Time's Arrow: Toward a Social History of Crow Biographic Art Using Seriation and Multivariate Statistics

Abstract

Biographic artworks produced by Historic-period Plains Indian warriors can be viewed as genuine historical documents, detailing important events in their lives. This is especially true because these documents contain a genuinely narrative component, telling their stories as much as depicting them. However, for individual lives to create a broader social history, they must be connected with the lives of others, especially over a temporal span. Here, we begin the task of building a chronological framework for Crow (Apsáalooke) biographic artworks based on multivariate statistical analysis and seriation analysis of their content. Our research not only allows five undated artworks to be better placed in chronological context but also reveals the changing pattern of stylistic features in these artworks during the turbulent decades of the nineteenth century. [biographic art, Plains Indians, cultural traditions, Native American art] RESUMEN Las obras de arte biográficas producidas por guerreros indígenas de las Llanuras del período histórico pueden ser vistas como documentos históricos genuinos, que detallan importantes eventos en sus vidas. Esto es especialmente verdadero porque estos documentos contienen un componente genuinamente narrativo, contando sus historias tanto como representándolas. Sin embargo, para crear una historia social más amplia, las vidas individuales deben estar conectadas con las vidas de otros, especialmente sobre un lapso temporal. Aquí, empezamos la tarea de construir un marco cronológico para las obras de arte biográficas de los crow (Apsáalooke) basado en el análisis estadístico multivariado y el análisis de seriación de su contenido. Nuestra investigación no sólo permite a cinco obras de arte sin fecha estar mejor situadas en un contexto cronológico sino también revela el patrón cambiante de características estilísticas en estas obras de arte durante las décadas turbulentas del siglo XIX. [arte biográfico, indígenas de la Llanuras, tradiciones culturales, arte nativo americano]

Dating Crow Rock Art through Multivariate Statistical Comparison with Biographic Artworks

“…During the turbulent nineteenth century, Crow society saw marked changes in features of their broader environment, such as the expansion (and later decline of) the fur trade, the increased encroachment of Europeans, growing hostilities with neighboring tribes, and the eventual shift to reservation life (Hoxie 1995). Several of these factors inevitably underlie some of the changing features observed in biographic artworks as the nineteenth century progressed (Lycett and Keyser 2019). Although the facial features at Benjamin Hill are subtle and human forms are still largely portrayed in a more traditional manner, the incorporation of these features may allude to the wider changes going on in Crow society during the 1860s, which included their allying with the U.S. military in 1866 as part of the offensive against the Lakota (Hoxie 1995).…”

“…Building on the work we have undertaken with Blackfoot robe art and rock art, we have previously established that variations in the form of horses and human figures (Table 2) routinely recorded in Crow biographic artworks provide valid information regarding their chronology (Lycett and Keyser 2019). The presence or absence of specific details in weaponry, tipis, and horse gear also provides important and useful chronological markers in Crow artworks (Lycett and Keyser 2019).…”

“…Although this effort is in its infancy, the utility of the method is self-evident, and its relative ease of use is obvious. With this in mind, and given Keyser's recent research involving Crow rock art at several key sites, we began discussing the possibility of developing such a seriation for Crow biographic art that could serve as a basis not only for helping date particular examples (including both rock art and portable pieces) but also for showing stylistic trends within the corpus of Crow art itself (Lycett and Keyser 2019). In this article we report on our use of this comparative framework and statistical seriation methodology to establish a more accurate chronology for five Crow rock art sites.…”

“…Hence, although the growing application of direct and chronometric methods to rock art has made considerable contributions in the Plains and elsewhere (e.g., Dorn 2001; Rowe 2001; Ruiz and Rowe 2014), rock art of the Historic period (post-1730) often can still only be attributed to quite broad time spans (Keyser 2001; Lycett and Keyser 2017). This is especially frustrating, because to truly draw rock art into the fine-grained historical and ethnohistorical context of documented key events that took place over the course of the nineteenth century, a scale of resolution on the order of a decade or so is often desirable for biographic artworks (Lycett and Keyser 2019).…”

Writing histories at Êngkahonovita Ogwêvi: multicultural entanglement at Red Canyon, Wyoming

“…The panel comprises more than 20 incised and abraded outlines of humans, horses, tipis and weapons in raiding and combat scenes. Stylistically, the images fit into the regional biographical rock art tradition, which continued at least to the First World War (Lycett & Keyser 2019). They also compare favourably to mid to late nineteenth-century fine-line images at site complexes such as Joliet and the Turner Rockshelter in Montana, and No Water and Seedskadee in Wyoming (Keyser & Poetschat 2005, 2009; Keyser 2007; McCleary 2016).…”