Pictographs, and the landscape formations they are featured upon, are culturally significant places among Indigenous communities. Here, we present the results of a field survey and compositional analysis of pictographs and the mineral pigments used to produce them at Babine Lake (British Columbia), in the traditional territory claimed by the Lake Babine Nation, the Tl’azt’en Nation, and the Yekooche Nation. The monochrome motifs are produced with iron oxide mineral pigments (red ochre), and are all painted on prominent, open-air rock faces overlooking deep water. This study also includes collection and analysis of red ochre pigment sources within the area for comparison to the pictographs. Using a series of microanalytical methods applied to the local raw materials and rock art paints, we offer insights into characteristics of pigment materiality, such as artistic selection of minerals with different physicochemical properties and the chaîne opératoire of paint preparation. Our results show that rock art painters active at Babine Lake chose a diversity of iron oxide types to produce different pigment mixtures with distinctive properties, including the harvesting and thermal enhancement of iron-rich biominerals from colonies of aquatic, iron-oxide-producing bacteria.

象形文字及其所代表的景观形态是原住民社区中具有重要文化意义的地方。在这里，我们展示了对巴宾湖（不列颠哥伦比亚省）象形文字和用于制作象形文字的矿物颜料进行实地调查和成分分析的结果，该湖位于巴宾湖民族、提尔阿兹特恩民族、和耶科什民族。单色图案由氧化铁矿物颜料（红赭石）制成，全部绘制在俯瞰深水的突出露天岩面上。这项研究还包括该地区红赭石颜料来源的收集和分析，以便与象形文字进行比较。我们利用一系列应用于当地原材料和岩画涂料的微观分析方法，深入了解颜料的物质性特征，例如不同理化性质的矿物的艺术选择和涂料制备的连锁操作。我们的研究结果表明，活跃在巴宾湖的岩画画家选择了多种氧化铁类型来生产具有独特特性的不同颜料混合物，包括从水生氧化铁产生细菌菌落中收集和热强化富含铁的生物矿物质。