At the water’s edge: an integration of ethnographic and archaeological methods in the study of rock art in Northern Central British Columbia, Canada

Pictographs occur frequently in the landscapes of northern central British Columbia, but they have received modest academic attention. As a result, there is limited understanding of rock art as social practice and its significance within larger cultural landscapes. This research integrates First Nations traditional knowledge with archaeological data in order to investigate the waterscape context and iconography of pictographs across three First Nations traditional territories. The insights into the rock markings provided by First Nations elders offer important informed perspectives about the images and the landscape that, when combined with archaeological data and formal analytical processes, enable the study of the social understanding of rock art and its context within the expansive territories of this region.