All-American Man, Salt Creek, Canyonlands, UT.
Photograph: 1983, Don I. Campbell.
One fascinating class of imagery in rock art is the
well-known shield figures of the American West. Although seen in a number of
variations the shield figure is basically a shield (usually the larger sized
shield carried by a pedestrian warrior) with portions of the anatomy of the
figure carrying it seen protruding from the edges of the shield; legs at the
bottom, head at the top, and with weapons or ceremonial items often portrayed
as well. Shield figures have always fascinated me because they very often
portray the sorts of details of adornment, decoration, or accessories that
allow us to assume that the representation is of a specific shield that would
be the property of a specific, and recognizable, person – in other words a
portrait.
All-American Man, Salt Creek, Canyonlands, UT.
Photograph: 1983, Don I. Campbell.
One of the most famous shield bearing figures is found in
Utah, in Canyonlands National Park. The “All-American Man” figure is rounded
and bears a brightly decorated shield. He is seen in front view with straight
legs and feet angled down slightly to his left. His face and head are seen
straight on and we can discern facial features as well as some form of neck
band as well as two antenna-like projections from his head, perhaps feathers in
a headdress. His name refers to his decoration in red, white, and a bluish
paint and references indicate that he has a radiocarbon date of A.D. 1295.
Close-up of shield figures, Werstwater canyon, UT.
Photograph: Oct. 8, 2001, Peter Faris.
With
his rounded contours All-American Man resembles the shield bearing warriors
from Westwater Creek, Utah, much more than the shield bearing warriors from
McConkey Ranch, near Vernal, Utah.
Dr. Lawrence Loendorf has written some insightful comments
about shield figures: “The oldest shields
or shield warriors found in the Montana and Wyoming region are in the Castle Garden
Shield Style. - - Castle Garden Shield Style figures are made in a unique way.
Before making these pictographs, the artist prepared the rock surface by
abrading it to remove undulations or protuberances and produce a flat, smooth
palette. This surface preparation removed the less-consolidated outer layer of
surface sandstone to reveal a harder, inner layer for painting."
Shields, Castle Gardens, Fremont County, WY.
Photograph: Peter Faris, Sept. 1992.
"Once smoothed, the artist incised a
pattern of the shield or shield warrior on the rock palette. - - Paint colors
include two shades of red (one more purple than the other), two shades of
orange (one more yellow than the other), black, white, and green. Polychrome
paintings are rare in Wyoming and Montana and this is one of the criteria by
which the Castle Garden Style shields and shield warriors can be identified.
Use of green paint is also an important criterion because it is rare in the
region.
In an excavation in the Valley of
the Shields, I recovered two sandstone-abrading tools used to smooth the
surface in preparation for the paintings (Loendorf 1990). One of these had
paint adhering to it as though the artist picked it up to do some additional
smoothing while in the process of applying paint. The tools were found in
direct association with the remains of a hearth, and it was possible to obtain
standard radiocarbon dates on the charcoal. Two dates with overlapping sigma
were obtained using the correction tables it is clear the Castle Garden Shield
Style pictographs were made at the Valley of the Shields ca. A.D. 1100.”
(Loendorf 1990:49) Great information Larry, as always.
Shields and shield figures are so fascinating to me because
they offer entry points into a whole range of questions in rock art:
portraiture, the pedestrian-to-equestrian warrior transition (and thus the
societal changes cause by the adoption of the horse), heraldry, and even inter-
and intra-tribal interaction and communication.
Loendorf, Lawrence
2004 Shields and Shield Warrior Pictographs and
Petroglyphs in the Intermountain West, pages 103-117, in New Dimensions in Rock Art Studies, edited by Ray T. Matheny, Museum
of Peoples and Cultures Occasional Papers No. 9, Brigham Young University,
Provo.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment