Cambridge Archaeological Journal

Table of Contents - June 2012 - Volume 22, Issue 02  

Articles

Mide Rock-paintings: Archaeology by Formal and Informed Methods

Rex Weeksa1

a1 Department of Geosciences, University of Arkansas, Stone House South, 346 Arkansas Avenue, Fayetteville, AR 72701 USA Email: wrweeks@uark.edu

Abstract

Rock-art research offers to archaeology a problem-oriented approach. A case study is presented on the interpretation of rock-art from informed ethnographic and formal archaeological perspectives regarding the origins of the Midewiwin, or ‘Grand Medicine Society’. The evidence is twofold. First, some of the rock-paintings that are found over a wide range of the southern Canadian Shield appear to be representative of the Midewiwin. Second, the most probable age estimation of those rock-paintings indicates that the antiquity of Midewiwin is greater than generally presumed by the key anthropological reference literature of the region. Rather than a relatively recent ‘revitalization movement’, the origins of the Midewiwin began in remote antiquity. Broad theoretical and methodological issues of cognitive archaeology and the crisis of representation are addressed, particularly classification, colonialism and cultural linguistics.

(Received September 07 2011)

(Accepted November 14 2011)

(Revised January 12 2012)

Rex Weeks is an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA. He studies First Nations' cultural geography and their rock-art in the North American Canadian Shield. His research focuses on their cultural linguistics and the origins of their Midewiwin, or ‘Grand Medicine Society’.