Working with Rock Art: Recording, Presenting and Understanding Rock Art Using Indigenous Knowledge

Griffiths, Billy

doi:10.1080/0035919x.2014.921796

Cited by 1 publication

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“…Strongest criticism has always been evoked by reaching for analogies from regions clearly not connected geographically or chronologically with the research material, which at a certain point in history even brought about a kind of methodological impasse. However, more recent conceptualizations of this issue show that, even if researchers do not explicitly employ ethnographic methods, ethnographic or early historical data still often and significantly influence research progress (Blundell et al 2010;Keyser et al 2006;Smith et al 2012). In certain cases, it has also turned out that a path towards understanding the rock art of a specific site or region may be to find in it a certain key motif, the unique feature (or its configuration) of which, when correlated with ethnohistorical sources, can offer new insights into the art in question.…”

Section: Method: Ethnography and Time Depthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dances with Zigzags in Toro Muerto, Peru: Geometric Petroglyphs as (Possible) Embodiments of Songs

Rozwadowski,

Wołoszyn

2024

CAJ

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Southern Peru is home to one of the richest sites with rock art in South America—Toro Muerto. A unique aspect of the iconography of the petroglyphs of the site is the figures of dancing humans, the so-called danzantes, which are additionally frequently associated with geometric motifs, mostly variants of zigzag lines. Drawing upon intriguing data recorded during Reichel-Dolmatoff's research in Colombia related to the meaning of analogous motifs in Tukano art, as well as broader exploration of the sonic sphere in South American cultures and the thesis that Amazonian animism was a more archaic ontology over a broader area of South America, this paper suggests that the geometric patterns at Toro Muerto, with which the figures of danzantes are juxtaposed, may have been representations of songs. An extension of this hypothesis is the suggestion that some of the more complex compositions consisting of danzantes and linear geometric motifs were graphic metaphors of transfer to the other world.

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Section: Method: Ethnography and Time Depthmentioning

confidence: 99%