New Book on Native American Rock Art

George Sabo, professor of anthropology and director of the Arkansas Archeological Survey, is a co-editor of Transforming the Landscape: Rock Art and the Mississippian Cosmos, newly released by Oxbow Books as part of their richly illustrated American Landscapes series.

He co-edited with Carol Diaz-Granados of Washington University in St. Louis, Jan Simek of the University of Tennessee, and Mark Wagner of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

Chapters in the volume examine rock art produced from A.D. 900-1700 in eastern North America as graphic reflections of Native American beliefs about the cosmos. An introductory chapter by Sabo and Simek summarizes historic and ethnographic information illustrating how Native American communities across the continent used art and ritual to transform regional landscapes in relation to fundamental social and religious principles.

Other chapters review rock art research methodologies, discuss similarities and differences across regions inhabited by separate communities, grapple with the difficult problem of chronology, and examine correspondences between ancient rock art and Native American oral traditions maintained into historic and modern times.

Sabo and co-authors Jerry Hilliard, Jami Lockhart, and Leslie Walker also contributed a case study examining a series of petroglyph (carved or engraved rock art) sites as part of a Mississippi period (AD 1450-1600) ritual landscape in the Eastern Ozark Escarpment region near modern Batesville.

Download a flier about Transforming the Landscape.

This story originally appeared in the University of Arkansas’ Newswire publication. Please visit news.uark.edu for more stories like this.