Shield petroglyphs at Alcatraz Rock

Abstract

Three petroglyph shields incised on Alcatraz Rock in southeastern Montana show the same heraldic design. Ethnohistoric information about the general site area, coupled with ethnographic knowledge concerning the acquisition of heraldic shield designs suggests that a supplicant originally obtained the first shield in a vision at this place and later made additional copies of the shield, commemorating them with additional petroglyphs. The shield heraldry appears to illustrate paired Great Blue herons in a fighting pose.

KEYWORDS:

• rock art
• petroglyph
• shield heraldry

Acknowledgments

I thank Stu Conner for sharing his original site photograph and notes. Mike Taylor accompanied me to the site and took the photographs used in this report. Sara Scott, archaeologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks provided reports and other research materials concerning the petroglyphs of Medicine Rocks State Park. Comments from Linea Sundstrom helped clarify the Lakota name for the Medicine Rocks area. Travel to the site was partially funded by an Oregon Archaeological Society Loring grant.

Notes on contributors

James D. Keyser is a Montana native who earned his PhD in anthropology from the University of Oregon in 1977. Keyser has conducted rock art research across western North America from Alaska to New Mexico and in the Valcamonica in Italy. He has more than 150 rock art publications and is the author of seven books on the subject including Indian Rock Art of the Columbia Plateau (1992), Plains Indian Rock Art (2001), The Five Crows Ledger: Warrior Art of the Flathead Indians (2000), and Art of the Warriors: Rock Art of the American Plains (2004). He was an Assistant Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo and the University of Tulsa before he retired from the US Forest Service.