Conversations with the Ancestors
Pursuing an Understanding of Klamath Basin Rock Art Through the Use of Myth, the Ethnographic Record, and Local Artistic Conventions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21974225 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert J David (0000-0002-8335-794X, Portland State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 78 |
| Publication date | 2025-07-17 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Arts (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2076-0752 • E-ISSN: 2076-0752 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/arts14040078 |
| OpenAlex | W4413081569 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
Past archaeological practices have resulted in a distorted history of Native American cultures based upon western-biased research. This has been especially apparent in the rock art of the Klamath Basin in southern Oregon and northern California. In response to this, Native and non-Native scholars are striving to develop a counter-discourse that both challenges and replaces western constructs in research on Native American communities. The result of this approach is a growing trend within the discipline that has come to be called “Indigenous Archaeology.” Critical to this approach is that Native voices are transported from the margins of the research to its center, where they are intended to replace the Western colonialist narrative. Unfortunately, Native American tribal communities have been the targets of federal assimilation policies for the past few centuries, and as a result, much of their cultural knowledge unwittingly carries forward this distorted past. In this paper I explore a framework built upon ethnographic accounts of shamanism and rock art, along with a robust familiarity with local myth, and how this provides a foundation of traditional cultural knowledge against which to compare and evaluate the interpretive statements made in contemporary tribal members about rock art and other sacred material culture
Archaeology · Art · Cultural assimilation · Ethnography · Ethnohistory · Ethnology · Indigenous · Literature · Mythology · Narrative · Native american · Rock art · Shamanism · Sociology · Traditional knowledge · Anthropology · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · Classics · History · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology · Ecology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |