In this highly anticipated book, Rogers—a self-confessed “Anglo-American rock art aficionado” (p. 318)—leverages his tenure as a communications professor, with specialties in critical/cultural and gender studies, to critically evaluate the intersection of Native American visual heritage and the contemporary cultural landscape. Rogers's work is novel in that it is not a piece of rock art research per se; it is instead a study of those (professional and avocational alike) who study, manage, interpret, and “collect” (p. 108) elements of Native American visual heritage.
Rogers is no neophyte to the critical analysis of rock art research and related issues. Indeed, four of the book's eight chapters are re-presentations of previously published articles (Chapters 4–7). With this book, Rogers couples his earlier works with an introduction to communication theory and critical/cultural studies (Chapter 1), a brief history of rock art research and practice (Chapter 2), and a very insightful examination of the neocolonial relationship between Native America and Anglo-America as gleaned through the representation, appropriation, and commodification of the former by the latter (Chapter 3). This third chapter is a substantial addition to Rogers's prior writings and the one that really pulls this book's various threads together.
Those unfamiliar with Rogers's writings regarding the contemporary (ab)use of Native American visual heritage will find the re-presented articles thought-provoking, yet possibly confrontational. One dissects the popular hunting magic and shamanism hypotheses to expose these interpretations as more revelatory of gender binaries and a “contemporary crisis of masculinity” within Anglo-American society than of past indigenous practices and beliefs, as they purport to be. Another addresses the conflation of flute player petroglyphs and the Hopi katsina Kookopöllö into the Americanized caricature of Kokopelli and Kokopelli's commodification as a fetish of primitive masculinity. In a third, Rogers unpacks the rhetoric of interpretive signage to show how it commonly serves to bolster dominant Anglo-American narratives in contestation to the authority of descendant communities. Rogers's fourth critique addresses site management practices, where he asserts that the prevailing concern for preservation is based in a primitivist paradigm that casts Native American cultures as authentic only when they are untouched by a colonial hand, metaphorically virginal and pristine.
Somewhat paradoxically, Rogers's critiques, while not rooted in archaeological theory or training, fit squarely within a postprocessual archaeological framework. Beyond critical, Rogers is self-reflexive and self-implicative, as he uses anecdotes to disclose how he himself is embedded in a neocolonial enterprise. This book therefore reads as an intimate confessional of one person's struggle with coming to terms with white, academic privilege, and I find it quite commendable for its blatant honesty.
What Rogers brings to bear in Petroglyphs, Pictographs, and Projections is offset by what is not presented. With his background in communications and critical studies, I was anticipating a serious appraisal of the contested and problematic phrase “rock art” and hoping to find a suitable alternative. While Rogers touches upon the debate, he provides no attempt at remedying the matter, choosing instead to follow the “uneasy consensus” (p. 43) to perpetuate the “rock art” terminology. From another angle, one of Rogers's key points is how Native Americans have been left out of the rock art research community and how this contributes to the ongoing marginalization of their communities. Given the accuracy of this assessment, it is troubling that this book omits any semblance of a Native voice through either coauthorship or tribal review, practices that are becoming more commonplace in postcolonial scholarship. In a somber way, Rogers engages in the very practices he criticizes, although he fully acknowledges this conundrum.
Still, this unique book has much to offer. From those who feel uneasy about using indigenous visual heritage to illustrate books or knickknacks to others who are perpetually skeptical of interpretations of the “meanings” of indigenous petroglyphs and pictographs, Rogers provides potent and sobering diagnoses. I argue that, while drawn from his experiences in the American Southwest, Rogers's impressions, perceptions, and conclusions about appropriation, commodification, and representation of the “other” are relevant and poignant to anyone engaging with the visual heritage of indigenous societies in colonial or neocolonial contexts. As with many diseases, however, colonialism continues to evade a cure, and I find this the principal shortcoming of Rogers's otherwise remarkable assessment. “Criticizing elements of rock art culture is easy” (p. 318), but without an antidote, or a treatment plan, diagnosis of a malady either can seem cavillous or can easily lead to hopelessness. Rogers, while spot-on with the diagnoses, leaves us with little guidance on how to break free from colonialism's legacy.
