Studying Rock Art of the Columbia Plateau
By Nancy Tran, Reed Wallsmith, and Monica Ontiveros

In 1995 we were excited to be notified that we were three of the ten young scholars chosen by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) from more than fifty applicants to record ancient American Indian rock art. Although all three of us live in Portland, Oregon, we didn't know each other before that summer. Our other teammates came from as far away as New York, Massachusetts, and California.

Our goal was to document two American Indian pictograph (rock painting) sites and conduct our own research on some aspect of rock art. We camped out for six weeks in the Columbia Plateau canyonlands of central Oregon while we did our research.

Our team of fourteen people included the ten high- school juniors and seniors from across the United States. Dan Leen, an archaeologist from Seattle, Washington, led the group along with three assistants. Jim Keyser, U.S. Forest Service regional archaeologist, and Jeff Gottfried, OMSI Vice-president for Science Education, directed the project. Throughout the summer, archaeologists from Oregon, Washington, and California came to talk and work with us and teach us how to do rock art research.

Our 1995 adventure was sponsored by four institutions. OMSI got a grant from the National Science Foundation and used the money to hire our team leader and assistants, provide facilities, and buy the food we ate. Two government agencies, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) provided campsites and rock art experts who helped us record sites, and we helped these agencies by surveying for sites on National Forest and BLM land.

For the first three weeks we stayed at OMSI's Camp Hancock field station near Fossil, Oregon. We ate in the dining hall and met other kids who were there for other summer science camps. Each day we rode in a van for an hour to get to two sites which had more than 100 pictographs! We recorded the ancient paintings by photography and tracings on clear plastic. This helped us get information for our own research projects. Later in the summer we camped in the field where we had to cook our own food. There we completed our own research projects and hiked up Black Canyon and Murderer's Creek to find new sites and began recording them too. Finally, we ended our project at Reed College in Portland where we finished our individual research projects and presented reports to the entire Young Scholars group, their advisors, and some of our parents.

We learned many things about rock art, Indians, and science on our project. Probably the main thing was that there are several steps which archaeologists go through to investigate rock art. The first step is to FIND A SITE. Usually you talk with people who might know where undocumented rock art can be found, but sometimes you just hike around looking for sites. For our project, the main sites had been found more than thirty years ago, but never completely recorded. Later in the summer we got to find some new sites too. After you find a site, you must CAREFULLY RECORD THE SITE. First you take pictures of each design, and then you make drawings or tracings of the glyphs. We traced each design on clear plastic using felt pens. This sort of recording is only done under the leadership of a qualified expert who decides exactly where and how the plastic is placed so that the site is not damaged. Finally, you make a map of the site which shows where each design is located and how to get to there.

After collecting data from the site, archaeologists must DO RESEARCH by EXPERIMENTING and ANALYZING the information. They try to understand what the pictures mean. To do this they do comparative research checking to see if the designs are like others at other sites. They can date some of the art and even make copies of it to understand what tools were used to carve petroglyphs or understand what the paint was made from. At the end of the project the archaeologist must PUBLISH THE RESULTS. In order for others to benefit from archaeological work, a paper must be published. We all wrote research papers and presented them at a meeting of the Young Scholars program. Some of our papers have already been used in further research!

So what were the most interesting things about our site? For Reed Wallsmith it was thinking about the people who made the pictographs and petroglyphs, and what their lives were like. Nancy Tran had similar thoughts: "On our first visit to a rock art site," she said, "I thought, WOW, someone stood right where I am hundreds of years ago and decided to draw a picture. It was amazing to see the work of someone from a completely different culture and time period." Monica Ontiveros found the setting of the site the most magnificent thing. "I think the site itself made the rock art stand out more," she said, "as you walked up to this big cave there was a waterfall right through its center. Bright green bushes, red and yellow flowers, and orange paintings seemed to make a picture with every color you could imagine. The only disappointment was the horrible graffiti covering some of the pictographs."

Each of us conducted independent rock art research. Projects included the manufacture and application of pigments to portable rocks that could be artificially "weathered" by sitting them in the sun or underwater, or freezing them in the mess hall freezer. Some students did design classification, or petroglyph replication (making exact copies using the same tools the Indians would have used). Others studied the relationship of some designs to others in the site, trying to understand why the ancient artists painted in certain places but not in others.

Reed Wallsmith experimented with creating entoptic designs to see if they were reproduced in the rock art at these sites. "I decided to investigate entoptics (Ent-op-ticks)" said Reed, "because they are the visual patterns you see when you squint and then lightly press on your eyelids. For my project, I had thirty volunteers draw pictures of what they saw when they did this. I then compared these drawings to ancient pictographs and found many similarities." Nancy Tran studied the natural weathering of rock art. "First I examined the sites we visited for any evidence of weathering, and researched all the types of weathering that I found," she said. "Then I painted on rocks with various kinds of pigments and subjected my paintings to different forms of weathering. Some I placed in a river, others I rubbed with branches. My results showed which types of weathering were most destructive and what pigments were most affected."

Monica Ontiveros compared the two sites we recorded with rock art from other areas of the Columbia Plateau. "I did research and drew many sketches," she said. "I compared such things as how many tally (counting) marks were at a site, and whether there were complicated spirit figures. I also found out where the paintings were done in red and white, or just in red paint. I found sites that made me think the same people who painted along the Columbia River were the ones who made the sites I studied."

The Young Scholars work will be used for further study at these sites. Jim Keyser, project co-director, says, "This year a group of archaeologists will do a complete study of both of these sites, and the records and research from the Young Scholars has already been used in that effort. We are very fortunate to have had these kids channel their interest into something so positive."

Because of the remoteness of many of the rock art sites, we were set apart from "civilization" and exposed to a variety of unique experiences. At Hancock field station we ate meals prepared by camp cooks, and were allowed two showers a week. We often went swimming in the nearby river. In our field camp, though, things were worse--NO SHOWERS, NO COOKS, and GIANT MOSQUITOS. We also had close encounters with rattlesnakes and a storm with golf-ball-sized hail, and once we were forced to take down a camp that we had just spent hours setting up to allow a Life Flight helicopter to land. But the summer wasn't always this tortuous. Highlights for some of us included going horseback riding and white water rafting for the first time, and for one boy going 40 days without taking a single shower!

"The only disappointment was the horrible graffiti covering some of the pictographs." ---Monica Ontiveros

Biographies:

Nancy Tran of Portland, Oregon, enjoys reading and playing the violin.

Reed Wallsmith of Portland, Oregon, enjoys playing saxophone and tennis.

Monica Ontiveros of Portland, Oregon, hopes to have a career in a science field when she graduates from college.