Abstract

The physical location of the pictographs has fundamentally influenced both how pictograph sites are found and interpreted. Unfortunately, fieldwork methods and analytical techniques used by archaeologists to survey archaeological sites reinforce how pictograph sites are considered. Archaeologists have developed a range of techniques to record these images, including tracing these images in red paint on wet rice paper and dot-for-dot reproduction of each image using clear plastic and coloured felt tip pens. However, even if precise recording techniques are employed both field and the analytical techniques continue to cause problems. Essentially these images are "trapped within a formula". New methods of recording the pictograph sites must acknowledge that this art, regardless of where it is found, is a form of communication and that its study is concerned about meaning. Similar images exist in other places, such as those found in the birch bark scrolls. Clearly, it is important to remain aware of the vast trans-media commonality of the imagery. Additional bodies of information from disciplines other than archaeology must be used in conjunction with a re-organization of how field data about these sites are collected and interpreted. The archaeologist must be aware of the tools, questions, and problems of other disciplines as well as their own. Yet rock art sites cannot be examined using the same techniques as applied to other archaeological sites. The theoretical approaches used and the questions asked may be the same, but the practical methods used to recover, catalogue and analyse the data are radically different from those that archaeologists apply to "traditional" archaeological sites. The area surrounding these images can perhaps be excavated, but the physical context will not provide information about the cultural context of the images themselves. This paper will critique the field techniques used by previous researchers in the Lake of the Woods area and commonly held views about how to survey and record these images. The sites in the Lake of the Woods area appear representative of those found in the archaeological surveys conducted on the rock art of the Canadian Shield. The individual pictograph sites associated with this lake vary in number and range of mages. It has been traditionally believed that the pictographs are found at the base of the vertical granitic rock walls, either immediately beside the water or several metres from the water's surface. Yet, my own fieldwork has demonstrated that rock art sites do not always exist in conjunction with a body of water. My own fieldwork has demonstrated that these sites were located sometimes away from the water's edge and occasionally found in caves. Yet, stereotypes about the physical location have fundamentally influenced how they have been found and interpreted. I intend to develop a new and more synthetic direct-historical approach to the interpretation of the rock art that overcomes some of the problems inherent in previous work. This approach will involve the investigation of the beliefs and traditions of the Ojibwa people in the expectation that these findings can be applied to the rock art. It will explicitly examine the images as complex dimensional media created in the context of their physical surroundings.