Tidbits

• Archaeological evidence suggests Head-Smashed-In was used almost continuously by the Peigan and earlier peoples in the area for at least 6,000 years
• Head-Smashed-In is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site, placing it in the company of the Pyramids at Giza, the Palace of Versailles and Machu Picchu for its importance to global culture
• Historical archaeology plays a major role in the study of fur trade and mission sites
• The Blackfoot or Siksika, the people of the Blackfoot Nation which dominated Southern Alberta several hundred years ago, named the site along the Milk River Aisinai'pi - "it has been written." What they found (and what they themselves augmented) were hundreds of petroglyphs (rock carvings) and pictographs (rock paintings), the largest single concentration of Aboriginal rock art on the North American plains
• While Archaeological evidence suggests that people have camped at Writing-On-Stone for at least 3,000 years, it appears most of the rock art is between 100 and 500 years old with some of the depictions possibly as old as 1,000 years. Very early works may have simply weathered away
• The petroglyphs (incised, using sharpened bone or stone) and the pictographs (painted, using ochre - iron ore mixed with water) vividly record in stylized fashion both the ceremonial and biographical details of Aboriginal life
• Details of daily life include the accomplishments of successful hunters and warriors, the weapons they used (bows and spears), the animals they hunted (bison, bear ,mountain sheep, deer and antelope) and the enemies they slew
• The spectacular cliffs and otherworldly rock formations of Writing-On-Stone undoubtedly quickened the spiritual pulse of Alberta's first peoples. Many of the details carved into the rock - heraldic devices on shields, headdresses of horns and sunbursts, cryptic lines and shapes - appear to have a ceremonial purpose and may represent the relationship between individuals and the spirit world or commemorate visions
• Such art is strongly associated with the vision quest, the rite of passage in which a young person fasted in an isolated and sacred location waiting for a guiding vision, even though Writing-On-Stone was not a typical vision quest site
• Since the Blackfoot believed the "writings" were the work of the spirit world in earlier times, Elders often visited Writing-On-Stone to consult the rock art for signs and portents and to create new works based on their own visions of the spirit world
• Life changed dramatically for the Aboriginal People of Alberta with the arrival of Europeans. That change is readily discernible in the altered style and content of the glyphs, notably by renderings of the horse and the gun, each of which was introduced into the area after about 1730AD. In pre-contact glyphs, human figures are represented by either distinctive V-neck or rectangular body shapes, accompanied by lances, bows or clubs, and, notably, by large shields with heraldic designs. After 1730, the human figures become more stick-like, less precise in execution but more fluid in motion, often engaged riding horses in combat

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