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Materials science insights into Indigenous rock art painters and ochre pigment materiality at Babine Lake, Canada

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Abstract

Pictographs, and the landscape formations they are featured upon, are culturally significant places among Indigenous communities. Here, we present the results of a field survey and compositional analysis of pictographs and the mineral pigments used to produce them at Babine Lake (British Columbia), in the traditional territory claimed by the Lake Babine Nation, the Tl’azt’en Nation, and the Yekooche Nation. The monochrome motifs are produced with iron oxide mineral pigments (red ochre), and are all painted on prominent, open-air rock faces overlooking deep water. This study also includes collection and analysis of red ochre pigment sources within the area for comparison to the pictographs. Using a series of microanalytical methods applied to the local raw materials and rock art paints, we offer insights into characteristics of pigment materiality, such as artistic selection of minerals with different physicochemical properties and the chaîne opératoire of paint preparation. Our results show that rock art painters active at Babine Lake chose a diversity of iron oxide types to produce different pigment mixtures with distinctive properties, including the harvesting and thermal enhancement of iron-rich biominerals from colonies of aquatic, iron-oxide-producing bacteria.

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Funding

This fieldwork was developed in consultation with Georgina West (LBN Nat. Resources Officer), and was completed under British Columbia Archaeology Branch permit #2019-0186. We are grateful to Lake Babine Nation for the opportunity to conduct this fieldwork on their traditional territory. Funding for fieldwork was supported by a University of Missouri Research Council Grant (URC-19-114). Scientific analyses were supported in part by a University of Missouri Material Science and Engineering Seed Grant (CD002184), and by a National Science Foundation grant (BCS-2208558) awarded to the Archaeometry Lab at MURR.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Archaeometry Laboratory, University of Missouri Research Reactor, Columbia, MO, USA

    Brandi L. MacDonald & Alexa Kuo

  2. Materials Science and Engineering Institute, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

    Brandi L. MacDonald

  3. Department of Anthropology, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, BC, Canada

    Farid Rahemtulla & Kwun Whess

  4. Lake Babine Nation, Burns Lake, BC, Canada

    Kwun Whess

  5. Electron Microscopy Core, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

    David Stalla

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  1. Brandi L. MacDonald
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  2. Alexa Kuo
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  3. Farid Rahemtulla
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  4. Kwun Whess
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  5. David Stalla
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Contributions

Manuscript writing: B.L.M., with contributions from all authors. Fieldwork: B.L.M., F.R., K.W. Formal analysis: B.L.M., A.K. D.S. Funding acquisition: B.L.M., F.R., D.S.

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Correspondence to Brandi L. MacDonald.

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MacDonald, B.L., Kuo, A., Rahemtulla, F. et al. Materials science insights into Indigenous rock art painters and ochre pigment materiality at Babine Lake, Canada. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 16, 56 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-024-01953-2

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