Rock art of the Chumash people
Encyclopedia
Chumash rock art is a genre of paintings on caves, mountains, cliffs, or other living rock surfaces, created by the Chumash people of southern California. Pictographs and petroglyph
Petroglyph
Petroglyphs are pictogram and logogram images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, and abrading. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images...

s are common through interior California, the rock painting tradition thrived until the 19th century. Chumash rock art is considered to be some of the most elaborate rock art tradition in the region.

Chumash people

The Chumash lived in the present-day counties of Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...

, Ventura
Ventura, California
Ventura is the county seat of Ventura County, California, United States, incorporated in 1866. The population was 106,433 at the 2010 census, up from 100,916 at the 2000 census. Ventura is accessible via U.S...

, and San Luis
San Luis Obispo, California
San Luis Obispo is a city in California, located roughly midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles on the Central Coast. Founded in 1772 by Spanish Fr. Junipero Serra, San Luis Obispo is one of California’s oldest communities...

 in southern California during the late period of history (ca. 1300 to 1804 CE). They were a Hokan-speaking, maritime, hunter-gatherer
Hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...

 society whose livelihood was based on the sea. They developed excellent skills for catching fish, shellfish, and other marine mammals. Beyond fishing, however, they were also skilled in creating rock art. Hudson and Blackburn define rock art as "an aesthetic, symbolic representation of significant concepts and entities that is painted on or carved into a rock surface." Rock art may have been created by shamans
Shamanism
Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world. To quote Eliade: "A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = technique of ecstasy." Shamanism encompasses the...

 during vision quest
Vision quest
A vision quest is a rite of passage in some Native American cultures.In many Native American groups, the vision quest is a turning point in life taken before puberty to find oneself and the intended spiritual and life direction. When an older child is ready, he or she will go on a personal,...

s, most commonly in the form of pictographs
Pictogram
A pictograph, also called pictogram or pictogramme is an ideogram that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and graphic systems in which the characters are to considerable extent pictorial in appearance.Pictography is a...

 (paintings on rock), but sometimes petroglyph
Petroglyph
Petroglyphs are pictogram and logogram images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, and abrading. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images...

s (engravings on rock) as well. No one is absolutely certain about the meaning of the Chumash Rock art, but scholars generally agree that it is connected with religion and astronomy.

Locations

Chumash rock art is almost invariably found in caves or on cliffs in the mountains, although some small, portable painted rocks have been recorded by Campbell Grant. The rock art sites are always found near streams, springs, or some other source of permanent water. In his research of southern California rock art, Grant recorded numerous sites from different areas that were all close to a water source. He found twelve painted sites in the highest parts of the mountainous Chumash territory, the Ventureño
Ventureño
Ventureño is a member of the extinct Chumashan languages, a group of Native American languages previously spoken by the Chumash people along the coastal areas of Southern California from as far north as San Luis Obispo to as far south as Malibu...

 area. The Ventura
Ventura River
The Ventura River is a river in Ventura County, California. The river forms at the confluence of Matilija Creek and North Fork Matilija Creek, upstream from the Pacific Ocean...

 and Santa Clara
Santa Clara River (California)
The Santa Clara River is approximately long, located in southern California in the United States. It drains an area of the coastal mountains north of Los Angeles. The Santa Clara is one of the largest river systems along the coast of Southern California and one of only a few remaining river...

 Rivers and several coastal streams flow through this area. He also recorded forty-one painted rock art sites in the Cuyama Valley
Cuyama Valley
The Cuyama Valley is a valley along the Cuyama River in central California, in northern Santa Barbara, southern San Luis Obispo, southwestern Kern, and northwestern Ventura counties. It is a sparsely inhabited area containing two significant towns – Cuyama and New Cuyama – and is largely used for...

 region (north of the Ventureño area), where the Sisquoc River
Sisquoc River
The Sisquoc River is a river in northeastern Santa Barbara County, California. It is a tributary of the Santa Maria River, which is formed when the Sisquoc River meets the Cuyama River. The river is long and originates on the north slopes of Big Pine Mountain, at approximately...

 flows between the San Rafael Mountains
San Rafael Mountains
The San Rafael Mountains are a mountain range in central Santa Barbara County, California, U.S.. They are part of the Transverse Ranges system of Southern California which in turn are part of the Pacific Coast Ranges system of western North America....

 and the Sierra Madre Mountains
Sierra Madre Mountains (California)
The Sierra Madre Mountains are a mountain range in northern Santa Barbara County, California, USA. They are a portion of the Inner South Coast Ranges, representing the southernmost part, which are themselves part of the Pacific Coast Ranges of western North America. The Sierra Madre Mountains...

. The most easily accessible example is at Painted Cave State Historic Park
Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park, California
Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park is a unit in the state park system of California, USA, preserving a small sandstone cave adorned with rock art attributed to the Chumash people. Adjoining the small community of Painted Cave, the site is located about north of California State Route 154...

, which is located in canyons above Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...

.

Painted Rock is a free-standing rock on the Carrizo Plain
Carrizo Plain
The Carrizo Plain is a large enclosed plain, approximately 50 miles long and up to 15 miles across, in southeastern San Luis Obispo County, California, about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles, California...

 near the Sierra Madre Mountains at the southern tip of the Great Central Valley. The interior alcove of the horseshoe-shaped rock features pictographs by Chumash, neighboring tribes, and non-Native Americans.

The Burro Flats Painted Cave
Burro Flats Painted Cave
Burro Flats Painted Cave is in the Burro Flats area of the Simi Hills, located between the Simi Valley, and West Hills and Bell Canyon, in Ventura County of Southern California, United States. It is a Cave containing Chumash Native American pictographs...

 petroglyphs are located in the Simi Hills
Simi Hills
The Simi Hills are a low rocky mountain range of the Transverse Ranges, located in eastern Ventura County and western Los Angeles County, of southern California, United States.-Geography:...

 in Ventura County. They are on the private land of Rocketdyne's
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is a United States company that designs and produces rocket engines that use liquid propellants. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, headquartered in Canoga Park, California, is a division of Pratt & Whitney, itself a wholly owned subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation...

 Santa Susana Field Laboratory
Santa Susana Field Laboratory
The Santa Susana Field Laboratory is a complex of industrial research and development facilities located on a 2,668 acre portion of the Southern California Simi Hills in Simi Valley, California, used mainly for the testing and development of Liquid-propellant rocket engines for the United States...

-SSFL, which has protected them from public harm since 1947. The SSFL is closed and in the initial stage of a significant toxins and radionuclides site investigation and cleanup. Boeing
Boeing
The Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...

, U.S. DOE, and NASA (current property owners and responsible parties) and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control
California Department of Toxic Substances Control
The California Department of Toxic Substances Control is an agency of the government of the state of California. The Mission of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control is to provide the highest level of safety, and to protect public health and the environment from toxic harm...

-DTSC are responsible to protect Chumash and other historical elements during the extensive SSFL work.

Religious aspects of art

Chumash traditional narratives
Chumash traditional narratives
Chumash traditional narratives include myths, legends, tales, and oral histories preserved by the Chumash people of southern California's Transverse Range, Santa Barbara-Ventura coast, and Channel Islands....

 in oral history says that religious specialists, known as alchuklash created the rock art. Non-Chumash people call these practitioners medicine men or shamans.
According to David Whitley, shamanism as "a form of worship based on direct, personal interaction between a shaman (or medicine man) and the supernatural (or sacred realm and its spirits)." In Chumash territory, the sites for the vision quests were usually located near the shaman's village. The Chumash considered caves, rocks, and water sources quite powerful, and the shamans saw them as a "portal to the sacred realm...where they could enter the supernatural." The way a shaman interacted with the supernatural was by entering a hallucinogenic trance, or altered state of consciousness
Altered state of consciousness
An altered state of consciousness , also named altered state of mind, is any condition which is significantly different from a normal waking beta wave state. The expression was used as early as 1966 by Arnold M. Ludwig and brought into common usage from 1969 by Charles Tart: it describes induced...

. In this altered state, brought on either by surprisingly potent native tobacco or jimsonweed, shamans received visions and supernatural power from spirit helpers often in the forms of dangerous and powerful animals like rattlesnakes and grizzly bears. Spirit helpers almost never took the form of an animal that was an important source of food, because it was 'taboo for a shaman to eat meat from the species of his helper.'

Subject matter and materials

Chumash rock art depicts images like humans, animals, celestial bodies, and other (at times ambiguous) shapes and patterns. These depictions vary considerably and appear to be in no particular order or arrangement. The colors of the paintings vary as well, from red or black monochromes (different shades of a single color) to elaborate polychromes (many various colors). The Chumash made paint from a mixture of mineralized soil, stone mortar, and some kind of liquid binder like blood or oil from animals or mashed seeds. The addition of an oil binder helped to make the paint permanent and waterproof. Orange and red paint contained hematite
Hematite
Hematite, also spelled as haematite, is the mineral form of iron oxide , one of several iron oxides. Hematite crystallizes in the rhombohedral system, and it has the same crystal structure as ilmenite and corundum...

 or iron oxide
Iron oxide
Iron oxides are chemical compounds composed of iron and oxygen. All together, there are sixteen known iron oxides and oxyhydroxides.Iron oxides and oxide-hydroxides are widespread in nature, play an important role in many geological and biological processes, and are widely utilized by humans, e.g.,...

, while yellow came from limonite
Limonite
Limonite is an ore consisting in a mixture of hydrated iron oxide-hydroxide of varying composition. The generic formula is frequently written as FeO·nH2O, although this is not entirely accurate as limonite often contains a varying amount of oxide compared to hydroxide.Together with hematite, it has...

, blue and green from copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...

 or serpentine, white from kaolin clays or gypsum
Gypsum
Gypsum is a very soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula CaSO4·2H2O. It is found in alabaster, a decorative stone used in Ancient Egypt. It is the second softest mineral on the Mohs Hardness Scale...

, and black from manganese
Manganese
Manganese is a chemical element, designated by the symbol Mn. It has the atomic number 25. It is found as a free element in nature , and in many minerals...

 or charcoal
Charcoal
Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen...

. Paint was applied with a person's finger or a brush. Grant organized the types of images depicted in the paintings into two categories: representational and abstract. Representational images include squares, circles and triangles, zigzags, crisscrosses, parallel lines, and pinwheels. Grant noted that in settled villages, abstract paintings were prominent, while the areas occupied by bands of hunting people reveal representational images.

Interpretations

In the early 20th century, non-Natives began studying California rock art, including a number of archaeologists, such as Julian Steward
Julian Steward
Julian Haynes Steward was an American anthropologist best known for his role in developing "the concept and method" of cultural ecology, as well as a scientific theory of culture change.-Early life and education:...

 and Alfred Kroeber. Because of some commonly occurring symbols in paintings, it was believed that at least portions of the rock art depicted themes of fertility, water, and rain; however, the Native California Indians are very reluctant to talk to anyone about the rock art and some deny any knowledge of it altogether. The natives' hesitancy to discuss the art led archaeologists to believe that they had no idea of the origin of the pictographs. Kroeber recorded some of his thoughts on the origins of the rock art in 1925.

"The cave paintings of [Southern California]...represent a particular art, or local style or cult. This can be connected,in all probability, with the technological art of the Chumash. [An] association with...religion is also to be considered, although nothing positive is known in the matter. Many of the pictures may have been made by shamans; and it is quite possible that medicine men were not connected with the making of any."

Kroeber was unsure about what specific associations could be made between the paintings and the artists. Julian Steward researched California rock art as well, and in 1929 he deduced that the only way to understand the meanings of the petroglyphs and pictographs was to compare them with the art and symbolism of the different Indian groups and their respective culture areas. In his book "Petroglyphs of California," Steward wrote:
"It has frequently been stated that the petroglyphs and pictrographs are meaningless figures made in idle moments by some primitive artist. The facts of distribution, however, show that this cannot be true. Since design elements and style are grouped in limited areas, the primitive artist must have made the inscriptions with something in mind...He executed, not random drawings, but figures similar to those made in other parts of the same area."

At Painted Cave, a circle enclosing five spokes surrounded by other circles–some spoked, some rayed–is thought to represent the solar eclipse
Solar eclipse
As seen from the Earth, a solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth, and the Moon fully or partially blocks the Sun as viewed from a location on Earth. This can happen only during a new moon, when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction as seen from Earth. At least...

 of November 24, 1677. Pinwheel shapes, dots, and concentric circles are believed to be celestial bodies. Figures combining human and animal features represent states of transformation the alchuklash experienced. Certain animals, such as rattlesnakes and frogs, are believed to represent spirit helpers.

Dating

Concerning the age of the paintings, Grant says "a radiocarbon test on pigment from a Santa Barbara area pictograph site showed that the sample was 'not over 2,000 years old.'"

See also

  • Painted Cave State Historic Park
    Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park, California
    Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park is a unit in the state park system of California, USA, preserving a small sandstone cave adorned with rock art attributed to the Chumash people. Adjoining the small community of Painted Cave, the site is located about north of California State Route 154...

  • Burro Flats Painted Cave
    Burro Flats Painted Cave
    Burro Flats Painted Cave is in the Burro Flats area of the Simi Hills, located between the Simi Valley, and West Hills and Bell Canyon, in Ventura County of Southern California, United States. It is a Cave containing Chumash Native American pictographs...

  • Painted Rock

Further reading

  • Fagan, Brian. "Ancient North America," 4th ed. London: Thames and Hudson, 2005.
  • Hudson, Travis and Thomas C. Blackburn. "The Material Culture of the Chumash Interaction Sphere." 4th ed. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press, 1986.
  • Whitley, David S. "A Guide to Rock Art Sites: Southern California and Southern Nevada." Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 1996.
  • Whitley, David S. "The Art of the Shaman: Rock Art of California." Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000.

External links

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