Archaeology in Focus: The Vissotzky Petroglyphs

Join us for a fascinating lecture by the Archaeological Society of Alberta exploring the mysterious Vissotzky Petroglyphs!

Between 2019 and 2025 the Oregon Archaeological Society has been recording and analyzing the Vissotzky Petroglyphs, located near Whitefish, Montana. Pecked into a horizontal bedrock outcrop just above a small glacial lake, the more than 700 petroglyphs include some 200 animal tracks, numerous human and animal images, and a dozen atlatls. Many of the animal tracks are arrayed in trackways representing animals walking across the site area. Analyses so far completed have focused on trackways, chronology, vision quest imagery, and the hyper-sexual representations of men and birthing women.

My presentation will focus on the site’s chronology, its close ties to the Cranbrook site in southeastern British Columbia, and the newly discovered use of narrative compositions in late Archaic culture.