Monumental snake engravings of the Orinoco River (2024)

Summary

Introduction In this article, we report on a unique South American tradition of monumental rock art and link it to the extant archaeological and ethnographic knowledge of the Orinoco River in its regional context. In concert with a growing interest in pre-Columbian art across the lowland tropics more broadly, Orinoco rock art has seen a recent rise in research attention (Riris Reference Riris2017; Riris & Oliver Reference Riris and Oliver2019; Tarble de Scaramelli & Scaramelli Reference Tarble de Scaramelli and Scaramelli2021; Pérez-Goméz et al. Reference Pérez–Gómez, Antczak, Antczak and Brewer-Carias2022). Areas of focus include the role of rock art in the peopling of the Americas, connections between Indigenous myth and art production, and the historical ecological knowledge that the art can embody (Valle et al. Reference Valle, Lopez, Tuyuka and Munduruku2018; Castaño-Uribe Reference Castaño-Uribe2019; Pereira & Moraes Reference Pereira and Moraes2019; Castiblanco Muñoz Reference Castiblanco Muñoz2020; Morcote-Rios et al. Reference Morcote-Ríos, Aceituno, Iriarte, Robinson and Chaparro-Cárdenas2021; Villar Quintana Reference Villar Quintana2021). The number of motif types shared across large parts of northern South America has led scholars to suggest the existence of several, sometimes overlapping, traditions of Indigenous art production (Williams Reference Williams, Wendell and Close1985; Reichel-Dolmatoff Reference Reichel-Dolmatoff1987; Greer Reference Greer1995; Overing Reference Overing and Arnold1996; Pereira Reference Pereira, McEwan, Barreto and Neves2001; Valle Reference Valle2012; Castaño-Uribe Reference Castaño-Uribe2019). The Middle Orinoco in particular hosts an exceptional quantity of petroglyph (rock engraving) and pictograph (rock painting) sites. The ‘hotspot’ status of our study area (Dubelaar Reference Dubelaar1986), together with a noteworthy diversity of motifs (Sujo Volsky Reference Sujo Volsky1975; Greer Reference Greer1995; Costas-Goberna...