10 Landscapes of Memory and Presence in the Canadian Shield John Norder In the study of rock art sites in archaeology, a substantial portion of research has emphasized symbolic and iconographic understandings. In other words, research has typically revolved around the following question: What did the images placed at a rock art site mean to the people who created them (e.g., Figure 10.1)? In pursuing these issues, one aspect of these sites that research- ers have come to focus on is that part of their symbolic capital, in addition to the composition(s) present, is the location. Within this more inclusive per- spective, the notion of “place” becomes part of how these sites are conceived. Subsequently, rock art sites have increasingly been studied as part of sacred landscapes, where rock art serves to mark locations of religious and cosmo- logical signifcance of a given community (Arsenault 2004a, 2004b; Lewis- Williams 1977; Whitley 1998, 2000, 2001). In contextualizing rock art sites within a sacred landscape, these places be- come part of a geography structured by spiritual and cosmological percep- tions of the world that are grounded in a culture’s religious belief and prac- tice. Rock art sites in their image composition represent the unseen universe that is hidden from, but coexistent with, daily experience, and their place- ment on the landscape represents bridges between these worlds. However, the concept of a sacred landscape is also one that is only part of the equa- tion of what rock art sites have the potential to represent. Tey are also part of a landscape of memory that embodies a community’s identity and serves to guide human experience and action in manners that bridge these visible and invisible worlds. Tey also mark the presence of a community on the landscape. In this framework, the memory of a community may fail, and the stories of particular places may be forgotten, but the physical presence of rock art sites may endure for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Tus these Copyright 2012. University Alabama Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/9/2019 10:42 AM via MICHIGAN STATE UNIV AN: 501770 ; DeBoer, Warren R., Sundstrom, Linea.; Enduring Motives : The Archaeology of Tradition and Religion in Native America Account: s8364774.main.ehost1