Native American rock art is well known in part due to its lengthy pedigree of research, but also due to numerous examples of world-class artistry. This is especially true for western North American rock art, where a series of regional styles are renowned for their aesthetic appeal. Perhaps naturally enough (given the human attraction to beauty), many of the most influential early studies, starting with Julian Steward's (Reference Steward1929) California and Great Basin synthesis, highlighted these Western corpora, almost as if no rock art existed in other parts of the continent. Most ignored was the Eastern Woodlands. Indeed, in Klaus Wellman's (Reference Wellman1979) encyclopaedic compendium of North American research to that date, only eight per cent of his discussion addressed this region, extending roughly eastward from the Mississippi Valley, although it constitutes about one-fifth or more of the continent. Most archaeologists assumed that little rock art was made in this vast region, and/or that it has not been preserved or that it is simply very difficult to see due to dense vegetation. Regardless of cause, eastern North America was a true rock art research backwater.

This situation has begun to change in the last two decades as a result of a series of important discoveries, detailed studies and significant publications. The culmination of this change in status—although not the end of research—is the publication of the first landmark study of eastern North American rock art, Picture Cave: unravelling the mysteries of the Mississippian cosmos. In a lengthy series of edited chapters contributed by a distinguished and wide-ranging group of authors, the volume documents and analyses the art from a remarkable dark-zone cave in Missouri, linked geographically, temporally and artistically to Cahokia, the centre of one of the greatest Native American civilisations. More than simply a testament to that painted cave, this volume places eastern North American rock art and research in their rightful place, fully alongside the best work on the rest of the continent.

Divided into five sections, the volume begins with an overview of the site and the interdisciplinary research that has been conducted there over the past two decades. Diaz-Granados's introductory summary of the research programme highlights three points that are emphasised throughout the volume. The site dates from late Woodland into Mississippian times, or very roughly from the mid-first to the mid-second millennium AD, and it is culturally affiliated with Cahokia. The occupants of Cahokia and creators of Picture Cave were Dhegihan Sioux speakers, and their most visible descendants are the Osage Nation, now resident in Oklahoma due to historical dislocations. And, inasmuch as Picture Cave is culturally affiliated with Cahokia, the Dhegihan Sioux ethnographic record is the key to interpreting the art. Simek and Cressler next contextualise this site with respect to other eastern US dark-zone caves, demonstrating that, rather than unique, it is one expression of a widespread and ancient tradition. The important implication, they state, is that an understanding of Eastern Woodlands religion requires a consideration of these dark-zone rock art sites, which themselves constitute ceremonial precincts as important as the above-ground mounds and plazas. Newell concludes the first section with a detailed description of the environmental setting of the cave.

The second section is the empirical heart of the volume, presenting geochemical (Blankenship) and chronometric (Diaz-Granados et al.) investigations, the results of a detailed documentation of the art (Simek et al.), and an analysis of the remaining material culture from the heavily looted archaeological deposits (Duncan). Reflecting a strength of the volume, the documentation includes a distributional analysis of the motif layout, very much inspired by Simek's background in Upper Palaeolithic archaeology and his exposure to the structuralist studies of cave art by Leroi-Gourhan (e.g. Reference Leroi-Gourhan1967). Duncan's archaeological analysis provides key support for the attribution of the art to the Dhegihan Sioux.

The third, longest and, in my mind, strongest section of the book consists of 10 chapters on interpretation, which fully discredit any claim that prehistoric rock art is somehow or necessarily inscrutable. Although the differing interpretations do not mesh on every minor point, they concur on the main issues and they are almost all based on ethnographic analysis. The chapters range from those primarily emphasising art historical approaches to addressing the cultural affiliation and age of the site (Brown & Muller); to those focusing on iconographic identification and thematic interpretations in terms of Dhegihan Sioux mythology and cosmology (Duncan et al., Reilly, Dye, Red Corn, Diaz-Granados & Duncan, Diaz-Granados, and Duncan), and two chapters that move beyond identification alone to consider the ritual origin of the art (R.F. Townsend and Lankford). Inasmuch as all symbols are polysemous—they have multiple meanings—iconographic and thematic identification of dominant or key symbols are the first step in interpretation (a probable explanation for the diverse interpretations offered for certain motifs at the site). As Lankford demonstrates most clearly, however, a detailed understanding of a dominant or pervasive symbol is usually derived from attention to the specific instrumental symbol with which it is paired, to use Turner's (Reference Turner1967) terminology. In this case, the cave itself and its setting in the landscape are the instrumental symbols (or symbolic context) that impart specific meanings to the painted motifs, among the many meanings that potentially could be divined here.

The volume turns next to two essays by artists, one Euro-American (P. Townsend) and the other Osage (Fields), before concluding with transcribed interviews with Osage elders who were brought on a site visit.

The result is a benchmark study, not just of Eastern Woodlands rock art, but also of the archaeology of this region more generally, and of rock art research internationally. The editors are to be congratulated for the depth and diversity of expertise and analysis that they have brought to bear on this important site, and for their inclusion of the Native American voice and perspective, demonstrating conclusively the values of such a collaboration in the process. The University of Texas Press is likewise to be congratulated for a beautifully produced and printed publication.