Archaeology

This article not only surveys but critically comments on the publications of those researchers who have worked on the Lake of the Woods. It also refers to studies in other regions on the Canadian Shield. Previous studies have utilised different paradigms and had their own opinions as to the value of
particular approaches, methods, and framework of different approaches adopted by previous work. For the frontiers of research can only be pushed forward if every generation of researchers challenges and re-examines the work of its predecessors. Such surveys of previous work should form part of
a base which is founded on a solid understanding of the fundamental issues and problems of the field at hand. Each investigator must conduct a detailed survey and analysis of their predecessor’s work. This to enable them to establish which approach has been the most popular, what have been the
previous findings, what were their premises, what have been the methods and the frameworks that have been utilized. The studies reviewed have been categorized according to the theoretical approach taken by the principal investigator of the study. The author concludes with a short discussion of her rationale in choosing and establishing the sequence of several theoretical
approaches for use in path breaking research."

The act of classification has the widest implications for scholarship.
Whatever the format, it involves the totality of our being. The use of our eyes indicates that decisions about whatever it is that we observe have already been made. Yet the interaction between the mechanical act of seeing and the mind or memory has rarely been registered. An object once seen implies that the researcher’s consciousness is engaged. The description of mere shape records
that interaction.
To establish whether sub-conscious decisions have been made as to the meaning of a shape, it might be placed in an armature. VIPS/ip software, created by both computer scientists and art historians, provides such an armature. The separate roles played by memory, brain, and eye in engaging with the shapes, encountered on the pictograph sites of the Lake of the Woods might then be detected. Subsequent labelling which bears these roles in mind just might isolate the contribution made by memory. The systematic identification and cataloguing of such images by an investigator may also enable us to understand something of the intricate and uncharted past of the Canadian Shield and about ourselves.

Of late I have been pondering the nature of ‘internal exploration’.  I will bounce off comments made by Michael Robinson and David Renwick Grant, who in turn commented on Mikael’s post “Am I a fake and a cheat?”  I thought Mikael’s and David’s comments were interesting, especially when it came to the question of such exploration and just what it might entail.  Surely it is about who we are, and what we can achieve within the resources that are offered by our minds......(See remainder of article on blog)

Most researchers who study rock image sites tend to be interested in the meaning of images, even though they could obtain more empirical information about these images and their physical location. Furthermore, very little of the work done in the past on rock image sites has been systematic. In this thesis I address the dearth of detailed information on the images and their context. This thesis presents a thorough examination of the images of the twenty-seven pictograph sites in the Lake of the Woods, in the Canadian Shield. These pictograph sites were selected because they exhibit traits evident in rock image studies in other parts of the world. This study is based on data collected during three months of fieldwork conducted in 2001. Images were found on cliff faces and inside caves. New images and new sites were found and identified. Here, as elsewhere, the choice of theoretical approach influences the fieldwork, analysis, and search for meaning. Each prescribes the types of questions asked and determines the levels of understanding obtained about whichever form of archaeological evidence is being considered. The different but complementary theoretical approaches should be employed in a definite order. The same data must be examined in sequential order using these different approaches to increase the potential quantity and quality of information gained. Archaeologists should use the following sequence of approaches: culture-historical, contextual, followed by either the homological, or analogical approaches, or a combination of the latter two. Classifying and describing any image is very difficult, since the level of description given to an image affects the way in which it can be analysed, and heavily influences the possible outcome of any discussion of perceived meaning. A rigorous examination of the images of these sites was conducted to (a) identify the possible vocabulary of images, (b) determine whether combinatory, rules exist, (c) reconstitute the life history of each site, and (d) ascertain whether the images can be related to other indigenous images to determine if this can provide information about the meaning(s) of the rock images. In assessing the meaning of the rock images, the images of a few birch bark scrolls were considered, since it was posited that a detailed investigation of the scrolls, the ethnographic record, and their pictographs might provide some answers regarding the meanings of the images found on the rock faces.

The identity of a group of people who live in a region might indicate the ethnic group that might have created the images found on the pictograph sites of the Lake of the Woods. This question is a bear trap – to be approached with great care. The presence of a specific artefact does not in itself imply the existence of a specific group, class, language, religion or ethnicity.

It will be immediately apparent that contemporary groups can only identify themselves with historic and prehistoric populations at their peril. For the interpretation of an archaeological artefact requires rigid intellectual discipline if context is to be securely established. To establish cultural continuity such discipline relies upon the canons of various disciplines. Only after that discussion can the ‘meaning(s)’ of the pictograph sites in the region be ascertained and their relevance to modern cultural life established.

The paper debates the history and ethnography of the indigenous peoples who lived in the boreal forest in the Lake of the Woods area located between Lakes Winnipeg and Superior.

Historical sources, aka written documents, must be consulted by archaeologists interested in the images, pictograph sites, such as those in the Lake of the Woods on the edge of the Canadian Shield. Documents should be consulted in conjunction with traditional perhaps ‘canonical’ archaeological artifacts: lithics, ceramics, and bones, as well as information obtained by examining birch bark scrolls, clothing, and other objects. The fact that the information is registered in different places should not deter the archaeologist from excluding, which bits of information to use. Historical documents and early ethnographic studies might well be invaluable since they will be crucial if we are to determine which cultural group might have created these images, the number of different arrangements of image that might have been employed, what each was used for, whether their ‘shapes’ have changed over time, whether changes in ‘meaning’ occurred, and what differentiates the various collections of images from each other.
Based upon their use and the intended audience three types of collections can be identified. These collections exist regardless of whether the images were etched, quilled, embroidered, drawn, painted or beaded. What has happened is that the physical location of these images have overly influenced the attitudes, perceptions, questions and even the discipline of each researcher. Even so an archaeologist interested in the pictograph sites of the Lake of the Woods must examine and include historical documents in the process of synthesizing a range of information prior before considering questions which address the way in which ‘meaning’ might have been allotted to these sites and their images by their creators.