Rock art of the Chumash people
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Chumash Rock Art is a type of artwork created by the Chumash people, mainly in caves or on cliffs in the mountains in areas of southern California.
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[edit] Chumash people
The Chumash lived in the present-day counties of Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis in southern California during the late period of history (c. AD 1300 to 1804). They were a Hokan-speaking, maritime, hunter-gatherer society whose livelihood was based on the sea. They developed excellent skills for catching fish, shellfish, and other marine mammals. Beyond fishing, however, they were also skilled in creating rock art. Hudson and Blackburn define rock art as "an aesthetic, symbolic representation of significant concepts and entities that is painted on or carved into a rock surface." Rock art may have been created by shamans during vision quests, most commonly in the form of pictographs (paintings on rock), but sometimes petroglyphs (engravings on rock) as well. No one is absolutely certain about the meaning of the Chumash Rock art, but scholars generally agree that it is connected with religion and astronomy.
[edit] Rock Art Locations
Chumash Rock Art is almost invariably found in caves or on cliffs in the mountains, although some small, portable painted rocks have been discovered by Campbell Grant. The rock art sites are always found near streams, springs, or some other source of permanent water. In his research of southern California rock art, Grant recorded numerous sites from different areas that were all close to a water source. He found twelve painted sites in the highest parts of the mountainous Chumash territory, the Ventureno area. The Ventura and Santa Clara rivers and several coastal streams flow through this area. He also recorded forty-one painted rock art sites in the Cuyama region (north of the Ventureno area), where the Sisquoc River flows between the San Rafael Mountains and the Sierra Madre Mountains.
[edit] Shamans and Visions
According to David Whitley, shamanism was the "cornerstone of religious beliefs in the Far West." He defines shamanism as "a form of worship based on direct, personal interaction between a shaman (or medicine man) and the supernatural (or sacred realm and its spirits)." In Chumash territory, the sites for the vision quests were usually located near the shaman's village. The Chumash considered caves, rocks, and water sources quite powerful, and the shamans saw them as a "portal to the sacred realm...where they could enter the supernatural." The way a shaman interacted with the supernatural was by entering a hallucinogenic trance, or altered state of consciousness. In this altered state, brought on either by surprisingly potent native tobacco or jimsonweed, shamans received visions and supernatural power from spirit helpers often in the forms of dangerous and powerful animals like rattlesnakes and grizzly bears. Spirit helpers almost never took the form of an animal that was an important source of food, because it was 'taboo for a shaman to eat meat from the species of his helper.'
[edit] Shamans and Rock Art
Directly after the vision quest ended (usually after two or more nights), a shaman pondered and meditated on the visions he/she had been given by his spirit helpers. Then while still on the site of his/her vision quest he/she painted or engraved images onto rock surfaces (usually sandstone), depicting the spirits he/she saw and supernatural events he/she had been a part of in his/her vision, such as curing illness or making rain. The shaman spent so much energy remembering and concentrating on his/her visions because he believed that if any visions were forgotten, he/she would become ill and/or die. Whitley notes that the shamans also recorded their visions on rocks to be observed by future generations of shamans. The other members of the shaman's village took extra care not to go near, or even look at, the location where a shaman had his/her vision quest.
[edit] Rock Art Characteristics
Chumash rock art depicts images like humans, animals, celestial bodies, and other (at times ambiguous) shapes and patterns. These depictions vary considerably and appear to be in no particular order or arrangement. The colors of the paintings vary as well, from red or black monochromes (different shades of a single color) to elaborate polychromes (many various colors). The Chumash made paint from a mixture of mineralized soil, stone mortar, and some kind of liquid binder like blood or oil from animals or mashed seeds. The addition of an oil binder helped to make the paint permanent and waterproof. Orange and red paint contained hematite or iron oxide, while yellow came from limonite, blue and green from copper or serpentine, white from kaolin clays or gypsum, and black from manganese or charcoal. Paint was applied with a person's finger or a brush. Grant organized the types of images depicted in the paintings into two categories: representational and abstract. Representational images include squares, circles and triangles, zigzags, crisscrosses, parallel lines, and pinwheels. Grant noted that in settled villages, abstract paintings were prominent, while the areas occupied by bands of hunting people reveal representational images.
[edit] Meanings of Rock Art
In the early 20th century very little was known about Chumash rock art (or the rock art of southern California in general). When the art began to be studied in detail, two main questions arose from scholars: (1), who created rock art? and (2), what does it mean? A number of archaeologists attempted to address these questions; Julian Steward and Alfred Kroeber were among them. Because of some commonly occurring symbols in paintings, it was believed that at least portions of the rock art depicted themes of fertility, water, and rain. However, the Native California Indians were very reluctant to talk to anyone about the rock art and some denied any knowledge of it altogether. The natives' hesitancy to discuss the art led archaeologists to believe that they had no idea of the origin of the pictographs. Kroeber recorded some of his thoughts on the origins of the rock art in 1925.: "The cave paintings of [Southern California]...represent a particular art, or local style or cult. This can be connected,in all probability, with the technological art of the Chumash. [An] association with...religion is also to be considered, although nothing positive is known in the matter. Many of the pictures may have been made by shamans; and it is quite possible that medicine men were not connected with the making of any" (Grant 80). Kroeber was unsure about what specific associations could be made between the paintings and the artists. Julian Steward researched California rock art as well, and in 1929 he deduced that the only way to understand the meanings of the petroglyphs and pictographs was to compare them with the art and symbolism of the idfferent Indian groups and their respective culture areas. In his book "Petroglyphs of California," Steward wrote: "It has frequently been stated that the petroglyphs and pictrographs are meaningless figures made in idle moments by some primitive artist. The facts of distribution, however, show that this cannot be true. Since design elements and style are grouped in limited areas, the primitive artist must have made the inscriptions with something in mind...He executed, not random drawings, but figures similar to those made in other parts of the same area" (91).
[edit] Conclusion
To this day, the exact meanings of Chumash rock art are largely unknown. It is generally believed that religion and astronomy play a role in the paintings, since the sun was an important part of their religion. The supernatural also played a role, through the vision quests of the shamans. Rock art was done as a representation of the interaction between the shaman and the sacred realm. Concerning the age of the paintings, Grant says "a radiocarbon test on pigment from a Santa Barbara area pictograph site showed that the sample was 'not over 2,000 years old'" (123). Whether monochromatic or polychromatic, the rock paintings demonstrate the artistic talent of the Chumash people.
[edit] References
- Fagan, Brian. "Ancient North America," 4th ed. London: Thames and Hudson, 2005.
- Grant, Campbell. "The Rock Paintings of the Chumash: A Study of the California Indian Culture." Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965.
- Hudson, Travis and Thomas C. Blackburn. "The Material Culture of the Chumash Interaction Sphere." 4th ed. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press, 1986.
- Whitley, David S. "A Guide to Rock Art Sites: Southern California and Southern Nevada." Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 1996.
- Whitley, David S. "The Art of the Shaman: Rock Art of California." Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000.
