15 - Interpretando cenas de Arte Rupestre

Interpreting Rock Art Scenes
L’interprétation des scènes de l’art rupestre
Interpretando escenas del Arte Rupestre

Coordenado por/Co-ordinator: Mavis Greer & John Greer

PAPERS

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Hunting Scenes Painted in Miniature, Guadalupe Mountains, New Mexico and Lower Pecos River Region, Texas, USA
Evelyn Billo and Robert Mark,  Estados Unidos da América.

Finely executed details of nets, weapons, hunters with dogs, and their prey of rabbits and cervids, led us to interpret two paintings as rabbit hunting scenes. These sites include other tiny figures depicting successful hunters butchering cervids. Individual element sizes range from 1cm to no greater than 15 cm. Comparison of details of pictographs from regions separated by 400 km, indicate the possibility of a travel corridor for people and ideas along the Pecos River.

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Problems About Creating “Scenes"
Mario Consens, Uruguai

Graphics scenes depend on perception (which is culturally limited), on vision [sight] (biologically limited), on meteoric degradation (limited by paleo environment), on interpretation (limited by cognition), on definitions (limited by culture), on ideology, academic firewalls, etc. We would be able to suggest an archaic scene only if those parameters are carefully analyzed and corrected. From such precautions we would be able to ask if isolated scenes rebuilt in laboratory are capable of representing prehistoric cultures. Some examples from Piaui will be used to expose these problems.

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What Rock Art Scenes Can Tell Us, Examples from the USA Northern Plains
Mavis Greer & John Greer, Estados Unidos.

The scene is a basic unit of rock art classification, description, and recording. Most rock art reports focus on scenes, and many historic era sites are understood mainly because of interactive figures within a scene. The importance of the scene is accepted as obvious, but how to utilize it best in prehistoric analysis is not always easily seen by the researcher. Scenes of various ages at pictograph sites in the northern USA states of Montana and Wyoming are considered with a particular interest in what defines a scene and how interacting figures can help explain function of the rock art.

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Depiction of an Ancient Ritual in the Southwest?
Peggy Whitehead, Estados Unidos

In the Southwest area of the United States is a wealth of pre historic rock Art. The marginal subsistence of the arid land has forced cultural groups to migrate into and out of the area.  Traces of these people and their ceremonies are hinted at in the panels etched and painted onto the high cliffs. One such painted panel outside of Moab, Utah depicts such a ceremony.  The elaborate clothing on the central figure hints of importance, while the flanking figures are clothed in regalia and the group to the side are merely shadows. The clothing as well as the juxtapositioning of the figures will be examined.

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Mastodons, Masks and Misunderstandings
Reinaldo Morales Jr., Estados Unidos da América

This paper will address the interpretation of several examples of Brazilian rock art. In the last few decades of rock art research in Brazil we have seen a variety of interpretive stances, from pragmatically conservative to highly imaginative. The differences seem to arise from methodologies that variously privilege form, iconography or a presumed iconology in their efforts to interpret the imagery. This paper will address three areas of interpretation: zoomorphic imagery (megafauna or not?), anthropomorphic imagery (people or personages?), and hunting/warfare imagery (documentary or display?).

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Wild Goat (Ibex), Hunting and Rock Art Interpretation in Iran
Sirvan Mohammadi, Irã

Like other countries, interpretation is also one of the main methodological limitations of rock art studies in Iran. The depiction of wild goat (ibex) is one of the most common icons which can be seen in nearly all rock art sites in Iran. Such pictures usually have been shown in a hunting scene and there is not a clear interpretation until now about them. Sometimes it has been proposed that large number of known rock art sites in Iran have been created by hunter groups without any clear means and was created just for amusement and pleasure. But, as discussed this conclusion cannot be true for all of Iranian rock art and strong associations between environments in which rock art sites are occurring and natural habitat of this animal (wild goat or ibex) can play a key role in understanding the meaning of Iranian rock art.