Placemaking and cosmology in Tsimshian rock art

A perfectly symmetrical volcanic cone rising up from the plains; a cave with silhouettes of red hands covering a wall; a lone boulder in the middle of the forest. Places in the landscape can be hidden from plain sight or prominently visible, but what they often have in common is that they have special meaning to the people that dwell around them.

The notion of "placemaking" (Fleming 2007) entails that places in human space are intentionally constructed. Places become meaningful because people share experiences at them. A close relationship with the land is an integral part of the worldview of Tsimshian people, whose territory is on the northern coast of North America. Key places in Tsimshian territory are marked by pictographs and petroglyphs (rock art), many of which are recorded as specific events in Tsimshianic oral tradition. The fact that pictographs and petroglyphs are personal testimonies from a remote or recent past invokes a sense of time depth and inheritance. However, these notions have been undervalued in the fields of archaeology and anthropology, especially in rock art research. There is a need for introducing Indigenous perspectives on placemaking into current rock art research. Historically there have been fraught relationships between Indigenous communities and archaeologists. Indigenous groups in British Colombia such as the Tsimshian however, have a keen interest in archaeology and rock art in particular.

The proposed project offers a novel approach into how people embrace their surroundings into their worldview by leaving behind something of themselves. With this, the outcomes from this project also provides new perspectives to my PhD research. We can never ask the people who painted the walls of deep caves in France and Spain why they chose these subterranean places to leave behind markings. We can however consider the scholarship by which contemporary Indigenous people deal with their choices of selecting locations for art and ritual, and draw on the oral and written documentary archives on this subject.

This project seeks to advance the understanding of Tsimshian places and landscapes by developing advanced methods of digital recording, 3D modelling and Geographical Information System (GIS ) at rock art locations. Importantly, the knowledge of these techniques will be shared with the Tsimshian community so that they can preserve the remarkable markings for future generations. The Indigenous community will be provided with an interactive map of the different rock art sites. If you click on a site, the map will display its meaning and oral traditions, using a digital platform constructed by Andrew Martindale: the Tsimshian Archaeological Spatial Archive. This opens the door to a discourse with Indigenous communities about the meaning and context of the rock art. A strong oral tradition still exists among the Tsimshian providing the possibility to ask communities about the stories that are connected to places. It is of utter importance to Indigenous communities that these places are protected and conserved.

The result of this project will be a richer understanding of the locations, landscapes, and histories of the Tsimshian people. One of the most important outcomes of this project is that it will strengthen the relationships between Indigenous communities, the scientific community and the public by sharing our gained knowledge. Archaeology has a remarkable way of bringing people together to enjoy the beauties of the past. At the same time, archaeology focused on Indigenous history must engage with the ongoing effects of colonialism; this project seeks to recognize Indigenous people as the primary scholars of their material heritage and provide tools to allow them to manage heritage resources. This way we really can bridge the gap between the past and the present.