They have a cultural resource management team who protect and manage artifacts, landscapes and sacred places. No one is absolutely certain about the meaning of the Chumash Rock art, but scholars generally agree that it is connected with religion and astronomy.Ĭurrently, the only federally recognized Chumash tribe are the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Mission Indians. Hudson and Blackburn define rock art as 'an aesthetic, symbolic representation of significant concepts and entities that is painted on or carved into a rock surface.' Rock art may have been created by shamans during vision quests, most commonly in the form of pictographs (paintings on rock), but sometimes petroglyphs (engravings on rock) as well. Beyond fishing, however, they were also skilled in creating rock art. They developed excellent skills for catching fish, shellfish, and other marine mammals. They were a maritime, hunter-gatherer society whose livelihood was based on the sea.
The Chumash have lived in the present-day counties of Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo in southern California for 14,000 years.
