Adams on Gabriola Petroglyphs
Those who love Gabriola petroglyphs had best head over to Northwest Coast Archaeology to read qmackie’s latest blog post: Adams on Gabriola Petroglyphs. It begins:
One recent M.A. thesis I was really looking forward to reading is by Amanda Adams entitled Visions cast on stone : a stylistic analysis of the petroglyphs of Gabriola Island, B.C., from UBC Anthropology 2003, and available for free download here.
I was particularly interested to read the instructions she received on proper deportment when visiting the rock art:
Sites were visited in a manner and with a personal code of conduct adhering to Snuneymuxw wishes. Petroglyph sites were not visited at either dawn or dusk. A respectful demeanor was expected as was an
open heart and mind(Bill Seward, Snuneymuxw elder, personal communication 2002). I was asked to give my full attention to the petroglyphs and their sacredness, not allowing daily distractions to interfere with my concentration on the ancient imagery. These expectations were met to the best of my ability. (18-19)While many archaeologists are under the impression that there is little to no ethnographic information about petroglyphs, I have long felt that more likely such knowledge is private or highly privileged and not readily shareable. In this self-serving sense, it was gratifying to see that Adams was able to record some such information: [continue]
Filed in First Nations,Gabriola Island 2 Comments so far
2 Responses to “Adams on Gabriola Petroglyphs”
Andrea on 05 Mar 2010 at 10:23 am #
The comment in the article about the use of the petroglyphs for spirit or vision quests reminds me of something else I read a few days ago. I was browsing at the library and came across a book about defining or finding your “authentic self”. I eventually figured out this was written by Dr. Phil. As I recall one thing he was discussing was the existence of (and need for) “defining moments” in one’s life. Where this connects to the use of the petroglyphs is a comment he made about how our modern culture doesn’t really create such defining moments, just lets them happen when they happen – whereas in older cultures they specifically set up experiences that would be defining – spending some period of time fasting or living on top of a mountain living off the land, going out alone to kill a tiger, or to find your adult name, or whatever – and I’m thinking this use of the petroglyphs to attain insight might be an experience in that genre.
qmackie on 05 Mar 2010 at 1:59 pm #
Thanks for the link, mysterious gabriolan
Andrea, you might be on to something … many cultures (and not just non-industrial ones) have “rites of passage” one function, anthropologically-speaking, is to directly and unambiguously transition people from the state of being a child to the state of being an adult. Lacking such unambiguous moments, we are left with delayed adolescences (30 year olds living with mom; university students who can’t accept responsibility for their own time management) on the one hand, and on the other, phenomena such as the inappropriate sexualization or sexual glamorization of children, which would be (literally) unthinkable in some cultural groups (not that sexual abuse, say, wouldn’t happen anyway, but the deportment of a child in an adult signifier such as lipstick or pierced ears would be impermissible until the child had passed through a specific, publicly acknowledged puberty ritual). Vision questing and similar rites would also act to manufacture unambiguous adults with an adult selfhood.
That’s a pretty broad brush but that’s the gist of how some anthropologists would think about this.