“Your Guess is as Good as Any”: Indeterminacy, Dialogue, and Dissemination in Interpretations of Native American Rock Art

Abstract

This essay examines the theme of the unknown meanings of Native American rock art in interpretive materials at rock art sites in order to explore the rhetorical constitution of indeterminacy in neocolonial contexts. The implications of indeterminacy are explored through Peters's (1999) discussion of dissemination and dialogue as normative models of communication. This analysis demonstrates that indeterminacy is used to license appropriations and polysemic interpretations of the traces of indigenous cultures, thereby enabling the projection of Western cultural imaginings onto the rock art and discouraging engagement with the interiority of indigenous others.

Keywords:

• Dissemination
• Indeterminacy
• Interiority
• Neocolonialism
• Primitivism

Notes

1. The rock art literature distinguishes between prehistoric and historic periods in indigenous North American cultures. I conflate these periods into (pre)historic when possible insofar as the distinction is ethnocentric, graphocentric, and complicit in both (neo)colonialism and primitivism.

2. The 11 sites are Puerco Pueblo, Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona; V-Bar-V Ranch, Coconino National Forest, Arizona; Klare Spring, Death Valley National Park, California; Atlatl Rock, Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada; Grimes Point Archaeological Area, Bureau of Land Management, Nevada; Mount Irish Archaeological District, Bureau of Land Management, Nevada; Toquima Cave, Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, Nevada; Buckhorn Wash, Bureau of Land Management, Utah; Newspaper Rock, Bureau of Land Management, Utah; Parowan Gap, Bureau of Land Management, Utah; Grand Gulch Primitive Area, Bureau of Land Management, Utah. A site with contrary interpretive materials to be analyzed later in the essay is Boca Negra Canyon, Petroglyph National Monument, New Mexico.

3. I do not assume that the statements in these interpretive materials are “true.” Although many claims in these interpretive materials could be challenged using findings in the rock art literature, that is not my purpose. Since these interpretive materials were produced and placed over several decades by a variety of institutions, I am not analyzing them as a coherent expression of archaeological theory and practice or of the institutional processes of cultural resource management.

4. For critical analyses focused on specific interpretations of rock art, see Rogers (2007a,b) and Schaafsma (1997).

5. Important to note is that Peters's (1999) discussion and re-evaluation of dialogue as a model for understanding communication does not necessarily apply to all dialogic perspectives and theories, such as those provided by and derived from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin.

6. “Rock art” is not used at Petroglyph National Monument, reflecting Pueblo cultures’ (and some researchers’) dis-ease with that term, due in part to the narrow Western conception of “art.” A sign at the monument states, “petroglyphs are more than just ‘rock art,’ picture writing, or an imitation of the natural world. … Petroglyphs are powerful cultural symbols that reflect the complex societies and religions of the surrounding tribes.”

7. The specific projections onto indigenous others by means of rock art interpretation are numerous but cataloging them is beyond the scope of this essay. For relevant discussions and examples, see Bury (1999), Hays-Gilpin (2004), Rogers (2007a,b), Schaafsma (1997), and Whitley (2001).

8. Although all of the interpretive materials analyzed here, including those at Petroglyph National Monument, were produced by or in cooperation with agencies of the federal, state or local governments, exploration of interpretive materials produced by (not merely in consultation with) indigenous communities would be an important extension of the current study. In addition, consultation with Native communities is increasingly common (and often required) in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and cultural resource management, and will presumably begin to affect (as it did at Petroglyph National Monument) the rhetoric of interpretive materials at rock art and other indigenous sites. Nevertheless, older interpretive materials will likely remain at sites such as Klare Spring and Parowan Gap for years or even decades to come.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard A. Rogers

Richard A. Rogers (Ph.D., University of Utah, 1994) is a Professor of Speech Communication at Northern Arizona University. He would like to thank Joseph Wilhelm for providing a photograph of the Klare Spring interpretive sign that was necessary for an accurate transcription of the sign's text and for years of dialogue about rock art. An earlier version of this essay was presented to the Intercultural Communication Division of the Western States Communication Association, Seattle, WA, February 2007