Abstract

Until the 1990's only a few sites had been studied in the Quebec part of the Canadian Shield. This situation started to change when I set up a multi-disciplinary project named PETRARQ, which aimed at reassessing our methods for studying rock-art sites in the Province. Since then, new decorated panels have been identified within some already known sites, and the six new painted and three engraved sites have been discovered altogether in the boreal forest alone, north of the St. Lawrence Valley. These results suggest that rock-art is not a mere epiphenomenon in Quebec but is part of a larger cognitive and visual symbolic system proper to Algonquian groups who have been inhabiting the Canadian Shield for millennia. This paper intends to shed new lights on this old phenomenon in Quebec compared to the rest of the Shield.