The pipette, the tiered cosmos, and the materialization of transcendence in the rock art of the North American Southwest

Abstract

The pipette is a rare rock art motif found across the North American Southwest but seldom depicted in other media. We address landscape and archaeological contexts, associated imagery, material correlates, and ethnography to provide an interpretative hypothesis that accounts for the motif’s widespread, cross-cultural use. We argue that pipettes represent a tiered cosmos and axis mundi, at times with portrayals of emergence and transcendence. The pipette’s compartmentalization signifies the conceptual metaphor ‘the cosmos is comprised of containers’, a concept embedded in Uto-Aztecan languages with Mesoamerican antecedents. The motif’s distribution across the North American Southwest demonstrates that it was a key religious symbol that accompanied the adoption of Mesoamerican-like religious beliefs and practices beginning in the eighth century or before. Prehistoric iconography – whether we understand it or not – references thought and ideas that were important enough to memorialize. Despite difficulties inherent to interpretation, archaeology would be remiss not to take advantage of the enduring iconological record. We demonstrate that careful, concentrated, and multidimensional approaches to understanding prehistoric symbolism can provide valuable and credible insight into cultures that otherwise could not speak for themselves.