Pictograph discoveries have been made in Quetico Park and at Lake of the Woods in northwestern Ontario. Although sites at Bon Echo Provincial Park in southern Ontario and at Lake Superior Provincial Park near Wawa, Ontario are well known, the majority of Pictograph sites in the Canadian Shield are less extensive in scale and contain fewer image clusters compared to carving sites. His brother Wolf a snake or Mishipeshu under a canoe shows the danger of those beings, which tip canoes and drown their passengers. Other iconographic themes also appear regularly: a figure with horns or rabbit ears accompanied by a wolf probably represents Nananbozo and Lightning, which is materialized in the composition by a seam of quartz. For instance, the battle between Thunderbird and the Horned Snake is often depicted as the bird killing the reptile with Or mineral seams (mostly quartz) shows an organization of space and a composition that stage the different mythological elements. Humans and other animals in the middle, and the underworld beings (the Horned Snake or Mishipeshu, the big lynx) at the inferior level.

It has been showed that in painting sites, the arrangement of symbols corresponds to the ordering of the spiritual world in different levels: the Thunderbirds above, Aesthetic order is in accord with nature, and images are often integrated with the numerous hollows, crevices and seams of the rock itself. That there is no deliberate grouping of images. Here, there are no pictorial boundaries such as frames or groundlines, and it seems Is the most outstanding in all of Canada with its several hundred images of humans, animals and boats, all contained on a single rock outcrop of crystalline limestone. The Peterborough petroglyph site in southern Ontario (see Petroglyphs Provincial Park)

The Canadian Shield, which extends from Rivière St-Maurice in Québec to northern Saskatchewan,Ĭounts more than 500 pictograph sites, while petroglyph sites are confined to the south. In addition to this traditional iconography, there are also images of European origin, such as firearms, churches and Christian designs as well as beautiful representation of sailboats. Ornamental designs that are also found on Mi’kmaq clothes. Images include animals, anthropomorphic figures, hunting and fishing scenes, footprints and fingerprints, and Some of them are found in Kejimkujik National Park,Īt Medway River and MacGowan Lake, and in southwest Nova Scotia. The Maritime provinces count many rock art sites that are usually attributed to the Mi'kmaq.Įssentially composed of petroglyphs, this art generally consists of fine incisions made on slate rocks along the shores of lakes and rivers. The Prairies, British Columbia and the Arctic. Several broad regions of rock art 'style areas' have been distinguished, including the Maritimes, the Canadian Shield, Rock art in much of Canada is linked with the search for helping spirits and with shamanism - a widespread religious tradition in which the shaman’s major tasks are healing and prophesy,Īlong with the vision quest. The tradition of rock art was no doubt brought into Canada by its earliest occupants during the last ice age. No foolproof method for the precise dating of rock art has been discovered, other than speculative association with stratified, relatively datable archaeological It is part of a worldwide genre of rock art, which includes the cave paintings of SpainĪnd France as well as the rock art of Scandinavia, Finland, northeast Asia and Siberia. In fact, pictographs and petroglyphs may constitute Canada's oldest and most widespread artistic tradition. Rock art sites have been discovered throughout Canada. Previous Next Pictographs and Petroglyphs in Canada

Ancient cave paintings names glyphs