Plains Indian Rock Art
Plains Indian Rock Art

Author: James D. Keyser

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9780295980942

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Archaeologist Keyser and Klassen share with readers the origins, diversity, and beauty of Plains rock art, with the hope of encouraging greater awareness and respect for this cultural tradition by society as a whole. Their guide covers the natural and archaeological history of the northwestern Plains; explains rock art forms, techniques, styles, terminology and dating; and suggests interpretations of images and compositions. The text is illustrated throughout with black-and-white photos, maps and drawings. The writing is serious, but accessible to the general reader. c. Book News Inc.

The Petroglyphs of Mu
The Petroglyphs of Mu

Author: Carole Nervig

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-08-09

Total Pages: 597

ISBN-13: 1591434483

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

• Shows how the archetypal symbols of the Pohnpaid petroglyphs have exact counterparts in other ancient cultures throughout the world • Provides evidence that Pohnpaid is closely related to--yet predates--neighboring Nan Madol • Includes hundreds of Pohnpaid petroglyphs and stone circle photos, many never before seen While residing on the small Pacific island of Pohnpei in the 1990s, Carole Nervig discovered that a recent brush fire had exposed hundreds of previously unknown petroglyphs carved on gigantic boulders. This portion of the megalithic site called Pohnpaid was unknown even to Pohnpei’s state historic preservation officer. The petroglyphs were unlike others from Oceania, so Nervig began investigating and comparing them with petroglyphs and symbols from around the world. In this fully illustrated exploration, Nervig documents her discoveries on Pohnpei, revealing how the archetypal symbols of the Pohnpaid petroglyphs have exact counterparts in other ancient cultures and universal motifs throughout the world, including the Australian Aborigines, the Inca in Peru, the Vedic civilization of India, early Norse runes, and Japanese symbols. She provides evidence that Pohnpaid is closely related to--yet predates--neighboring Nan Madol and shows how Pohnpaid was an outpost of the sunken Kahnihmueiso, a city of the now-vanished civilization of Mu, or Lemuria. Discussing the archaeoastronomical function of the Pohnpaid stones, the author examines how many of the glyphs symbolize celestial phenomena and clearly reveal how their creators were sky watchers with a sophisticated understanding of astronomy, geophysics, geomancy, and engineering. She shows how the scientific concepts depicted in the petroglyphs reveal how the citizens of Mu had a much deeper understanding of the living Earth than we do, which gave them the ability to manipulate natural forces both physically and energetically. Combining archaeological evidence with traditional oral accounts, Nervig reveals Pohnpaid not only as a part of a geodetic network of ancient sacred sites and portals but also as a remnant of the now submerged but once enlightened Motherland of Mu.

Indian Rock Art of the Columbia Plateau
Indian Rock Art of the Columbia Plateau

Author: James D. Keyser

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2016-06-01

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 0295806974

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From the river valleys of interior British Columbia south to the hills of northern Oregon and east to the continental divide in western Montana, hundreds of cliffs and boulders display carved and painted designs created by ancient artists who inhabited this area, the Columbia Plateau, as long as seven thousand years ago. Expressing a vital social and spiritual dimension in the lives of these hunter-gathers, rock art captivates us with its evocative power and mystery. At once an irreplaceable yet fragile cultural resource, it documents Native histories, customs, and visions through thousands of years. This valuable reference and guidebook addresses basic questions of what petroglyphs and pictographs are, how they were produced, and how archaeologists classify and date them. James Keyser identifies five regions on the Columbia Plateau, each with its own variant of the rock art style identifiable as belonging exclusively to the region. He describes for each region the setting and scope of the rock art along with its design characteristics and possible meaning. Through line drawings, photographs, and detailed maps he provides a guide to the sites where rock art can be viewed. In western Montana, rock art motifs express the ritualistic seeking of a spirit helper from the natural world. In interior British Columbia, rayed arcs above the heads of human figures demonstrate possession of a guardian spirit. Twin figures on the central Columbia Plateau reveal another belief--the special power of twins--and hunting scenes celebrate success of the chase. The grimacing evocative face of Tsagiglalal, in lower Columbia pictographs, testifies to the Plateau Indians’ “death cult” response to the European diseases that decimated their villages between 1700 and 1840. On the southeastern Plateau, images of horse-back riders mark the adoption, after 1700 of the equestrian and cultural habits of the northwestern Great Plains Indians. Despite geographic differences in emphasis, similarities in design and technique link the drawings of all five regions. Human figures, animals depicting numerous species on the Plateau, geometric motifs, mysterious beings, and tally marks, whether painted or carved, appear throughout the Columbia Plateau.

Great River of the West
Great River of the West

Author: Professor of History William L Lang

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2013-10-10

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780295802763

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the Pacific Northwest, the river of dominance is the Columbia, and in ways both profound and mundane its history is the history of the region. In Great River of the West historians and anthropologists consider a range of topics about the river, from Indian rock art, Chinook Jargon, and ethnobotany on the Columbia to literary and family history, the creation of an engineered river, and the inherent mythic power of place. Since first contact between Euro-Americans and Native peoples during the late 18th century, the river's history has been characterized by dramatic demographic, social, and economic changes. The remarkable set of essays in Great River of the West investigate these changes by highlighting important episodes in the history of the river. Readers meet mariners who challenge the Columbia River bar, a family torn by insanity, Native people who preserve fishing traditions, and dam-builders who radically change the Columbia.

Shadow Tribe
Shadow Tribe

Author: Andrew H. Fisher

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2011-07-25

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0295801972

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Shadow Tribe offers the first in-depth history of the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River Indians -- the defiant River People whose ancestors refused to settle on the reservations established for them in central Oregon and Washington. Largely overlooked in traditional accounts of tribal dispossession and confinement, their story illuminates the persistence of off-reservation Native communities and the fluidity of their identities over time. Cast in the imperfect light of federal policy and dimly perceived by non-Indian eyes, the flickering presence of the Columbia River Indians has followed the treaty tribes down the difficult path marked out by the forces of American colonization. Based on more than a decade of archival research and conversations with Native people, Andrew Fisher’s groundbreaking book traces the waxing and waning of Columbia River Indian identity from the mid-nineteenth through the late twentieth centuries. Fisher explains how, despite policies designed to destroy them, the shared experience of being off the reservation and at odds with recognized tribes forged far-flung river communities into a loose confederation called the Columbia River Tribe. Environmental changes and political pressures eroded their autonomy during the second half of the twentieth century, yet many River People continued to honor a common heritage of ancestral connection to the Columbia, resistance to the reservation system, devotion to cultural traditions, and detachment from the institutions of federal control and tribal governance. At times, their independent and uncompromising attitude has challenged the sovereignty of the recognized tribes, earning Columbia River Indians a reputation as radicals and troublemakers even among their own people. Shadow Tribe is part of a new wave of historical scholarship that shows Native American identities to be socially constructed, layered, and contested rather than fixed, singular, and unchanging. From his vantage point on the Columbia, Fisher has written a pioneering study that uses regional history to broaden our understanding of how Indians thwarted efforts to confine and define their existence within narrow reservation boundaries.

Pecos River Style Rock Art
Pecos River Style Rock Art

Author: James Burr Harrison Macrae

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2018-11-05

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 1623496403

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Pecos River style pictographs are one of the most complex forms of rock art worldwide. The dramatic prehistoric pictographs on the limestone overhangs of the lower Pecos and Devils Rivers in West Texas have been the subject of preservation and study since the 1930s, and dedicated research continues to this day. The medium is large-scale, polychrome pictographs in open rock shelter settings, emphasizing the animistic/shamanistic religion practiced by the local aboriginal peoples. Creating large-scale rock murals required intelligence, skill, and knowledge. These enigmatic images, some dating to 4,500 years ago and possibly earlier, depict strange, vaguely human and animal shapes and various geometric forms. While full understanding of the meaning of these images is abstruse, archaeologists and other scholars have identified what they believe to be patterns and religious themes, mixed with what could be figures and objects from everyday life in the local hunter-gatherer culture as it existed in the region centuries before the arrival of colonizing Europeans. Although interpretation of these pictographs remains controversial, in Pecos River Style Rock Art: A Prehistoric Iconography, James Burr Harrison Macrae contributes to the beginnings of a syntactic “grammar” for these images that can be applied in diverse contexts without direct reference to any particular interpretation. “The strength of structural-iconographic analysis,” Macrae writes, “is that it relies on repetitive patterns rather than idiosyncratic information, such as trying to make broad inferences from one or only a few sites.” Pecos River Style Rock Art offers the framework of an empirical methodology for understanding these ancient artworks.

Guide to Indigenous Rock Carvings of the Northwest Coast
Guide to Indigenous Rock Carvings of the Northwest Coast

Author: Beth Hill

Publisher:

Published: 2019-06

Total Pages: 50

ISBN-13: 9780888397379

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What is a petroglyph? Who made them and why? What is rock rubbing? How is it made? In her book, Guide to Indigenous Rock Carvings, Beth Hill examines these questions. She gives a fascinating introduction to the subject of First Peoples Petroglyphs of the Northwest Coastal Region - BC, Washington, Oregon and Alaska. Beth Hill and her husband Ray have traveled the coast for close to 20 years, recording the known sites, and discovering others. Out of this came Indian Petroglyphs of the Pacific Northwest, with over 1,000 photos and illustrations. A truly comprehensive study.