ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ontology of Indigenous South-Central California with a focus on the colorful pictographs of the Chumash. It argues that interpretations of rock art from shamanic perspectives have dehistoricized the art and cast imagery within essentialist cognitive terms, effectively curtailing the possibility of interpreting the images as something more than the standard outward expression of a universal neuropsychological function. Interpretations of rock art based on the shamanic model of the American Far West remains the dominant theory. Various rock art elements appear to represent transmorphic beings, either during their process of transformation, or more commonly as a collage of different forms, each part of which seems to be representative of some form of sentience. The overemphasis on brain function and the pursuit of an internal origination of specific imagery has resulted in limited attention to the associated archaeology and the constituent characteristics of the design.
