2006) Conversations with I Man-Aniti: Interpretation of Discoveries of the Rock Art in the Northern Mariana Islands

This paper provides an overview of the rock art of the Northern Mariana Islands and particularly as the rock art discov-ered to date predominantly pertains to ancestor worship within the Chamorro cultural group. For centuries, the West-ern world has categorized the ancient Chamorro inhabitants of the Marianas Archipelago as a “prehistoric ” people; a people without a written history. In addition to providing an overview of the rock art of the Northern Mariana Islands, this paper also emphasizes the fact that the ancient Chamorros did indeed have a recorded history and that this chrono-logical record exists in the pictographs and petroglyphs that they painted and carved. No previous in-depth historical and/or archaeological studies specific to this subject matter exist, which therefore places this paper in a preliminary standing. Readers should note that while the pictorial assemblages discovered and studied thus far are largely focused on ancestor worship as the pervasive cultural element, future studies are sure to afford more details about the ancient Chamorro ways of life. During the latter half of the twentieth century, archaeology, along with historical research, has revealed much about the Mariana Islands ’ an-cient indigenous inhabitants. Excavations of Latte stone village sites and analyses of ubiqui