical or homological approach (see Figure 1) pages 4-5
The analogical approach, associated with processual
archaeology, was a reaction by positivists to the culture-history which
dominated the post war era. Its proponents argued that behaviour could be
inferred from material culture because many uniform connections exist between
the various components of socio-cultural systems, material culture, and human
behaviour. Scholars who practice this approach argue that it is only worth
employing universal regularities in human behaviour. Biologists define
analogies as similar features of different species without close evolutionary
relations. The similarities have resulted from natural selection operating to
adapt different species to a similar environment (Abercrombie, Hickman and
Johnson 1985:20). An archaeological analogy is a likeness or partial likeness
assumed to exist as a consequence of convergent development under comparable
conditions. Interpretation using analogies allows scholars to use strong
cross-cultural regularities between behaviour and material culture in systemic
contexts to attribute behavioural correlates to material remains recovered from
archaeological contexts. This assumes that correlations can be argued between
past and present day cognitive and behavioural capabilities of human beings.
So, if similar behavioural characteristics can be established between specific
aspects of material culture and behaviour in the contemporary world, scholars
can extend them to cover the same or similar aspects of material culture in the
archaeological record (Binford 1981). Scholars adopting analogical approaches
use universal generalisations, rather than concepts specific to individual or
historically related cultures. This has one major drawback. For if they deem
only universal correlations to be relevant then it is difficult to deal with
the idiosyncratic facets of a single image
The homological approach might offer an alternative to this
bleak picture (. An archaeological homology is a similarity in two or more
cultures occurring as the result of shared historical origin unobscured by
adaptation to different cultural environments. Archaeological homologies result
from diffusion as well as common descent (page 6)…
Page 8 Revista de Arqueología Americana No.25
‘Rock Art’ and Its Study - Some Preliminary
Thoughts
I think that the
images that exist on the surface of rocks should be termed rock images, or
petroglyphs and pictographs instead of rock art. I realise that the term ‘rock
art’ is applied world-wide to images that are placed on the surfaces of rocks.
It occurs in many different places and settings: Australian rock shelters, the
surfaces of boulders in the Jordanian desert, vertical rock faces or rock
outcrops on the Canadian Shield, the sides of the stone passages of New Grange
in Ireland, and the walls of deep caves in France and Spain. ‘Rock art’ also covers features
created using rocks of different sizes to produce ‘rock,’ or ‘boulder
alignments.’ I think that the term ‘art’ is problematic because it
suggests that these images have primarily a decorative value and no intrinsic
value or meaning of their own. It also implies classification of these images
according to Western notions of high or low art, or, perhaps, a craft. These
terms have loaded meanings, since they impose the analyst’s conventional
values. Rock images should not be considered within such a perspective, since,
evidently, the cultural context of the ‘reader’ or ‘viewer’ influences
perception and classification. This prejudgement affects how images are
understood (Blocker 1994; Conkey 1987; Price 1989).
Rock image sites cannot be studied using the same techniques
as are applied to other archaeological sites. The theoretical approaches used
and the questions asked may be the same but the data sources are radically
different and generally far more limited. These images cannot be excavated
using the techniques for recovering, cataloguing, and analysing data that
archaeologists apply to ‘conventional’ archaeological sites. The area
surrounding such images may be excavated but the physical context of the site often
provides little or no information about the meaning(s) of the images
themselves. The subjective beliefs and ideas held by the people who created
these images did more to shape them than technological processes or the economic
or political systems in which these people lived. Therefore, the archaeologist
must rely to an unusual degree on a range of nonarchaeological sources in order
to establish the meaning of the images. It is very difficult to access this
information for a group whose past is available only through the archaeological
record. The difficulties
in accessing the symbolic knowledge of a group of people through the inherent
attributes and physical location of such images may explain why these sites
have often been ignored, or merely described, in contrast to similar images
found on birch bark scrolls. Fieldwork and archival work must be considered as
equally important in this study, since information must be drawn from a wide
range of disciplines, including archaeology, anthropology, history, art
history, geology, and geography.
What Do These Symbols Mean? 8-9
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