Crouch Zuojiang Humanoid Rock Art Research

The Zuojiang River rock art in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region is magnificent in size, which stretches more than200kilometer, forming a corridor of rock art on cliff, and has attracted world attention. The number of "squatting figure"(so-called "Hocker") theme rock art is enormous not only in China but also around the world. The squatting figure is a significant cultural phenomenon to the world, which in space wildly scattered in Asia, the Pacific Rim, and Mediterranean countries, in time ranges the whole culture history from the early age of Neolithic Period till now. Although many scholars have made outstanding achievements, its meaning is always replaced by the derivative and the original meaning is lost in history. However, in China, there remain plenty of historical images and records, and the area of Zuojiang, which possesses vast of squatting figure rock art, reserves abundant cultural heritage and folk custom materials. Therefore, through the research on these materials, we can have an intensive study and comprehensive understanding of the squatting figure rock art, which has a worldwide significance.Confusingly, the Zuojiang rock art sites is mostly located in the river bend mountain cliffs, and more than ninety percent of the subject is a kind of squatting posture human figures. The highest figures are nearly high in3meters, and the smallest is around60cm. Those kind of rock paintings is called" Squatting humanoid figure" in the area of rock art studies, ancient cultural studies, and archaeological."Squatting humanoids" appeared widely in pacific coast, Asia and Mediterranean in common. It also can be found on the world archaeological data of pottery, bone, paintings, bronze and other ancient works of art, therefore, it is a cultural phenomenon that widely distributed with long history and unique meaning. The Zuojiang squatting humanoid rock paintings are plenty in number, with the found at Southwest China's Sichuan, Yunnan, Southeast of Fujian, and some in the Southeast Asian island nations, and even as far away as Oceania and Melanesia, Polynesia, the distribution presented as regional cultural.So, Zuojiang Squatting figure paintings generally have high value to study in-depth. Moreover,the study of Zuojiang squatting humanoid art through the ways of petroglyphs, ethnology, folklore at the same time, it will help the ongoing work for Zuojiang rock art applying for the world cultural heritage.Zuojiang rock art was composed for expressing of human feeling and emotion. It was for transmit information, and was formed as symbols of human thought. Therefore, with the communicate between viewers and the rock art, it functioned as a language transferred message at the same time, and formed a information exchange process. This paper applied petroglyph semiotics method, from the Zuojiang squatting rock art, tried to discuss and argue.Thesis is divided into six parts:introduction is a general introduction about the topic's origin, purpose and the background, especially to make a more detailed interpretation of rock art symbols, first chapter is the study about pragmatics of Hocker theme rock art on the Zuojiang river, mainly related to the symbolic use of the context, including the rock art of Zuojiang river natural and geographical environment, the main cultural relics, the type of the national economy and culture, as well as the type of rock paintings as well as creative and user of the ethnic composition; Chapter ii is the study about syntactics of Hocker theme rock art on the Zuojiang river, Zuojiang squatting rock art shows two types:simple and unordered types and complex symbols type. The spatial structure, syntactic structure, aesthetic characteristics, performance style and mental performance of the rock art have shown a significant difference. Through studying, we reached a new conclusion; Chapteriii is the study about semantics of Hocker theme rock art on the Zuojiang river, on the basis of the first two chapters, we used a large number of crouching humanoid related to archeology, anthropology, ethnology, folklore, folk art, in-depth research information on the semantics of the typical combination of symbols of Zuojiang squatting rock art; Chapter ivis is the study about Hocker theme rock art on the China and around the world, the final conclusions is the paper points, innovationsummarized, and the future development of the prospect. Core part of this article is one, two, three, four chapters,which are the excavation of the unique cultural value of Hocker theme rock art on the Zuojiang river.