By James D. Keyser, Michael A. Klassen
The sector stretching from northern Colorado to southern Alberta and from the Rockies to the western Dakotas is the land of the Cheyenne and the Blackfeet, the Crow and the Sioux. Its grasslands and river valleys have nurtured human cultures for hundreds of thousands of years. On cave partitions, glacial boulders, and riverside cliffs, local humans recorded their ceremonies, imaginative and prescient quests, battles, and day-by-day actions within the petroglyphs and pictographs they created on stone surfaces.
Some websites have been sincerely meant for communal use; others sincerely mark the incidence of a personal religious come upon. Elders frequently used rock paintings, corresponding to advanced depictions of searching, to coach conventional wisdom and talents. different websites rfile the drugs powers and courageous deeds of recognized warriors. a few Plains rock paintings is going again greater than 5,000 years; a few varieties have been made consistently over many centuries.
Archaeologists James Keyser and Michael Klassen exhibit us the origins, range, and wonder of Plains rock artwork. The possible never-ending number of pictures comprise people, animals, guns, mask, mazes, handprints, finger traces, geometric and summary varieties, tally marks, hoofprints, and the wavy strains and starbursts that people universally go together with trancelike states. Plains Indian Rock artwork is the last word advisor to the paintings shape. It covers the usual and archaeological background of the northwestern Plains; explains rock artwork types, ideas, types, terminology, and courting; and provides interpretations of pictures and compositions.
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Following certain rules of grammar or syntax, these symbols are arranged in a sequence to convey information. As pictographic systems use readily recognizable symbols, they can often be loosely translated by people outside the culture which produced them. Ideographic systems, on the other hand, are nearly impossible to decipher without some prior knowledge of what each symbol represents. Nonetheless, the grammar used by the system can sometimes be independently recognized in both cases. Several studies have shown that some Northwestern Plains rock art, particularly that of the Biographic and Vertical Series traditions, incorporates elements of both pictographic and ideographic systems (Keyser 19873; Klassen 19983; Sundstrom 1987,1990).
They include horses (some with brands), guns, metal hatchets, military accouterments, boats, wagons, Euro-Americans, and buildings. 1). For instance, the first horses were introduced onto the Northwestern Plains about 1690 by the Shoshone, who obtained animals stolen from the Spanish settlements in New Mexico from their Lite kinsmen (Haines 1938; Ewers 1955). Through trade and raiding, horses spread rapidly northeastward, reaching southern The large body shields and bow-spears associated with these shield-bearing warriors at Writing-OnStone date them to the Late Prehistoric period.
39 INTERPRETING ROCK ART spirit power (Malouf and White 1953). The words of Lasso Stasso, an elderly Flathead Lake Kutenai, make clear the power of these ancient images: "Up there is a little circle of stones where we would lay. All kinds of spirits dwell up there, like birds, animals, rocks, everything. Coyote spoke to me up there one night.... Deer gave me the power to h u n t . . [and] fawn gave me gambling power" (Malouf and White 1952). 1. Communal Bison Killsites on the Northwestern Plains 40 4 / The Area and Its History T he Northwestern Plains is a vast land of extremes and stark contrasts with an incredible diversity of landscapes and climates.