The Lack of “Creativity” in Pre-Columbian Art: The Impact of Terence Grieder’s Early Scholarship on Recent Rock Art Studies

In his earliest scholarship, Terence Grieder set forth several broad-ranging concepts regarding the interpretation of ancient American art and its relationship to archeological methods of the time. Grieder was an avid proponent of the idea that virtually all documented ancient American societies shared a basic set of fundamentally similar beliefs and ideologies; that all ancient American art forms extending well into the past had always been technically, intellectually, and iconographically highly sophisticated; and as a result of these two assertions, as well as his application of strict art historical analysis, the traditional notion of “creativity” in both ancient American archaeological and art historical scholarship has undergone significant reconsideration. Employing Grieder’s 1975 “configurational/ethnographic” approach, this essay focuses on the impact of his approach on recent studies of an ancient American Archaic Period rock art style known as the Barrier Canyon Style, c. 2000 BCE, centered in modern-day Utah, and argues that specific figures depicted in this style constitute early iconographic forerunners, and possible artistic ancestors, of one of the most highly revered images in later Mesoamerican art, the ubiquitous central Mexican rain god, Tlaloc.