00:01.10 Alan Out there in archaeology podcast land this is your host for the rock art podcast episode 73 we ah are blessed and honored to have trace Fleeman Garcia an interdisciplinary scholar. The Oregon Institute for creative research and we're gonna sort of ah roll through this and talk a bit about talk about and it's an esoteric subject but 1 that's near and dear to my heart called semiotics and we're gonna ah, drill down and talk about. Meaning and metaphor in symbols trace. So you're there trace. It's an honor and a real real blessing. We yeah have only met recently very recently at the society for California archaeology meetings there in vicealia. 00:43.28 Trace Fleeman Garcia Yes I am. 00:58.37 Trace Fleeman Garcia Yeah, my hometown. Yes, we did absolutely. 00:58.41 Alan And we ah certainly became fast friends didn't we hometown? Yeah so and trace Why don't Why don't you give the listeners sort of a thumbnail sketch of what the heck semiotics is and why it might even be relevant to the study of rock art. 01:16.14 Trace Fleeman Garcia So classically semiotics is considered as the science of signs and um, that is um, a definition that comes up all across the literature and semiotics is a ah, very wide and generally interdisciplinary field. Um. 01:17.21 Alan Has that? okay. 01:34.35 Trace Fleeman Garcia But a lot of connections between anthropology but also in mathematics in Symbolic logic. Um, in linguistics of course, um, especially um, but of course that doesn't really explain very much as to what semiotics actually is um, a better definition. Ah, might be that semiotic studies the process of meaning making um or semiosis um across different disciplines across different codes across different mediums. 02:09.56 Trace Fleeman Garcia Semiotics was ah first developed in the early nineteen hundreds by ferdinand de sasour um, and um, an american philosopher named. Um, oh why can't I remember his first name. Um his last name is purce. 1 second good. 02:32.26 Trace Fleeman Garcia Charles Sanders purse of course it is um so semiotics was first developed in um, in the early nineteen hundreds by Ferdinand Deaur who was a french theorist um and one of the founding fathers of modern linguistics and. Charles Sanders purse in the United States um generally semiotic theory is more so aligned with Peirce's notion of the sign but sosor has a lot of influence still especially in the linguistic side of things on the linguistic side of things. Um. He's also considered one of the founders of modern linguistics as I said um, indeed he actually calls semiotics a form of general linguistics. Um, when he first actually defines the word when he first coins the word. 03:22.18 Alan And I think in the world of rock art myself Carolyn Boyd and certainly David Whitley and and just a very few others my ah colleague from ah the guanawato university yeah in Mexico. Has used the terminology um in attempting to examine the signs symbols and individual elements that are recurring in the archeological record that we find on rock art and I think that's been. Ah, somewhat useful and and of of great value to us to begin to sort of wrap our minds around the meanings of meanings as you put it or the you know the intention of these particular symbols and just exactly. How and what they're trying to communicate has that? yeah. 04:20.39 Trace Fleeman Garcia Yeah, that definitely that definitely fits um as I mentioned semiotics is a very wide discipline and um, how semiotics is considered and how it's actually done across those disciplines. Um, for example. In Biosemiotics which studies the so ah the life of the life of signs and the signs of life. Um, how it considers signs and the process of semiosis and meaning making is a lot different than seio semiotics as it crops up in structulist anthropology. Um. Sort of the um middle of the twentieth century and different still than how semiotics crops up in literary theory and in critical theory which is my background I would say critical theory the basis for my interdisciplinary notions. 05:07.20 Alan So tell me a bit about yeah tell me a bit about critical theory and how or what that would be of relevance to our work in the world of. 05:16.82 Trace Fleeman Garcia So critical theory is um, like semiotics is a very wide field. Um, generally I like to explain it as this theory of critique. Um or not necessarily criticism but critique. Um. There are 2 main schools of critical theory. Um, there is more so the french side of things with thinkers like Foucault. Um Jac Dedida and um Leotard are 3 very big ones. Um and the marxist theory of. 05:48.46 Alan O. 05:53.66 Trace Fleeman Garcia Or marxist model of critical theory which is associated more deeply with the frankfurt school with thinkers like adorno and um with thinkers like Adorno and Benjamin and other ah other primarily german- speakingaking philosophers critical theory. Um. Has very close relationships to semiotics. Um, especially through um writers like Roland Barth and um, even early in foucault's work. He writes a lot about semionics and signs and specifics. Um so critical theory is this very broad term. Um, just like semiotics. Um, but it has it has a more it has more of a focus on criticism and critique critique is interpretation but also cultural critique um cultural criticism. Um. 06:31.71 Alan Right. 06:46.44 Trace Fleeman Garcia Some have said that Nietzsche is the father of critical theory in the west. 06:48.68 Alan Okay, so I guess to bring it down to something that maybe our listenership might understand or might grasp or sort of hang their hat on. Um there is this concept called indexical animals have you. 07:08.30 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um, yes, yes I have. 07:08.39 Alan Have you run across that trace in indexxical animals and there's been a couple of papers written about that and and 1 of those indexical animals that I could bring up a couple of them but that I that's been near and dear to my heart of course is the desert bighorn or the other one that we've been focused on of course is the. 07:27.44 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um. 07:28.19 Alan Serpent But what those indexical animals tell us about the cultural malu of the indigenous people that depict them is. There's a ah package ah a set of compound metaphors. That relate to the imagery that is used on their rock art and paxed quite a lot of multiple Meanings impreated meanings that help us understand the imagery now they're. Powerfully religious. They're Sacred. They're also involved with some of the mundane elements of hunting but also fertility and rain and etc etc and only as we begin to study these images and think about them linguistically And. Ah, ethnographically and from every other angle sometimes through habits and Habitat of the animals themselves. Can we really begin to get a sense of the significance and the understanding of the way these particular symbols were nested. And the cognitive map of the universe for these people and it's very revelatory once one can get to that particular level does that make any sense trace. 08:52.38 Trace Fleeman Garcia Absolutely um I would consider this to be 1 of the most fertile places where semiotics could cross into archeology and into ethnography. Um, there is already. Um, it seems to be some crossover from the. Rhetoric of semiotics. The the vocabulary of semiotics here. Um, there are generally considered to be 3 main categories of signs and classical semiotics and those are the index the symbol and the um. Index the symbol and the icon and of course an icon is something that it is exactly what it sounds like something that actually mimics what it represents whereas an index is something that's kind of interestingly here is something that has. 09:28.97 Alan E. 09:44.13 Trace Fleeman Garcia Kind of a natural relationship. So the the classical example of that would be that smoke is an index of fire. Um, that smoke is an index ah of fire. Um, and of course this is um in classical semionics. These definitions have shifted slightly over the years over the. 09:49.60 Alan What right. 10:00.10 Alan E. 10:02.40 Trace Fleeman Garcia Ah, now up to 100 years of semiotics existence in the west although some would like to point out semiotics roots in in medieval europe in um, the writings of of porphyry and even St Augustine um 10:12.50 Alan So so for instance, as an example just to bring this you know, full full court full circle as it were um the the book that I'm writing with and have written with Tertha is called the iconicity. 10:19.24 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um, oh. 10:32.36 Alan Of the Udo s Teans and so and and so what we're attempting to do is ah is historically talk about the evolution of certain key symbols and how those are tethered. 10:33.10 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um. 10:50.84 Alan And nested in the cosmology and the religious perspective of people that have been classed as associated with ah an overarching linguistic unit known as Uto aztecns and how the. 11:07.54 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um, this is. 11:10.33 Alan Environment and their cultures and habits and habitats and sociopolitical organization et Cetera has sort of focused in ah and in a way on these central Hallmark Elements. They can be something as simple as ah as the as a symbol for water. A simple for a serpent a feathered serpent ah on and on and the rattlesnake as Well. So All of these different packages which ah seem somewhat mundane. And simple end up being highly highly complex as you're well aware. 11:53.69 Trace Fleeman Garcia Yes, um, one of the advantages that semiotics gives to the analyses or to the analysis of things like rock art but also any cultural text. Um that that notion of text is a lot wider in semiotics than it is in. Literary theory for example or non-semiotic literary theory. Um, but 1 of the advantages advantages it gives is that it allows one to investigate and and interrogate the um, underlying grammar and um, syntax. Of symbols in things that are wider than linguistics and as I mentioned ferdinand de saor very closely allied semiotics to linguistics. Um, although he wanted to broaden the field a little bit. Um actually a lot and he did end up broadening the field. Um. There has been critique on the side of semioticians and non-semiticians alike that semiotics um, uses linguistics as kind of a metaphor for everything else. Um that it just kind of. Invades other fields with linguistic rhetoric. But um, a lot of cinematic semiticians have for example, um, moved the notion of the text away from words and speaking and these metaphors of words and speaking talking about how signs speak. Um, rather to a visual grammar. Um, and in within the field of cinema um, how films communicate through a different form of syntax that of the shot and that of the um and that of the transition. Um. 13:40.20 Alan So so some of the things that at at another level that we get into in our book and in our research and writing is something called Neuro theology. It's also called Neurophysiology or or cognitive archeology. 13:56.80 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um. 13:58.35 Alan And I know that that turtha coming from the art history side and also the visual anthropology side and also some of the you know ah I don't know what you'd call this but anyways has um. Has broadened our understanding or or noted and argues that signs themselves in certain ways. Evoke neurological responses when 1 perceives them and those neurological responses that neurophysiology. Can in fact, elicit certain feelings and these feelings ah are a bit are cross-cultural and sometimes almost embedded as as something that one might call an instinct or a deeply seeded and ingrained physiological response. Where people over time and place have a ah similar sense of the significance and meaning or how would you put this the ah the feeling that this these particular images are meant to evoke. Does that make any sense to you to trace. Yeah, so talk a bit about that. 15:13.48 Trace Fleeman Garcia Absolutely um I think so um I think a good word for that that feeling that you would get from looking at a sign or from recognizing a sign um in critical theory we might describe as affect. Um as affect. 15:27.80 Alan Um, yes after thank you? yes. 15:33.20 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um, so the intersections between neurology and meeting making processes. Um is it has a very deep history. Um, in semionics. Um, so in the early years in the early years of the ah first half of the Twentieth century. Um, you get. Thinkers from psychoanalysis. Um, in particular Yac La Khan who um draws a lot on linguistics and semiotics in particular um, adopting the notion of the sign um into psychoanalysis. So this is where we start to see the roots of um. 16:08.23 Alan Yeah, yeah, absolutely well let's look. 16:10.77 Trace Fleeman Garcia Psychological and cognitive interest in semionics. In fact, um, lacon is credited with speaking of of he says that the unconscious is structured like a language. 16:21.43 Alan Oh My word. Interesting. Let's let's stop there and we'll pick it up on the other side and continue this this so very unusual discussion of the esoteric area of signs and meanings and semiotics and we're gonna. Bring it on home and begin to talk about how that relates back to rock guard see in the Flip-flop gang.