Signs of the Time: Nlaka'pamux Resistance through Rock Art - Softcover

Arnett, Chris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0774867965 ISBN 13: 9780774867962

Publisher: University of British Columbia Press, 2024

Synopsis

Exploring the cultural significance of Indigenous rock art and its history.

Rock art—etched in blood-red lines into granite cliffs, boulders, and caves—appears as a beguiling, graffiti-like abstraction. But, the petroglyphs and red-ochre pictographs found across Nlaka’pamux territory in present-day British Columbia and Washington State are far more than ancient motifs. Signs of the Time explores the historical and cultural reasons for making rock art. 

Archaeologist Chris Arnett draws on extensive research and decades of work with Nlaka’pamux people to document the variability and similarity of practices. Through a blend of Western records and Indigenous oral histories and tradition, rock art is revealed as communication between the spirit and physical worlds, information for later generations, and powerful protection against challenges to a people, land, and culture. Nlaka’pamux have used such cultural means to forestall threats to their lifeways from the sixteenth century through the twentieth. As this important work attests, rock art remains a signature of resilience.

About this title

About the Author

Chris Arnett is an archaeologist, researcher, and writer who lives on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. He has lectured in anthropology and archaeology at the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, and Malaspina University-College (now Vancouver Island University).

Edition details

• Publisher: University of British Columbia Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0774867965
• ISBN 13: 9780774867962
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256