scholarly journals Emigdiano Blues: The California Indigenous Pigment Palette and an In Situ Analysis of an Exotic Colour

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Bedford ◽  
David Wayne Robinson ◽  
Devlin Gandy
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Blue Pigment ◽  
Central California ◽  
Black And White ◽  
South Central ◽  
Shelter Site ◽  
Experimental Rock ◽  
Body Painting

Abstract The Native inhabitants of South Central California produced rock art containing red, orange, black, white, green and blue colours using a range of mineral and organic materials. Many of these same colours were used on material culture and body painting. This paper focuses on a sub-group of the Chumash, called the Emigdiano, who produced an enigmatic blue colour used in the creation of rock art. Here, we focus on the blue pigment at the rock shelter site of Three Springs in the Wind Wolves Preserve in South Central California. The composition of blue pigments has previously been the focus of discussion with suggestions that they were produced either using European pigments taken from Spanish missions, or that azurite from a local quarry was the source. Previous experimental work had demonstrated that it was possible for the blue to be produced from locally available azurite. Here we present the in situ analyses of these enigmatic blue pigments using handheld X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF). Results from pXRF analysis of rock art, quarried azurite samples and experimental rock art reconstructions showed that the Emigdiano Blue at Three Springs were not azurite based and was composed of optical blue (a mixture of black and white or grey materials which mimic the appearance of blue). This paper discusses the surprising implications of the use, given the availability of a ‘true’ blue pigment, and the wider ontological importance of combining multiple colours to produce the effect of blue in a rock art panel.

Drawing Upon the Past: Temporal Ontology and Mythological Ideology in South-central Californian Rock Art

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Rock Art ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Relational Ontology ◽  
Central California ◽  
Temporal Ontology ◽  
The Past ◽  
South Central ◽  
New Information ◽  
Indigenous Society

The increasing influence of New Animism is providing useful ways of interpreting rock art as well as ways to move beyond generalizing models based upon Cartesian principles. However, the increasing attention to animism runs the risk of simply replacing one generalization with another. To avoid the pitfalls of generalization, this article sets out to explore the ways in which relational ontology may have been communicated throughout indigenous society in a specific case study from south-central California. To do this requires adopting a ‘third space’ approach (Porr & Bell 2011) to detail the didactic and pedagogical narrative roles of rock art and mythology in south-central California. Paraphrasing Bird-David (2006), the goal is to understand how an animistic epistemology is enacted into an institutionalized way of knowing. To do this, I look closely at new information on rock-art chronology in conjunction with mythological narratives. It is suggested that the vibrant pictographs of the region drew upon ontological notions of the past embodied at specific places in the landscape and that the narrative structure of myth helps inform our understanding of the narrative structure of rock-art composition. This provides an appreciation of indigenous perceptions of time, which in turn shows that mythology was a template for human institutions while explaining rock art as another ontological institution that was part-and-parcel of relational ideologies associated with ‘delayed-return’ complex societies of south-central California.

Land Use, Land Ideology: An Integrated Geographic Information Systems Analysis of Rock Art Within South-Central California

2010 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 792-818 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Geographic Information Systems ◽  
Systems Analysis ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Geographic Information ◽  
Central California ◽  
Gis Applications ◽  
South Central ◽  
Physical Environments ◽  
Research Questions

While rock art is global in distribution, it remains a media fix in placed within particular physical environments. Because of this, it can be examined using various spatial approaches and technologies. By integrating a variety of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications to examine the location and position of rock art in relation to both natural features and other archaeological deposits, a detailed understanding of the positioning of rock art can be advanced. In this case, I employ this methodology to address the presence that rock art exerted within the Emgidiano/Hulkuhku Chumash landscape of South-Central California. In so doing, I demonstrate that specific research questions concerning rock art in public or private contexts can be addressed, and that in this example, the pictographs of the Hulkuhku were visibly integrated within the intimate confines of the most important economic places in the landscape, showing that subsistence and symbolic practices were conjoined through ideological media.

Polyvalent Metaphors in South-Central California Missionary Processes

2013 ◽  
Vol 78 (2) ◽  
pp. 302-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Presenting Problems ◽  
California Coast ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
Central California ◽  
South Central ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
The Media ◽  
Mission System

AbstractThe Spanish missionary entrada (A.D. 1769 to 1833) along the California coast created a series of complex encounters between multiple cultural discourses. The Franciscan mission system directly brought colonial and indigenous cultural metaphorical understandings into play. Missionary and indigenous discourse interacted largely via the media of material culture, animals, embellished architecture, and landscape—media interpreted through preexisting cultural metaphors and understandings. Investigating how metaphors played a role in constituting colonial entanglements is important in understanding cultural interactions and change. Metaphors structured colonial interactions, simultaneously hindering and enabling missionary–indigenous relationships. These relationships created parameters for unforeseen transitory configurations: a process best theorized under the term polyvalence. By adopting polyvalence, the processes of colonialism can be approached without usage of ethnic or racialized terms such as creolization, hybridity, or amalgamation. In the case of indigenous south-central California, it is suggested here that widely different forms of evidence can be better appreciated without recourse to terms laden with racial or ethnic connotations. The evidence suggests that while missions may have failed to create entirely new ethnic groups, missionary endeavors did result in unanticipated outcomes, presenting problems and creative opportunities for indigenous groups living within immediate coastal and extended interior populations.

Singa Transitional: Rock-art Saywas Marking Boundaries of Identity and Socializing Landscape in Huánuco, Peru

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-263
Author(s):  
Jonathan J. Dubois
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Regional Survey ◽  
Intermediate Period ◽  
Social Trends ◽  
The North ◽  
The Andes ◽  
Early Horizon ◽  
Landscape Feature

This paper introduces a new art style, Singa Transitional, found painted onto a mountainside near the modern town of Singa in the north of Huánuco, Peru. This style was discovered during a recent regional survey of rock art in the Huánuco region that resulted in the documentation of paintings at more than 20 sites, the identification of their chronological contexts and an analysis of the resulting data for trends in changing social practices over nine millennia. I explore how the style emerged from both regional artistic trends in the medium and broader patterns evident in Andean material culture from multiple media at the time of its creation. I argue that the presence of Singa Transitional demonstrates that local peoples were engaged in broader social trends unfolding during the transition between the Early Horizon (800–200 bc) and the Early Intermediate Period (ad 0–800) in Peru. I propose that rock art placed in prominent places was considered saywa, a type of landscape feature that marked boundaries in and movement through landscapes. Singa Transitional saywas served to advertise the connection between local Andean people and their land and was a medium through which social changes were contested in the Andes.

Żelazna Nowa, stanowisko 2. Cmentarzysko kultury przeworskiej z Zapilcza na południowym Mazowszu

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Cieślak-Kopyt ◽  
Dorota Pogodzińska
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Archaeological Heritage ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
Vistula River ◽  
Animal Bones ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Metal Detectors ◽  
Przeworsk Culture ◽  
Small Finds

The subject of the monograph, published as the 10th volume of the Saved Archaeological Heritage series, are the results of rescue excavations on a cemetery from the period of Roman influence on the Vistula River near Magnuszew in southern Mazovia (Poland), carried out several years ago at the initiative of the Museum in Radom. This necropolis, like many similar ones throughout the country, was systematically destroyed as a result of agricultural activities, and in recent years also through illegal prospection with the use of metal detectors. Archaeologists, with the cooperation of numerous volunteers, managed to protect against further destruction about 60 graves (urned and urnless) from the period between the 1st century BC and the 3rd century CE. These are an evidence of the settlement of the region by people whose material traces are referred to in the archaeological nomenclature as the Przeworsk culture (associated mainly with the Germanic tribes). The cinerary graves were equipped with ceramics, metal parts of clothing, tools, less often weapons, glass beads, imported vessels or dice. Among the forms of graves, the so-called groove object stands out: a kind of rectangular grave feature tied with survival to the beginnings of our era of Celtic traditions, arriving here from northern Małopolska. In addition to the standard catalogue with the description of graves, pottery and small finds, and very detailed illustration plates, the monograph includes an analysis of material culture and forms of burial, photographs of selected finds and very extensive specialist reports. The latter include both osteological materials (anatomo-anthropological analysis, analysis of animal bones placed in the graves), as well as other ecofacts and individual categories of furnishings (glass, faience, iron and bronze objects). The whole is complemented by clear plans with the location of graves and artifacts in the necropolises, as well as with the results of non-invasive research going far beyond the excavated area and of key importance for further in situ protection of this extremely valuable monument.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document