2005 ESRARA ROCK ART CONFERENCE: AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT (ERNIE) BOSZHARDT

As a member of the Mid-America Geographic Foundation, I've been called on to serve as "media coordinator" for the 2005 ESRARA Rock Art Conference being held at Ripon College later this month. In that capacity, to call attention to the conference and to the study of rock art, I have prepared a news release and interviews with two of the conference participants; these went out Friday for release on May 9, 2005. I'm sharing that material here as well: on Monday, the news release; yesterday, an interview with conference organizer and presenter Jack Steinbring of Ripon College and the University of Wisconsin-Oshksoh; today, an interview with Robert (Ernie) Boszhardt of the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, who will speak at the ESRARA banquet and help lead the field trip to western Wisconsin.

Q. What is your official title?

Boszhardt: I tell people I'm that regional archeologist for western Wisconsin. My official title is Associate Director of the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

Q. How do you define "rock art?"

Boszhardt: Rock art consists of the symbols, designs, and stories carved or painted on rock surfaces, the walls of outcroppings and in caves; or the rock art may be portable, carved or etched onto stones. "Petroforms" are another form of rock art, but these are not plentiful in the unglaciated driftless area of western Wisconsin.

Q. How did you become interested in rock art?

Boszhardt: By accident. Early in my career, I tried to stay away from rock art because it was very frustrating. Rock art was difficult to date back then. To understand the past, you need to be able to date artifacts. And, secondly, it was difficult to interpret what the rock art meant. That is beginning to change, too, as an encyclopedia of rock art symbols is built up.

When I came to work in southwestern Wisconsin, I had to become involved in rock art because as much as 95% of the rock art in Wisconsin and the upper Midwest, in terms of number of sites, is found in the driftless area. In 1982, there were twenty known sites in Wisconsin. There was then an explosion of research into rock art around the world, and we started checking the known sites in this area and receiving information on other sites. There are now 200 known rock art sites in Wisconsin.

As reports about sites came in, I grew more and more interested. And then we found the "deep cave" sites. Deep cave rock art is that found in the area of the cave beyond the natural light, in the dark zone. "Rock shelters" still have natural light natural illuminating them. Deep caves require the rock art painters or carvers to take in artificial light. Wisconsin has lots and lots of limestone caves, but these tend to be very wet and clayish. They wouldn't be nice to live in and we don't see evidence of occupation in the limestone caves of Wisconsin. By contrast, sandstone caves are dry and they have soft, sandy floors. We have found rock art – paintings and carvings – deep in the dark zone in two sandstone caves in western Wisconsin.

The first thing we have to do at a new site is to document what is there, to map and record it. Then we work towards preserving the site, preventing vandalism and graffiti. One assumes that people putting up graffiti at the rock art sites where we've found it did not know anything about rock art, what was there, what they were destroying.

To protect rock art in a cave, we work with the land-owner to put up a gate at the entrance to the cave. Samuel's Cave is one of the oldest known rock art sites in Wisconsin. The art there was recorded in 1879. Subsequently it was vandalized. In the 1980s, we documented what remained at the site and worked with the land-owner to install a wooden gate, which vandals have since broken down with axes. We are trying to raise money to install a steel gate at Samuel's Cave, but it is currently unprotected.

At Tainter's Cave, which is the first of the true "deep cave" sites we've found, we worked with people who specialize in creating gates for caves, to create an environmentally-friendly gate. Bats can still go in and out, air can still circulate, but people can't get past it. On private property, working with the owners is critical to preserving a site. It is part of stewardship of the land.

Q. Describe the nature of your work with rock art during your career.

Boszhardt: My responsibilities towards rock art at the Mississippi Valley Archeology Center are these: I serve as the regional contact. I formulate management plans. I prepare documentation of the sites. I make public presentations. And I get to do some research.

Q. Talk about the rock art of western Wisconsin. What's here? Why is it here? What does it mean?

Boszhardt: Tainter Cave has 100 paintings in it. When we found it, we effectively doubled the number of known rock art paintings in Wisconsin. The paintings here tend to occur in panels. In the panels we can start to see stories being told. There is one panel deep in the cave that is split by a natural fracture in the rock surface. Above the split is the sky; there are birds up there. Beneath the split is the earth, represented in a deer-hunting scene. Because we can see that the deer are carrying fawn, we know it is late winter. The hunters in the scene are using bows and arrows to kill the deer. This information suggests the painting was done between 700-1100 A.D. Carbon dating of a small sample of pigment indicates the painting is about 1300 years old. So we know the date with some certainty. And we know the paintings are associated with the Effigy Mound people. What we find in the world view represented in the painting is very similar to the world view of the Effigy Mound people, plus we have a hunting scene set at a specific time of the year. We make the association with the Effigy Mound people because of the age of the painting, its location, and the correspondence in world views. We had mounds representing that culture, and now we've added rock art.

The only two "deep cave" rock art sites we have are Tainter Cave and Larsen Cave. Both of these are sandstone caves. The great vast majority of rock art in Wisconsin is on sandstone.

Why is there more rock art in southwest Wisconsin than elsewhere in this region? Because of the rock exposures here. This is an unglaciated area, which is not true of the Midwest generally. The medium for rock art existed here, those rock surfaces. If you go north into the Boundary Waters of Canada where there is lots of rock exposure, you find rock art. The same is true in the Ozarks.

What does the rock art mean? Certain images are easy to recognize – birds, humans, buffalo, elk, deer, and so on. But 75% of it is abstract symbols, a groove or a diamond, which are more difficult to interpret. Yet the more rock art we see, the easier it is to see patterns.

One of the keys to understanding is working with Native Americans. I took Ho-Chunk elders to that site, to interpret for us what is there. Some of the stories are not meant to be shared with outsiders and we have to respect their feelings in that regard.

Now, one might question how accurate is the interpretation made by a Ho-Chunk elder now of something that's 1300 years old. Well, they are much closer to the meaning than we are – they have an oral tradition, which admittedly is difficult to double-check scientifically. Yet like the Catholic Mass, ritual perpetuates itself.

Oral tradition can adapt and change, however, so we can't be one hundred percent sure that what the meaning used to be is the meaning now. When things get written down, they become fixed.

Q. Tell me about your book about the rock art of western Wisconsin. What can readers expect from it? Who published it? Where is it available?

My book is titled Deep Cave Rock Art in the Upper Mississippi Valley. It outlines the history of rock art in western Wisconsin and the upper Mississippi valley. It provides a description of the history and details of the Tainter and Larsen Caves. And it includes a "preservation message." The irony is that "rock" implies something sturdy and permanent, but that is not the case. Rock art is being lost in three ways: 1) by vandalism, where images are destroyed; 2) by graffiti, where images are painted or marked over, now with spray paint, which mars the surface; and 3) by nature itself – caves are formed by erosion and they'll continue to erode; in Wisconsin rock surfaces will continue to freeze and thaw.

The books was published by Prairie Smoke Press AND is available at the Prairie Smoke Press web site and also at the Mississippi Valley Archaeological Center web site. It sells for $24.95. Income from the sale of my book goes to a rock art preservation fund, so that someone buying the book is also contributing to the preservation of rock art.

Q. How would you explain rock art for today's busy and somewhat material-minded Americans? Why is rock art important? What is its significance to us? Why should we care about preserving it?

Boszhardt: If people could take half a day and sit at a site, they'd get a sense of the place. These are usually out in the countryside, away from the hustle and bustle of city life. You can sit there and look up to see paintings and carvings more than a thousand years old. You are looking at the world view that people expressed a thousand years ago.

The problem is that there are not many rock art sites openly accessible to the public. That is because of the fear of vandalism to the sites, such as the spray-painting at Roche-a-Cri. Or at the Goschell site, where a person tried to saw a piece of rock art out of the rock face and destroyed a pristine site in the process. The dilemma is this: you want to let people see the rock art, so they become excited about it, and at the same time you want to protect the rock art. It takes only one vandal to destroy a site.

Since we gated the Tainter Cave site in 2000, there has been only one visit to the cave. We are trying to preserve the site for the future, when we may have more sophisticated technologies which will allow us fuller understanding of what is there.

Why care? We live here. These rock art sites are part of the heritage of our area. Rock art and the Indian mounds give an appreciation of the landscape we live on. With urban sprawl and highways being built, our landscapes are rapidly being modified. The rock art sites are one place where we are preserving the world that existed before everything changed. Understanding rock art gives us a better appreciation of what this place is. As humans, we have a curiosity about the past. Other animals don't. The past touches people.

Q. What can participants expect to hear when you speak at the 2005 ESRARA Conference banquet?

Boszhardt: I'll present a historical perspective on rock art in western Wisconsin, highlighting Samuel's Cave but talking about the diversity of styles; and then I'll concentrate on the recent discoveries at Tainter Cave and Larsen Cave. If we have two deep cave sites, there are probably more and they may be pristine.

Q. As a guide for the far western portion of the field trip on May 20^th, you're in a position to describe what participants will see at the West Salem petroglyph sites. What can they expect?

Boszhardt: We'll see the Bell Coulee rock shelter, where there is a series of carvings, both abstract designs and buffalo. If there is time, we may go to Samuel's Cave as well.