A few nice euro pacific images I found:
Grassi Lakes Petroglyphs
Image by ocean.flynn
According to (Keyser 1992)the Grassi Rock Art seen here is anthropomorphic and more naturalistic than abstract. I believe Keyser dates this petroglyph c. 1000 AD. He claimed also that this rock art was characteristic of finger-painted pictographs because of the "finger-width lines" of the circular hoop or drum and the "blockbody human figure."
" Northwestern Plains pictographs are most often red, but yellow, orange, blue-green, black, and white pictographs are also known. [...] Pictograph pigments were made from various minerals. Iron oxides (hematite and limonite), often found in clay deposits, yielded reds ranging from bright vermilion to dull reddish brown, and also yellow. Often called red and yellow ochre, these minerals were sometimes baked to intensify their color. [...] To make a pigment suitable for painting, the crushed mineral was mixed with water or an organic binding agent to form a paste or liquid. Ethnographic descriptions and archaeological work from other areas of North America document such binding agents as blood, eggs, animal fat, plant juice, or urine. As yet, little analysis of Northwestern Plains pigments has been undertaken to identify possible binding agents. Most pigments were applied to the rock surface using fingers and brushes. Northwestern Plains pictographs are most often finger painted, as indicated by finger-width lines on many figures. [T]he Foothills Abstract tradition was created in order to incorporate both Central Montana Abstract style sites (Keyser 1979a) and many newly documented sites with similar rock art in Alberta and north central Montana. We have attempted to use the best known and least ambiguous names when two or more occur for the same tradition. [. . .W] e can construct a general framework to help determine when, why, how, and sometimes even by whom the art was made.
For example, we can distinguish between the red painted pictographs of the Columbia Plateau and Foothills Abstract traditions. These traditions contain some of the same designs, including stick-figure and block-body humans and simple animals and geometric figures, but each tradition uses them in significantly different numbers and arranges them in different structured relationships. Furthermore, in each tradition these shared designs are associated with characteristic motifs (tally marks in Columbia Plateau art; handprints and mazelike figures in Foothills
Abstract art) that are rare or entirely absent in the other tradition. The traditions also show differences in site setting. Columbia Plateau art is typically painted in isolated locations, difficult of access and with commanding views of the surrounding terrain. These locations suggest that the rock art was an individual effort. In contrast, Foothills Abstract sites, though isolated, are usually easy to reach, and many appear to have served some sort of public function. [...] For thousands of years, Northwestern Plains Indians carved and painted images on cliffs, rock outcrops, and boulders throughout the region—images with which Native people recorded their visions and chronicled their history. Often found in the spectacular settings of these peoples’ most sacred places, rock carvings and paintings represent the intimate connection between Native people and their spirit world. These images are a remarkable artistic accomplishment and a lasting cultural legacy of the Plains Indians. More than 1200 rock art sites have been recorded across the plains of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas (Map 1.1), and the images at these sites span the last 5000 years, with some possibly dating to the end of the Ice Age (ca. 10,000 b.c.). An expression of the spiritual and social lives of these ancient artists, rock art offers a fascinating glimpse into Native culture and history from the earliest occupation of the New World to the early 1900s. Northwestern Plains rock art has captured the interest of Euro-Americans from the time of the earliest explorers in the region, which attests to both its abundance and its artistic beauty. Lewis and Clark provided the first written record of this art, but many other explorers, soldiers, traders, artists, and missionaries sketched rock art sites and collected examples of robe and ledger drawings. Early anthropologists also recorded sites and obtained information about the more recent designs from knowledgeable tribal elders (Wissler 1912, 1913; Mallery 1893). These early studies have proved invaluable for studying several rock art traditions, but most sites predate the occupation of this region by historically known groups; thus, much of the rock art is known only from its archaeological context. The numerous articles and scientific monographs about Plains sites and styles, most written since the 1960s, form the most diverse body of rock art literature for any region of North America. Some works are broadly based syntheses of known data (Renaud 1936; Conner and Conner 1971; Wellmann 1979a; Keyser 1990), but even the most recent of these studies omits the four least-known rock art traditions and relies on incomplete data for three others. In the 1990s alone, hundreds of new sites have been described and interpreted in dozens of new publications. While researching this book, we consulted more than 200 written sources ranging from Ph.D. dissertations to single-site summaries written by local amateur researchers; we incorporated additional information from almost 100 other sites that have yet to be described in the literature (Map 1.2). Despite this richly documented record, the public remains relatively unaware of and uninformed about much Northwestern Plains rock art. A few famous sites are visited by thousands of tourists each year, but information at these sites can vary greatly in quality and accuracy; sometimes it even suggests that rock art is a complete mystery. All too often the public receives the impression that this art’s origin and meaning are lost, and any interpretation of these images is therefore purely speculative. Inaccurate statements by professional researchers concerning its chronology (cf. Grant 1983:49) also lead to false impressions of the antiquity and significance of these images. Some sites have even been subjected to absurd “interpretation”: the work of Pre-Columbian Chinese cartographers, Celtic scribes, or Spanish bankers recording their transactions. Rock art sites in fact chronicle the long histories, the hunting ceremonies, and the religions of the region’s diverse Native peoples. They reveal their relationships with the spirit world and record their interactions with traditional enemies and the earliest Europeans, Americans, and Canadians who explored and later colonized the area. Although some rock art conveys only enigmatic messages from an unknown past, many sites can be dated or attributed to a specific group or culture (Keyser 1992."
"The Columbia Plateau is the largest lava plateau in the world. It has striking glacial land formations, including dry steep-walled canyons known as coulees, and patches of hard lava rock called scablands. The surrounding valleys and slopes are extremely fertile, with rich alluvial soils."
"The Plateau culture area in western North America is an upland region that encompasses the Columbia Plateau and the basins of the great Fraser and Columbia rivers. The Columbia Plateau is flanked by the Cascade Mountains to the west, the Rocky Mountains to the east, the desert country of the Great Basin to the south, and the forest and hill country of the upper Fraser River to the north. The mountains bordering the Columbia Plateau catch large amounts of rain and snowfall. This precipitation drains into a great number of rivers and streams, many of which feed the Columbia River that flows to the Pacific Ocean. [. . .] Archaeologists have found ancient traces of human settlement in the Plateau region dated at more than 10,700 years old. Columbia Plains Indians [. . .] More than two dozen distinct tribal groups inhabited the Columbia Plateau at the time of European contact. Collective ancestors of peoples speaking languages of the Penutian stock probably settled the area before 8,000 years ago. Another group, ancestors of people of the Salishan language family, may have arrived in the region about 3,500 years ago. Other groups entered the region in later years. Chinookians probably migrated from the west, Athapaskans from the north, and Algonquian-speaking peoples from the east. Indigenous peoples who settled on the Plateau used the many rivers as avenues of trade, and contacts among different tribes were frequent. [. . .] ((NANA)"
Rock Art
Grassi Lakes
Canmore
Finger painting
Webliography and Bibliography
Keyser, James D. 1992. "Introduction to Rock Art." Indian Rock Art of the Columbian Plateau. University of Washington Press.
Keyser, James D.; Klassen, Michael. 2001. Plains Indian Rock Art. UBC Press, 2001
Bryan, Liz. 2005. Stone by Stone: Exploring Ancient Sites on the Canadian Plains Heritage House.
Native Americans of North America NANA