Ancient rock paintings in the Rocky Mountain region have been getting a new look over the past year-and-a-half as part of a project designed to discover more about the enigmatic rock art.
Parks Canada archaeologist Brad Himour said recently at the Whyte Museum during his presentation, Forgotten Dreams: A New Look at Ancient Rock Art, the Parks Canada Pictograph Project is also helping Parks understand how to best preserve, protect and share pictographs found in the mountain national parks and beyond.
As part of this project, Parks archaeologists have been working with elders from the Ktunaxa (Kootenay), Piikani (Peigan), Stoney Nakoda and Kinbasket First Nations – all of which have a long connection to the Rocky Mountains – to learn more about the sites and the pictographs painted on cliff walls in red and yellow ochre mixed with grease.
“Our job with Parks Canada is to preserve and protect these types of cultural sites, so working with the elders we are able to get their recommendations about how they would like to see the sites treated and how the pictographs should be preserved into the future,” Himour said during his presentation, May 12, as part of the Parks Canada Research Updates Speakers Series.
As the Parks researchers set out on the project, they were quickly faced with two challenges, one being that many of the pictograph sites are in remote areas that are often difficult to access and two, that many of the pictographs are so faded that they are practically invisible.
However, a modern form of visual communication helped them overcome these challenges, allowing them to bring the sites to the elders and enhance the ochre rock art.
Using two different techniques, the first being cross-polarization photography and the second, a computer program known as DStretch that is used by NASA to enhance the space agency’s aerial photographs, researchers were able to bring out surprising clarity and detail in images of the pictographs.
DStretch uses a technique known as decorrelation stretch that gives researchers a tool to digitally enhance the differences in the hue of the colours, allowing the red and yellow ochre to ‘pop’ on the screen.
A second technique, cross-polarization photography, which provided a relatively similar effect as the DStretch program, proved to be more cumbersome as the photographs had to be taken at night with two flashes, mounted on either side of the camera body. As well, polarizing filters were attached to the flashes and the lens to reduce the bright highlights that reflect from the rock face and dull the pictograph colours.
Using both techniques, Himour said they have created a digital database of 2,500 photographs and 1,000 enhanced DStretch images from 25 pictograph sites that include Grotto Canyon, Cochrane Ranch, Washout Creek near Kootenay Lake, Sinclair Canyon in Kootenay National Park, the Okotoks Erratic and the Canal Flats region.
All told, the 25 sites are a small sampling of the sites located throughout the Rockies, the foothills and the plains.
With the enhanced photographs loaded onto a laptop, Himour was able to make it far easier for elders to identify the pictographs and interpret their meaning.
When Himour showed two Piikani elders enhanced images of faded pictographs found on the Okotoks Erratic – a massive boulder left behind by the melting glaciers near the town of Okotoks – the elders were immediately able to identify the meaning behind a series of pictographs that included humanoid figures and 17 circles.
“As soon as I brought up the enhanced image, they both leaned forward in their chairs and at the same time said it was a journey,” Himour said.
The elders determined that the pictograph artists, in a style known as the Plains Tradition, had recorded a 17-month long northward-bound journey as the circles, now bright and crisp, represented moons.
However, the symbols and meaning behind why these people embarked on this journey are not being shared, as Himour said the information is proprietary to the Piikani as a protected part of their culture.
As part of the Plains Tradition, Himour said pictographs were often used to record major events such as journeys, battles and the signing of treaties.
Moving west, the Plains Tradition rock art style gives way to the Foothills Abstract Tradition, and then once into the mountains that gives way to what is known as the Columbia Plateau Tradition.
This pictograph style and tradition is centered in the Okanagan area along the Fraser River to the west of Kootenay National Park, but both the Shushwap and Ktunaxa have long histories throughout the valleys and passes of the Rockies, including the Bow Valley.
Unlike the Plains Tradition, which used the pictographs to record events, the Columbia Plateau Tradition rock art sites tend to be linked to vision quests, where Himour said “individuals intertwined with the spirit world.”
This intertwining of the physical and spirit world often led these individuals to leave a record of their experience on the rock faces, painting, for example, wavy lines attached to otherworldly figures that indicate a supernatural experience.
Within that tradition, Himour said it is common to find pictographs of human figures with an arc that represents the sun and with drums.
Other relatively common pictographs found throughout the different traditions includes human-shape figures which appear to have two protrusions extending from the head that often represented a shaman wearing a two-horned headdress.
“It was very common in aboriginal cultures to have a two-horn society and the horns connotes intellectual or spiritual societies,” he said, adding the two-horned pictographs represent “a spiritual component or shaman activity that denotes intellectual and spiritual confidence and power”.
As a result, only a few individuals would have had the right or privilege to create a pictograph.
According to Piikani elders, Himour said, only members of specific societies within aboriginal culture, such as medicine or two-horn societies, could carry the ochre, produce the paint, mixing it with grease, and use it to paint an image.
“It is one of the reasons we don’t see rock art splashed all over rock faces. It is actually something that was quite highly regarded and it had specific purposes,” he said.
Even though pictographs are grouped into traditions – such as the Columbia Plateau or Foothills Abstract – saying the rock art belongs to only one specific culture is difficult as influences from other regions and traditions can often be seen at the pictograph sites.
“(The pictographs) do vary from culture to culture. It is hard to say that this particular symbol means this for all time. It was something that was traded and exchanged and influenced by other people and regions. It did stay dynamic,” said Himour.
That exchange in imagery and style comes from the fact that aboriginal people moved easily through the mountains, which were no barrier at all to the different groups.
“First Nations aboriginal cultures used this landscape fluidly. There wasn’t a set territory where only one group could use it,” he said. “We wanted to show they used the landscape for thousands of years. That is reflected in the rock art.”
One of the goals now is to find ways to share the rock art with the public to help foster cultural respect and understanding. The challenge, though, is that much of the interpretation belongs to the individual First Nations involved with the project, which is being provided to Parks to help it manage the sites, rather than to share as an interpretive material.
However, some First Nations are interested in working cooperatively with Parks to share some of these images and the knowledge behind them at national park or First Nations interpretive centres.
“One of the key elements of this program was we were able to let the elders speak for themselves and so one of the very important contributions elders made is they are giving us suggestions of how they would like to see the pictographs preserved and shared in a national park setting,” Himour said.
And overall, photography was seen as the best way to preserve the pictographs, rather than going to extraordinary lengths to keep the rock art from fading further by applying an acrylic sealant to preserve them, for example.
“They strongly feel these sites should be allowed to fade over time,” Himour said.
