Picture rocks : American Indian rock art in the Northeast woodlands /

This volume surveys all known petroglyph and pictograph sites in the northeast, from Nova Scotia southward through all of the New England states to New York and New Jersey. It briefly reviews the history of northeastern rock art studies and explains how rock art is made. After a brief, perhaps even superficial, summary of Native American culture history in the northeast, Lenik devotes a chapter to each province and state in the region. Within each chapter, he presents a short description of each known rock art site, with some discussion of style, technique, and content. The abundant photographs are useful and mostly clear. Lenik regards rock art as an "expressive and symbolic system of visual communication." Rock art reflects, he asserts, cognitive and spiritual aspects of the culture in which it is embedded and must be studied in cultural and environmental context. Nevertheless, the volume shows that interpretations vary with the interpreters, and the cultural context is not always precisely known. Often the pictures cannot be dated with certainty. Still, this book is the only complete survey of the subject. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Public, museum, and college libraries. R. Berleant-Schiller emerita, University of Connecticut