Petroglyph preview
Oh my, I’ve got lots more petroglyphs to show you! And other things too. No time tonight, though, but I thought I’d at least post a preview photo for you before going off to bed.
I’ll try to post more petroglyph photos soon, as well as blog entries for all the things I’ve been meaning to tell you or ask you.
Filed in First Nations 9 Comments so far
marja-leena on 05 Feb 2010 at 3:31 pm #
I’ve been enjoying your lovely blog for a couple of months now. I’m particularly excited by your posts on petroglyphs for I’ve been studying them for some years, via books and the internet, and seeing some here and there. I even have a book by Mary and Ted Bentley on Gabriola’s petroglyphs. It’s been a longtime wish of mine to come over and see them on Gabriola and on Quadra — one day!
Gabriolan on 05 Feb 2010 at 7:09 pm #
I’ve got lots more petroglyph pictures, Marja-Leena — I’ll try to get around to posting more of them. Glad you like the blog!
qmackie on 07 Feb 2010 at 10:28 am #
Hi gabriolan,
Hey, these are at Petroglyph Park just south of Nanaimo, aren’t they? Compare to Dan Leen’s pic here:
http://danielleen.org/petro/figure031.jpg
Though either way they’re part of the superb artistic heritage and profound spiritual landscape of the Snuneymuxw people whose traditional territory includes Gabriola.
These particular designs are often wrongly termed as “lighnting snakes” which many Snuneymuxw people object to, since that is a Nuu-chah-nulth supernatural being (a snake which transforms into a harpoon and is used by Thunderbird to harpoon whales). Rather, many researchers interpret these as “sea wolves”, an artistic motif of a supernatural being seen on Pender Island as early as 3500 years ago and not uncommon since then.
However, Dan Leen whose picture I linked above interprets these two figures as Skamichin, or river otters, a creature of deep spiritual significance to many Coast Salish people and which were frequently the “spirit helper” of shamans. Knowing how much thought Dan has given to this, and in the absence of unequivocal other evidence, I think your picture may be a shaman’s tribute to his or her spirit helper the river otter, from whose tongue supernatural forces would emanate.
cheryl on 07 Feb 2010 at 2:26 pm #
qmackie; The Petroglyphs on your link and the pictures on Gabriolans’ are so much
more clearer and obvious than most of the ones here on Gabriola is that because ours are older or are the ones in Nanaimo protected better from the elements. Do you know?
qmackie on 07 Feb 2010 at 9:46 pm #
Hi cheryl,
That’s a good question. I’d say first, no one really knows how old any of these petroglyphs are. Archaeologists usually wave their hands and say “about 2,000 years” because that’s when our received wisdom says a lot of artistic expression in stone develops – but there is very little evidence for that date. So we can’t really say, this bunch is older than those. Even the state of relative erosion or clarity isn’t very much use because the specifics of the rock bed and the kinds of exposure these have recieved is quite variable.
I think though that many of the ones at the Church site, for example, have been loved half to death – many of these were under moss and then cleared in the last few decades, meaning that freeze-thaw and other temperature effects have started exfoliation. Further, they see a lot of foot traffic and in the past they’ve seen a lot of rubbings made and folks scraping lichens off for pictures. I think they preserve a bit better when on vertical or steeper surfaces as well, the horizontal ones seem to be less resilient.
However, overall, I can’t really confirm or deny your suggestion except to say that stylistically many of the ones on Gabriola, around Nanaimo and even up around Sproat Lake share strong stylistic similarities to each other. Archaeologists would often say that suggested they were made around the same time, though for us that might mean within the same millennium!
cheryl on 08 Feb 2010 at 6:01 am #
Thank-You, qmackie. My husband says if I keep reading this blog by the time I die I’ll be too smart for my breeches.
John Hudson on 08 Feb 2010 at 11:34 am #
@qmackie,
I’ve seen only a small number of petroglyphs on vertical surfaces, and the majority seem to be horizontal or near-horizontal. I was thinking about this when I visited the large grouping of Nanaimo petroglyphs recently, because they are in a place where there is no shortage of vertical surfaces but are all located on the ground. This led me to wonder if this had something to do with the ceremonial use to which they were put?
In Britain, there is a long folk tradition women wishing to have many children sleeping in or beside the outline of the Cerne Abbas chalk carving (for obvious reasons!). I wonder if Coast Salish ceremonial use of petroglyphs might also involve lying or sitting on or near the images, and this would explain why they are mostly on horizontal surfaces?
qmackie on 08 Feb 2010 at 6:44 pm #
Hi John,
The vertical ones I am thinking of tend to be boulders rather than bedrock. I can think of two or three obvious ones on the slopes above False Narrows in the “Legends at Spirit Rock” area. But yes, vertical bedrock cliffs very sledom have petroglyphs on them.
I have never read of anything comparable to the lying down idea but then very little is known. Another idea which I just though of and should probable patent or something is that petroglyphs may hold their greatest power at dawn and dusk – the researcher Amanda Adams was asked by the Suneymuxw elders to not do any recording or be on site except during the fat part of the day. When incident light angle is low, then the petroglyphs on horizontal surfaces would also be especially obvious, their grooves picked out by shadows. The same might be true of vertical ones depending on their solar orientation.
(Incidentally, I have seen some petroglyphs elsewhere at night by light of a coleman lantern, and they just come to life, with shadows in the eyes rolling around crazily as the light moves).
John Hudson on 08 Feb 2010 at 6:50 pm #
Thanks. I can well imagine how lively these images would look in the flickering light of an oolichan oil flame.