In collaboration with Indigenous elders and ritual specialists, archaeologists have shed light on the meaning of ancient rock art from the Amazon rainforest in a study.
A trio of researchers has been investigating Indigenous rock art in the Serranía de la Lindosa (La Lindosa for short)—a 12-mile-long sandstone outcrop located in Colombia's Guaviare department. This area contains tens of thousands of rock art motifs painted with ocher, featuring depictions of humans, animals, plants, mythological creatures and geometric designs. Some evidence suggests that the oldest of the artworks date as far back as around 11,000 years ago.
For most of the past 100 years, inaccessibility and political unrest have limited research activities in the region. But in a new paper, published in a special issue of Advances in Rock Art Studios, the researchers discuss findings from six years of field investigations aimed at uncovering the meaning and significance of the works.
By combining various strands of evidence—including a range of ethnographic sources and local Indigenous testimonies—the researchers propose in the paper that the rock art is associated with ritual specialists negotiating spiritual realms, as well as the interrelation between the human and supernatural worlds, rather than a literal record of the environment.
"Indigenous descendants of the original artists have recently explained to us that the rock art motifs here do not simply 'reflect' what the artists saw in the 'real' world," the study's lead author, Jamie Hampson, said in a press release. He is an archaeologist in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the U.K.'s University of Exeter.
As part of their investigations, the researchers accompanied 10 local Indigenous elders and ritual specialists to six rock art panels documented at the Cerro Azul outcrop of the Serranía de la Lindosa. They conducted interviews with them, recording and translating their testimonies about the rock art.
Ulderico, a ritual specialist from the Matapí people, told the researchers that the artworks have to be viewed from the "shamanic" viewpoint in order to understand them.
"I tell you each one of these figures contributed the shamanic knowledge for our own management of the territory where we are.... When this knowledge comes out, it appears as a wardrobe, as a shamanic wardrobe, as a guide to be able to practice shamanism," Ulderico said.
Among the images that were of particular interest to the elders were figures associated with the spiritual world that combine the form of animals and humans.
Victor Caycedo, an elder with the Desana people, told the team that the Serranía de la Lindosa paintings were created by spirits.
Highlighting images located high up on a rock face, Caycedo said: "How would you paint up there? How would you do it? They didn't do it with a ladder...they didn't do it with some big devices that were put there.... Why? Because the natives in the old days lived spiritually.... They were a spirit."
The elders also highlighted the imagery of symbolically significant animals, such as anacondas, jaguars, bats and herons, as well as images depicting fishing. One elder, for example, said that jaguars represent shamanistic knowledge.
"It is the first time that the views of Indigenous elders on their ancestors' rock art have been fully incorporated into research in this part of the Amazon," Hampson said.
He went on: "In so doing, it enables us to not simply look at the art from an outsider's perspective and guess; we know why specific motifs were painted, and what they mean. It enables us to understand that this is a sacred, ritualistic art, created within the framework of an animistic cosmology, in sacred places in the landscape. It also emphasizes how Indigenous belief systems and myths need to be taken seriously."
Hampson continued: "I have worked with rock art and Indigenous groups on every continent — and never have we been fortunate enough to have such a direct fit between Indigenous testimony and specific rock art motifs."
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about archaeology? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
Reference
Hampson, J., Iriarte, J., & Aceituno, F. J. (2024). 'A World of Knowledge': Rock Art, Ritual, and Indigenous Belief at Serranía De La Lindosa in the Colombian Amazon. Arts, 13(4), 135. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040135
English (US) ·