Overview

This absorbing volume examines the cultural role of rock art for the Apsáalooke, or Crow, people of the northern Great Plains. Their extensive rock art developed within the changing cultural life of the tribe. Individual knowledge and meaning of rock art panels, however, relies as much on collective concepts of landscape as it does on shared memories of historic Crow culture.

Focus and Content

Using this idea as a focus, this book:

• introduces Plains Indian rock art of the 19th century as we know about it from its own stylistic conventions, ethnographic data, and historical accounts;
• investigates the contemporary Crow discourse about rock art and its place within the cultural landscape and archaeological record;
• argues that cultural concepts of space and place are fundamental to the way rock art is discussed, experienced and interpreted.