{"id":4555,"date":"2026-01-28T16:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T15:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eveha-international.com\/?p=4555"},"modified":"2026-02-24T15:40:38","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T14:40:38","slug":"bear-island-2019-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eveha-international.com\/?p=4555&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Bear Island – 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Direction
S\u00e9bastien Perrot-Minnot <\/strong>(Eveha International)<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
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How Eveha Participates
<\/strong>Project Direction<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Location
United States of America<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Location of rock painting sites on Kachemak Bay and Cook Inlet. Base map: USGS \/ The National Map.

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As part of the Bear Island Project, S\u00e9bastien Perrot-Minnot undertook a mission to Alaska last September. On that occasion, he met with the project\u2019s partners, did some documentary research, examined and photographed the stone artifacts from Bear Island kept at the Pratt Museum, and visited SEL-00036 with Janet Klein. During that visit, a survey of the area and a first photographic recording of the decorated rock wall were performed. Thanks to Alaska USGS Geologists Frederic Wilson and Sue Karl, the rock which was painted could be characterized as silicified siltstone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After his return from mission, S\u00e9bastien Perrot-Minnot enhanced the pictures of the decorated rock wall with the DStretch plugin for the ImageJ program, which allowed him to see already known pictographs more clearly, and to identify a number of new pictographs, including the above-mentioned polychrome motif (polychromy is exceptional in Southcentral Alaska rock art). Moreover, for the first time, all the pictographs were located on an image of the decorated rock wall, in order to have an overview of the rupestrian manifestations and to think about their distribution, which shows intriguing aspects. The comparative study of the iconography has already revealed significant analogies with other Southcentral Alaska rock art sites, located on Kachemak Bay, Cook Inlet but also Prince William Sound and Kodiak Island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Current research evidence suggests that the Bear Island paintings are expressions of the Kachemak Tradition, which appears in Kodiak around 1500 BC and on the Kenai Peninsula about 5 centuries later, to disappear between 600 and 1000 AD. This cultural entity has been attributed to the Alutiiq or \u201cPacific Eskimo\u201d. So, the Bear Island Project could make it possible to define, on a regional scale, a \u201crock art identity\u201d of Kachemak Tradition\u2019s Alutiiq. For the rest, the rupestrian iconography and ethnographic evidence leads one to think that the Bear Island rock paintings related to hunting rituals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Drawing of a few pictographs of Bear Island, by Frederica de Laguna (1933).

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Aspect of the rock art site of Bear Island. Photo: S\u00e9bastien Perrot-Minnot.

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Fieldwork at the Bear Island site. Photo : Janet Klein.

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Slate \u201cUlu\u201d (a kind of knife of Native tradition) found on Bear Island and preserved at the Pratt Museum, Homer. Photo: S\u00e9bastien Perrot-Minnot.

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Photograph of the Bear Island decorated rock wall, enhanced with DStretch. Images: S\u00e9bastien Perrot-Minnot

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Photograph of the Bear Island decorated rock wall, enhanced with DStretch. Images: S\u00e9bastien Perrot-Minnot

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Campagnes <\/h2>\n\n\n