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This article appeared in Discovery Magazine 1997 |
Stone Sculptures From BC’s Distant
Past Anthropomorphic
stone bowl from the Gulf Islands 
Prehistoric stone sculptures in the Royal BC Museum’s
Archaeology Collection are silent memorials to a dimly remembered past.
In that world where survival depended on hunting and fishing skills, no
person would have called themself an artist by profession, but hunters’
lifelong intimacy with animals gave the highest form of artistic expression
to their creations.
The choice of stone as a medium was preferred to wood; pottery was unknown in ancient British Columbia. Prior to European contact, metal tools were not used in most areas of North America. The artists worked with stone tools, pecking and grinding stone upon stone, to mold from the rock the image in their mind. Zoomorphic
stone bowl from Rithet’s Bog in Victoria, BC 
Until more archaeological research provides a clearer
picture, we can only speculate on how stone sculpture developed in British
Columbia.
Probably the most ancient type of bowl was one made from a boulder. Of those found on the Northwest Coast and in many areas of North America, most show signs of use as mortars – most likely for grinding pigments, traces of which are still visible in some bowls. Widely used in rituals, a paint was made from hematite, a mineral that was burned and crushed in stone mortars and mixed with animal fat or fish oil. Such paint had many decorative and ceremonial uses ranging from facial painting to painting pictographs, some of which have lasted for hundreds of years. From examples found in archaeological excavations on the Northwest Coast, it is possible to date boulder bowls from about 3,000 years ago. Some are decorated with animal features. Hollowed-out boulders have been found along the Fraser River from Lytton to the coast and on Vancouver Island and in Puget Sound. Basalt
ridged bowl from the Queen Charlotte Islands 
Based on an analysis of form, distribution and art
style, it appears that animal and bird bowls evolved from the hollowed boulders
and simple-shaped bowls. What are thought to be the earliest bowls in bird-like
or fish-like forms have been found in the Gulf of Georgia area, a dynamic
focal point of First Nations culture for several thousand years, before
the arrival of Europeans. As stone sculpture spread to people along the
Fraser River, soapstone became the favoured medium, and bowls became more
elaborate, sometimes combining features of birds with mammals and reptiles.
Though the species of bird carved on the bowl is usually unidentifiable, some bowls definitely represent owls. According to some Salish-speaking peoples, certain guardian spirits, including owls which represent the spirits of the dead, gave the powers of clairvoyance and prophecy. Stone bowls or mortars in the shape of animals are widespread in western North America and are known the length of the British Columbia coast where wooden food dishes are also shaped like animals. Soapstone
owl bowl from Skagit River 
Of all forms of Salish stone sculpture, the most complex
are the "seated human figure bowls." These bowls are thought to have been
used by shamans. (See adjacent article.) The development of stone sculpture
among the Salish from simple boulder bowls to seated human figure bowls
may mark the growth of shamanism and ritualism in Salish culture.
On the northern coast, the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian had stone vessels for grinding native tobacco. It was dried, crushed in stone mortars and pressed into cakes. It was not smoked in a pipe but mixed with lime made from burnt shell and chewed, probably on important occasions. These northern tobacco mortars have not been found in circumstances that suggest great age; the art style used is the fully developed style of relatively recent times. They were also not made after the 1880s when native tobacco was no longer grown. Our Archaeology Collection has many fine examples of stone sculptures. Though the people who created these objects are long forgotten and their world little known to us, their artistry lives on. Nancy Romaine is Archaeology Collections
Manager at the RBCM.
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