Rock art of the Chumash people

Chumash rock art is a genre of paintings on caves, mountains, cliffs, or other living rock surfaces, created by the Chumash people of southern California. Pictographs and petroglyphs are common through interior California, the rock painting tradition thrived until the 19th century. Chumash rock art is considered to be some of the most elaborate rock art tradition in the region.

The Chumash are probably best known for the pictographs. Which were brightly colored paintings of humans, animals, and abstract circles. They were thought to be part of a religious ritual.

The Chumash lived in the present-day counties of Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo in southern California during the late period of history (ca. 1300 to 1804 CE). They were a maritime, hunter-gatherer society whose livelihood was based on the sea. They developed excellent skills for catching fish, shellfish, and other marine mammals. Beyond fishing, however, they were also skilled in creating rock art. Hudson and Blackburn define rock art as "an aesthetic, symbolic representation of significant concepts and entities that is painted on or carved into a rock surface." Rock art may have been created by shamans during vision quests, most commonly in the form of pictographs (paintings on rock), but sometimes petroglyphs (engravings on rock) as well. No one is absolutely certain about the meaning of the Chumash Rock art, but scholars generally agree that it is connected with religion and astronomy.

Chumash rock art is almost invariably found in caves or on cliffs in the mountains, although some small, portable painted rocks have been recorded by Campbell Grant. The rock art sites are always found near streams, springs, or some other source of permanent water. In his research of southern California rock art, Grant recorded numerous sites from different areas that were all close to a water source. He found twelve painted sites in the highest parts of the mountainous Chumash territory, the Ventureño area. The Ventura and Santa Clara Rivers and several coastal streams flow through this area. He also recorded forty-one painted rock art sites in the Cuyama Valley region (north of the Ventureño area), where the Sisquoc River flows between the San Rafael Mountains and the Sierra Madre Mountains. The most easily accessible example is at Painted Cave State Historic Park, which is located in canyons above Santa Barbara.

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