Affiliation: Washington State University
Emily Van Alst is an assistant professor at Washington State University in the Department of Anthropology. She received her PhD and MA from Indiana University and her BA in anthropology and archaeology from Yale University.
She is currently conducting a research project entitled Inscriptions of the Elk Nation: Interpreting Rock Art through an Indigenous Lens, where she is working with members of the Hehaka Oyate to reinterpret rock art sites in Wyoming and South Dakota with a particular interest in images related to elk (Cervus canadensis). This project braids together ethnohistory, cultural mapping, visiting circles, and rock art research, with community members driving the research questions and objectives. She employs a diachronic framework that bridges ancestral rock art with contemporary landscapes, ceremonies, and Indigenous ontologies.
Her publications focus on Indigenous women’s relationships to rock art in the northern Great Plains and on reclaiming cultural heritage with, by, and for Indigenous and descendant communities through community-directed archaeological research projects. She is the co-editor of Indigenizing Archaeology: Putting Theory into Practice (University Press of Florida) and the series co-editor for Indigenous Archaeology Methods and Practice in the Americas (University of New Mexico Press).
This talk links Indigenous archaeological practices with gendered perspectives to challenge traditional views of Indigenous-made rock art motifs from the Northwest Plains, including present-day Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota. Conventional methods often see rock art as fixed or separate from its cultural context, relying on art historical or archaeological frameworks. Instead, this research promotes Indigenous-centered approaches that view rock art as living expressions of knowledge systems. Emphasizing Indigenous women’s ecological, cultural, and spiritual perspectives, it provides a deeper understanding of the iconography—seeing it not just as art or material but as ancestral knowledge woven into the landscape. This research highlights the importance of relationality and considers rock art as “knowledge bundles” embedded within Indigenous ways of knowing.
