ABSTRACT
Human societies endow the physical landscape with significant meaning, both historical and spiritual, and, as noted earlier, rock art is land literally marked with cultural texts. As the Crow examples show, rock art was created in specific places based on cultural concepts and uses of landscape; thus, the knowledge about that art and how it is to be interpreted relies on shared memories of historic Crow cultural uses of land. Although most historic rock art is a presentation, or description, of one individuals war honors, today this art collectively represents for Crow people a bygone era, a time when the warrior ethic held sway. Additionally, Nativist Crow philosophy holds that land is sacredsacred in a general sense, as all land contains spiritual power, and sacred in particular places, which are seen as charged with supernatural energy. Crow interpretations of pictographs and petroglyphs are as much about the rock face itself and its position on the land.
