Dr. Alan Garfinkel has studied animal-human headdresses in the eastern Mojave desert for much of his career. These items help shamans commune with the spirit world and show the people they support that prosperity is coming. What do these date to? What were they made of? All this and more on today's episode.
Chris Webster
Dr. Alan Garfinkel
Bighorn sheep were and are a major source of food, religion, and spirituality in many parts of the Americas. Dr. Garfinkel has studied rock art and shamanism in the Coso range of southeastern California and the surrounding areas and has a lot to say on this topic.
Chris Webster
Dr. Alan Garfinkel
This episode is a bit different. Dr. Garfinkel discusses and sketches his latest unpublished research into some new and rather revolutionary interpretations of Coso rock art. Coso rock art is located in eastern California and represents some of the greatest concentrations of rock art in the entire Western Hemisphere. It is surprisingly realistic and representational. We will dive into ancient archaic Utoaztecan religious thought and look at the relationships between Coso the American Southwest and into Mesoamerica!
Chris Webster
Dr. Alan Garfinkel
The ghost dance was a revitalistic movement that was most popular in the 1870s and 1890s. The religious leaders of the ghost dance movement were religious specialists who dreamed a prophetic vision. That vision included that the world was to be remade over and that the dead would come back to life and the world would return to the way it was before your Americans entered their lands. To usher in that New World native people were to dance around dance for several days day and night and that by praying and dancing and singing this would bring in a new world of peace and prosperity.
Anthropologists and archaeologists have identified about two dozen rock art sites that appear to commemorate or document this time of the religious movement of the ghost dance. These historic paintings are in many colors and depict dancers and the return of animals and plants and the return of the dead. The paintings also document and portray the principal religious beliefs of the participants in the movement which include a layered cosmos a depiction of the Thunderbird BighornSheep and other animals and a central white horse image.
Chris Webster
Dr. Alan Garfinkel
What? That's right. Arrowheads, or as archaeologists know them, projectile points, are sometimes carved or painted on rock as parts of people. In this episode we talk about projectile-pointed people and other depictions of projectile points in rock drawings.
Chris Webster
Dr. Alan Garfinkel
