Rock Art, Historical Memory, and Ethnic Boundaries

Abstract

As a specific and widespread form of cultural production, rock art has been studied from a variety of perspectives including evolutionary (Biesele 1983;Kirkland and Newcomb 1967), functional-adaptive (Ellis 1975;Heizer and Baumhoff 1959;Olson 1977;Thomas 1976), formal art historical (Castleton and Madsen 1981;Grant 1967), and semiotic (Berenguer and Martinez 1989;Lewis-Williams 1980,1982, 1983, 1995;Llamazares 1989). In this chapter, I adopt the latter framework to examine the performative and connotative aspects of a set of late prehistoric period petroglyphs from the Pimampiro district of northern highland Ecuador. Given the importance of context to the interpretation of meaning, I first situate these petroglyphs within a specific cultural, geographic, and historical framework. I then analyze the imagery found on the stones with respect to literal content, internal coherence, external linkages, and symbolic associations. Relying on ethnohistoric and archaeological data as well as local myth to establish a referential context of social action (after Hodder 1982), I suggest that these petroglyphs articulate aspects of territoriality, boundary maintenance, and ethnic identity in this region of the northern Andes.