ROCK ART and ONTOLOGY: PATTERNS of HOHOKAM IMAGERY by DEIANIRA MORRIS a Thesis Submitted to the Honors Coll
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Rock Art And Ontology: Patterns Of Hohokam Imagery Item Type text; Electronic Thesis Authors Morris, Deianira Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 01/10/2021 08:36:08 Item License http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/632702 ROCK ART AND ONTOLOGY: PATTERNS OF HOHOKAM IMAGERY By DEIANIRA MORRIS ____________________ A Thesis Submitted to The Honors College In Partial Fulfillment of the Bachelors degree With Honors in Anthropology THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA M A Y 2 0 19 Approved by: ____________________________ Dr. Barbara J. Mills Department of Anthropology ABSTRACT Although the Hohokam produced a number of rock art sites that feature a variety of images, rock art scholars have yet to explore how often different types of images occur at these sites or how they are associated on individual rock features. As such, the purpose of this project was to analyze the glyphs at two Hohokam rock art sites, South Mountain and Tumamoc Hill, to look for possible patterns in how often an image occurs at each site, and how often it co-occurs with other types of glyphs at the same site. By examining these topics in relation to the ontology of identity, this project revealed that the Hohokam tended to utilize the same types of images in their rock art at both sites, but used them with different frequencies. In addition, the co- occurrence of different glyphs types tended to strongly correlate to the numerical occurrence of the image at the site. This could indicate that the Hohokam ontologically situated themselves within a broader regional context, but expressed the individual identities of their communities through the frequency that they used the different images. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES...............................................................................................................iv LIST OF FIGURES………..................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION………………………………………………….............1 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW……. …................................................................5 Rock Art Research in the Southwest…….............................................................................5 Identity in Southwestern Rock Art …...................................................................................7 Rock Art Theory and Interpretation…..................................................................................8 A Critical Analysis of Dominant Rock Art Paradigms …..................................................10 A Dynamic Combination …................................................................................................14 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY………………………………………………...............16 My Approach……………………. .....................................................................................16 Samples…………………………………………………………………………................17 Categorization…………......................................................................................................18 Analysis Methods ................................................................................................................19 Sample Controls ..................................................................................................................20 CHAPTER 4: THEORY, METHOD, AND DATASET.....................................................22 The Hohokam.......................................................................................................................22 Hohokam Rock Art..............................................................................................................24 South Mountain Archaeological Site...................................................................................26 Tumamoc Hill Archaeological Site.....................................................................................28 CHAPTER 5: DATA ANALYSIS.......................................................................................31 South Mountain Batch..........................................................................................................33 Tumamoc Hill Batch............................................................................................................38 Comparison..........................................................................................................................44 CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS........................................................50 Discussion............................................................................................................................50 Conclusions…………..........................................................................................................53 REFERENCES CITED........................................................................................................57 iii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: South Mountain General Category Frequencies of Occurrence ……………...33 Table 2: South Mountain Representational Subcategory Occurrence Frequencies…….34 Table 3: South Mountain Geometric Subcategory Occurrence Frequencies…...………35 Table 4: South Mountain General Category Frequencies of Co-occurrence …….…….36 Table 5: South Mountain Representational Subcategory Co-occurrence Frequencies with Anthropomorphs…………………………………………………………………….….37 Table 6: South Mountain Geometric Subcategory Co-occurrence Frequencies with Anthropomorphs……………………………………………………………………......38 Table 7: Tumamoc Hill General Category Frequencies of Occurrence.........………….39 Table 8: Tumamoc Hill Representational Subcategory Occurrence Frequencies..…….39 Table 9: Tumamoc Hill Geometric Subcategory Occurrence Frequencies..…………...41 Table 10: Tumamoc Hill General Category Frequencies of Co-occurrence…………...42 Table 11: South Mountain Representational Subcategory Co-occurrence Frequencies..43 Table 12: Tumamoc Hill Geometric Subcategory Co-occurrence Frequencies with Anthropomorphs..............................................................................................................44 Table 13: Statistical Comparison of Glyph Frequencies at South Mountain and Tumamoc Hill……………...…………………………………………………………...47 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Rock Art Panel from South Mountain Featuring Anthropomorphs, Quadrupeds, and Circles………………………………………….…………………………………………….18 Figure 2: Single Circular Glyph from South Mountain………………………………….…..19 Figure 3: Multiple Circular Glyphs from South Mountain…………………………………..19 Figure 4: Archaic Glyph at Tumamoc Hill…………………………………………………...21 Figure 5: Distribution of General Categories…………………...…………………………....45 Figure 6: Percentages of Petroglyph Subcategories at South Mountain and Tumamoc Hill...46 Figure 7: Co-Occurrence of Anthropomorphic Glyphs with All Image Categories …...……48 v Chapter 1: Introduction In the U.S. Southwest, a persistent interest in the archaeological study of past cultures has been fostered by the preservation of a vast amount of historical remains into contemporary times. Among the many changes this discipline has undergone as it has developed is that the range of topics being studied has significantly broadened to include many subjects that were considerably neglected during the earliest phases of southwestern archaeology. One such topic that has become of greater interest in recent decades is the study of rock art. In the field of archaeology, the term “rock art” refers to a specific type of material culture that is defined as “images pecked into or painted on stone” by people in the past (Schaafsma 1980:1). Rock art can be found in almost every region in the world and normally consists of three primary categories, petroglyphs, pictographs, and geoglyphs, which are differentiated according to how they are produced. Petroglyphs are images that have been created by carving into rocks, pictographs are images that have been painted onto rocks using mineral or organic paint (Schaafsma 1980:25), and geoglyphs were produced by clearing areas on the ground or by arranging individual rocks into shapes (Thiel 1995:3). Of the three different types, petroglyphs and pictographs often occur the most frequently in many regions, including the Southwest. When studying rock art, scholars often facilitate their analyses by categorizing the many characteristics of rock art into hierarchical units that can be then be independently examined. The smallest scale of rock art categorization, often called “glyphs” or “elements,” refers to “a single design or image” that is that has been placed on some type of natural geologic formation (Thiel 1995:3). Rock art sites can consist of anywhere from individual images to thousands of individual elements concentrated within an area. Another phrase that is often used by researchers 1 when analyzing rock art at this level is “motifs.” This term, however, is less clearly defined as some researchers use this as a synonym for individual elements (Wright 2011), while other rock art scholars have also defined this as a “group of elements that together make up a coherent piece of a design,” similar to how archaeologists specializing in the study of ceramics have defined motifs on vessels (Wallace 2001:401). The next scale in rock art analysis