SOUND/BREATH SYMBOLS IN ROCK ART – CONTINUED:

Although I have written previously about speech or wind symbols in rock art, so far I focused on symbols that resembled the speech scrolls in the art of Mesoamerican peoples. There are a number of other examples of symbolic notations of speech or sound, conventions of portrayal used by artists elsewhere found in rock art or other art of First Nations peoples. Before going further in this exploration I need to clarify that what we are actually looking at should more technically be described as oral emanations, whether representing breath or sound, or both, is not usually possible to define.

Dog with good voice, from Red Cloud's Census, Garrick Mallery, fig.1197, p. 718.

Elk walking with his voice, from Red Cloud's census, fig. 1197, p. 718.

Five Thunders, from Red Cloud's census, Garrick Mallery, fig. 681, p.486.

Many examples from the First Nations peoples of North America are known with straight or wavy lines emanating from the mouths of anthropomorphs or zoomorphs. A number of examples from various sources can be seen on pages 718 -719 of the Dover publication of Garrick Mallery's Picture Writing of the American Indians (1889) reprinted in 1972. The bulk of Mallery's examples appear to come from painted robe or ledger book art of the Northern Plains.

Wer-panther, Halo shelter, Val Verde County, TX. Photograph Peter Faris, March 2004.

Some commonly seen examples are wavy lines emanating from the mouths of animals in rock art. Often referred to as “spirit lines” these can be seen from Mallery’s examples as representing sound or breath. One excellent example of this is the red two-legged feline painted in Halo Shelter, Vel Verde county, Texas.

“At Halo Shelter (41VV1230), a red two-legged feline (60 cm long) emits a series of long, undulating red lines from its toothed mouth. The arrangement of the speech-breath lines forms a tightly constrained, acute angle. The feline’s fur is standing on end, and its tail arches over its back. A long, thick red line emerges from its nose before turning downward to intersect the undulating lines below. The painting of the feline has been heavily abraded and incised. This form of Indigenous postpainting modification is common in the Lower Pecos, but it is especially pronounced on this figure.” (Boyd and Busby 2021) This portrayal can be compared to Mallery’s illustration of the name glyph of a man named Dog With Good Voice, from Red Cloud's Census, (fig.1197, p. 718) and to another of a man named Five Thunders, from Red Cloud's census (fig. 681, p.486). In both of these examples from Mallery the name glyph has wavy lines issuing from the mouth to illustrate sound. Other instances of wavy lines issuing from the mouth may be interpreted as breath instead of sound.

Halo shelter, Val Verde County, TX. Photograph Peter Faris, March 2004.

A painted anthropomorph from Halo Shelter is shown with a cloud of lines issuing from the head.

Reproduction of a Forrest Kirkland water color. Turpin, 1994, p.87, fig. 7.

Turpin (1994:87) included a reproduction of a Forrest Kirkland water color painting of another Pecos River Style panel with a prone figure she identifies as a shaman with wavy breath or sound lines coming from his mouth.

Crow equestrians. Horse Raiders of the Missouri Breaks, Keyser and Minick, 2018, p. 25, fig. 15.

Keyser and Minick (2018: 25) show Crow examples of equestrian figures where the horse is displaying wavy lines from the mouth, possibly panting after a run.

Lakota drawing. From Storied Stone, Linea Sundstrom, 2004, p. 184, fig. 14.

Sundstrom ( 2004:184) illustrates a Lakota drawing of a ceremony of the Elk Dreamer’s Society wherein the wavy lines of the elk in the lower right encompass the participants and impart his power to them through the power of his breath or bugling.

Pecos River Style anthropomorph. Carolyn E. Boyd and Ashley Busby, 2021, From Speech-Breath: Mapping the Multisensory Experience in Pecos River Style Pictography, Figure 6.

Boyd and Busby (2021) also show many examples of Pecos River Style pictographs where breath or sound is indicated by a cloud of dots emanating from the mouths of figures. 

Pecos River Style anthropomorph  Fate Bell Shelter, Seminole Canyon, Val Verde County, TX. Photograph Peter Faris,  March 2004.

This photo from Fate Bell Shelter in Seminole Canyon State Park, Val Verde County, Texas shows a cloud of dots above the head of the anthropomorph in the fashion that they designate a representation of sound.

So, breath or sound? I personally lean toward sound, with the other elements in the composition as clues to what sound the viewers are being reminded of but, either way, many examples of moving breath and/or auditory vibration can be found in rock art.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Boyd, Carolyn E. and Ashley Busby, 2021, Speech-Breath: Mapping the Multisensory Experience in Pecos River Style Pictography, 28 June 2021, published online by the Cambridge University Press for the Society for American Archaeology.

Keyser, James D., and David L. Minick, 2018, Horse Raiders of the Missouri Breaks, Eagle Creek Canyon Petroglyphs, Montana, Oregon Archaeological Society publication #25, Portland.

Mallery, Garrick, 1889, Picture-Writing of the American Indians, Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., reprinted 1972 by Dover Publications, New York.

Sundstrom, Linea, 2004, Storied Stone: Indian Rock Art of th Black Hills Country, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Turpin, Solveig, 1994, On a Wing and a Prayer: Flight Metaphors in Pecos River Rock Art, pp. 73-102, in Shamanism and Rock Art in North America, edited by Solveig Turpin, Rock Art Foundation Inc., San Antonio.

SPEECH SCROLLS IN ROCK ART?

Chaco Canyon, trail to Penasco Blanco, San Juan county,

New Mexico. Photograph Peter Faris, May 1994. 

A familiar convention in Mesoamerican art is the speech scroll, a curved line or shape in front of the mouth used to indicate that the possessor is speaking. We do know that the rock art creating peoples of Mesoamerica, including Aztec, Maya, and Zapotec, all had symbols to represent speech or sound. These we generically lump together under the title “speech scrolls”. Examples exist in stone sculpture, on painted pottery, and in the few remaining books that survived the Spanish destruction, the codexes. We also know that these peoples had influence on the cultures and rock art of the American southwest. With this in mind I have kept an eye out for the general shape of a Mesoamerican speech scroll in rock art.

Aztec god Xochipilli, p.4, Archaeoacoustics

 Graeme and Lawson, 2006.

Aztec Codex Boturini, Fig. 11, p. 39, The Road To

Aztlan, Fields and Zamudio-Taylor, 2001. 

The Mesoamerican speech scroll was a curved line or scroll found issuing from the mouth, or in the general area of the mouth. My assumption is that a speech scroll connected to the mouth would represent a sound being made (speaking) where a speech scroll that is not connected to the mouth would represent a sound that had been made (previous speaking), but this might just be over thinking the problem. They could, in fact, just be two variations of exactly the same thing, a generic vocalization.

The petroglyphs at the top of this posting are to be found in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, and bear an uncanny resemblance to many examples of the Mesoamerican speech scroll. Do they actually represent speech? I do not know, and we probably cannot know.  Indeed, without a figure in the picture to represent a speaker I must assume that it is unlikely that this was actually intended as a speech scroll. We do, however, know that there were contacts between the people of Chaco Canyon and Mesoamerican civilizations so there is the possibility that some of the imagery also made it to New Mexico. In any case it is fun to speculate.

Figure with speech scroll, carved
Mayan stela, from pu5h.info.

Mayan pottery cups with Camazotz, the bat god.

I have included some examples of Mesoamerican speech scrolls above for comparison, and below I have also included a European example of the same thing.

Figure with banderole (speech scroll),

Bernhard Strigel, 1506, Wikipedia.

As a side note, this phenomenon is also represented in our European art history as is explained in this comment from Wikipedia. “A speech scroll, also called a banderole or phylactery in art history, is an illustrative device denoting speech, song, or, in rarer cases, other types of sound. Developed independently on two continents, the device was in use by European painters during the Medieval and Renaissance periods as well as by artists within Mesoamerican cultures from as early as 650 BC until after the 16th century Spanish conquest. While European speech scrolls were drawn as if they were an actual unfurled scroll, Mesoamerican speech scrolls are merely scroll-shaped, looking much like a question mark.” (Wikipedia)

SOURCES:

Fields, Virginia M., and Victor Zamudio-Taylor,

2001    Aztlan: Destination and Point of Departure, pages 38 – 77, The Road To Aztlan: Art From A Mythic Homeland, edited by Fields, Virginia M., and Victor Zamudio-Taylor,

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles.

Scarre, Chris and Graeme Lawson, editors

2006    Archaeoacoustics, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge.

Wikipedia

THE CHIMU TELEPHONE AND A FLIGHT OF FANCY/FANTASY:

Chauvet lions, from Dawn of Art, by Jean-Marie Chauvet,
Eliette Brunel Deschamps, and Christian Hillaire.

Picture yourself standing in front of a painted panel of lions, or a bear, in a Paleolithic painted cave in Europe. The flickering light of your flame provides the only illumination and the moving shadows almost lend an illusion of movement to the fearsome predator pictured. Then, all of a sudden, you hear a roaring, growling sound. Would that not impress you? Remembering the tin-can telephone from my childhood, what could a Paleolithic shaman do with it to introduce sound to the cave paintings in a dark cave in Europe? Concealed some distance away from a panel of painted animals he could mimic their sounds adding growling and moaning to the expressive imagery. This would provide a very impressive addition to a ceremony.

An article in Smithsonian Magazine, December 2013 issue, written by Neil Baldwin, explained an amazing example of technology attributed to the Chimu culture of the Rio Moche Valley in northern Peru that would have been able to do just that.

One of the earliest examples of ingenuity in the Western

Hemisphere is composed of gourds and twine, Smithsonian

Collections, Neil Baldwin, Smithsonian Magazine, 

December, 2013.

“Nestled in an acid-free corrugated container was the earliest known example of telephone technology in the Western Hemisphere, evoking a lost civilization – and the anonymous ancient techie who dreamed it up.

The gourd-and-twine device, created 1,200 to 1,400 years ago remains tantalizingly functional – and too fragile to test out. “This is unique,” NMAI (National Museum of American Indians) curator Ramiro Matos, an anthropologist and archaeologist who specializes in the study of the central Andes, tells me.

“Only one was ever discovered. It comes from the consciousness of an indigenous society with no written language.”

We’ll never know the trial and error that went into its creation. The marvel of acoustic engineering – cunningly constructed out of two resin-coated gourd receivers, each three – and-one-half inches long; stretched-hide membranes stitched around the bases of the receivers; and cotton-twine cord extending 75 feet when pulled taut.” (Baldwin 2013)

Please note that I am not suggesting any connection between Paleolithic painted caves and the Chimu culture, I know there was none. I am only explaining that my first reaction to seeing Baldwin’s article was to think of adding sound to rock art. In the Chimu case, perhaps adding sound to paintings or carvings in a dim temple interior.

And while on this flight of fancy I can recall another piece of childhood technology that would have been even more effective. What was often called “the growler” (technically it is a string drum) was simply an empty tin can with a hole punched in the center of the bottom and a piece of twine affixed in it. When the twine was rosined and then pulled on while allowing the twine to slip slowly through the fingers, the resulting vibration of the can bottom made a growling/roaring sound like a lion or bear. A variation was made with a round oatmeal box and waxed string, but the metal can was much stronger and could thus be made much louder. 

Now ask yourself, could a paleolithic artist or shaman have had gourds? Or could they perhaps have formed a container out of rawhide to serve the purpose? Could they have made a drum? Did the Paleolithic people ever do this? I have absolutely no indication that they ever did (although I cannot imagine that they did not), but in my imagination I can take a flight of fancy to those dark and so impressive Paleolithic painted caves of Europe. We know that cave interiors have marvelous acoustics anyway, with echoes, whisper channels, and other effects. Now add the roaring, growling sound booming through the cave passages and chambers. How impressive is that?

In any case check out the article in the December 2013 issue of Smithsonian Magazine, and keep an eye on that excellent publication for other fascinating material as well.

NOTE: This posting is a wild flight of fantasy based upon my reaction to a remarkable Chimu artifact that was published in the December 2013 article by Neil Baldwin in Smithsonian magazine. Only the basic facts of the Chimu artifact should be attributed to Smithsonian magazine. All of the other surmise and speculation is from me personally, and should not be attributed to the Smithsonian Society, its magazine, or any of its employees or writers.

REFERENCES:

Baldwin, Neil

2013   Smithsonian Collections, One of the earliest examples of ingenuity in the Western Hemisphere is composed of gourds and twine, Smithsonian Magazine, December.