Edward J. Lenik is president and principal investigator of Sheffield Archaeological Consultants, based in Wayne, New Jersey. Nancy L. Gibbs, a longtime collaborator with Lenik, is an artist and researcher on cultural resource investigations. Rock Art in an Indigenous Landscape picks up where Lenik's last book (Amulets, Effigies, Fetishes, and Charms: Native American Artifacts and Spirit Stones from the Northeast, 2016) left off. The new book covers portable and nonportable petroglyphs across four different landscapes—coastal, riverine, lakeside, and upland sites from Nova Scotia to Virginia. Lenik defines portable petroglyphs as pecked, sculpted, or incised figures or symbols on stone artifacts such as pebbles, pendants, gorgets, pipes, axes, or atlatl weights. Nonportable petroglyphs are immovable images on glacial erratics, fixed boulders, rock shelters, and ledges. The authors offer interpretations of these forms of rock art, made by Algonkian peoples of northeastern North America. They bring a few Indigenous voices to help with these interpretations, which is a key strength of the book. Although the authors cover a wide range of sites, they do not always go into great depth with each one. The book has many black-and-white photographs and drawings, which aid the reader in visualizing the rock art images.
Chapter 1 explores sites along the Atlantic coastline. The chapter is organized by states—from north to south—covering Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey. The authors offer interpretations of cup marks and motifs such as crosses, thunderbirds, H shapes, and bear and turtle effigies. They also bring in the Native voices of Passamaquoddy's THPO Donald Soctomah and Ramapough Lenape and Penobscot elder Cindy Fountain. The Indigenous voices represented throughout the book are refreshing, adding crucial knowledge that is historically underused and even ignored in archaeology. One of the three better-known sites that Lenik and Gibbs introduce is the Tiverton site in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. They also draw on primary documents such as the papers of Ezra Stiles. Stiles was president of Yale College from 1777 to 1795, and he recorded pecked images on boulders in Rhode Island. Lenik visited the site in 1978 and relocated one boulder, but he also noted how many of the boulders with imagery had been destroyed or had gone missing by that time. Lenik again mentions Stiles later in the chapter, stating that Stiles documented large stone effigies all throughout New England. One large rock, Siwanoy Bird, in Westchester County, New York, appeared to resemble a bird. Lenik traces the history and relocation of this rock to its current place at the Thomas Paine Cottage Museum in the town of New Rochelle.
Each chapter begins with petroglyph sites that may be more familiar to nonarchaeologists. In Chapter 2, the authors examine rock art near rivers and streams. They begin with brief examples of sites located on the Kennebec, Connecticut, and Hudson Rivers. They also cover sites from Lenik's investigations and data collected from the Penobscot River in Maine and the Nemasket River in Massachusetts. Lenik and Gibbs then follow the Susquehanna River through New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, mentioning sites such as “Indian Steps,” Little Indian Rock, and Standing Stone. The rock art at these sites is unprotected from dams and vandalism.
The next two chapters cover lakeside and upland sites. Here, Lenik and Gibbs bring in oral histories and stories of cultural beings such as Gluskap from Maine and the horned serpent and Crane from Nova Scotia. These stories give a deeper insight into what the rock art images may depict.
Rock Art in an Indigenous Landscape shows how complicated deciphering the meaning of rock art can be. To understand rock art, one must have an understanding of the landscape from Indigenous perspectives. Indigenous voices and collaboration can help guide researchers toward better and more complete understandings of rock art within its landscape. The authors have significant experience and a passion for this subject, and readers get a sense of that energy and interest throughout this book. When looking for answers about rock art, it is easy to assume that certain images have a universal relationship, which is often an illusory correlation. For example, researchers often assume that entoptic images were drawn by shamans in trance states. I think Lenik and Gibbs associate geometric rock art with shamanistic practices too frequently. There is relatively scant evidence of this and no definitive proof, so this interpretation is premature. The authors do, however, admit that they do not have all the answers and that there is much more to understand about these interesting and important images.
The authors’ research and devotion to rediscovering and contextualizing these images gives the reader a sense of curiosity and adventure. This volume is straightforward and would appeal to a general audience. It left me looking more closely at rocks in my area.
