Saturday, March 16, 2024

HORSE PETROGLYPHS AS INDICATORS OF CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION – PART 2:

The Cheyenne acquiring their first horse by trading. Ledger Book art by Howling Wolf (Southern Cheyenne). Online image, public domain.

In Part 1 of this series I presented the concept of the early Iconic Mode of horse portrayals illustrating them as somewhat otherworldly spiritual beings. At this stage the horse was shown separately and usually alone. The latter Iconic Mode shows the beginnings of integrating the horse into the Native American culture.

The Blackfoot name for the horse translates as “elk dog”. A name like “elk dog” expresses the results of fitting a new element into preconceived mental templates. When they saw their first horse it was an animal the size of an elk, but domesticated like the dogs around their own camp – thus “elk dog”. Predictably this was not unique to the Blackfoot. “Other tribes of the Great Plains also regarded the horse as strong medicine. Witness the Sioux name for this animal – Shonka Wakan, “Medicine Dog.” (Ewers 1997:207)

Equestrian figure, Shavano Canyon, Montrose County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, 1981.

The Piegan name for the horse was "Missutuim - Big Dogs" (Secoy 1966:36). As the dog was the only domesticated animal that the inhabitants of the Great Plains knew, variations of Dog were natural for naming horses. As Michael Klassen (1998:67) stated: "An individual's first encounter with horses would have been a unique, astonishing, and totally unprecedented experience, which would not immediately fit within the explanatory cultural framework available. The uniqueness of this event, and its lack of cosmic or mythical precedence, may have on a certain level encouraged the recognition of its 'historicality.'"

Equestrian figure, Farrington Springs, Bent County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, 2002.

In later stages of the Iconic Mode, horse portrayals are usually shown with a rider, but anonymously, without details or characteristics that identify the image as representing a specific occasion or individual. This implies an acceptance and appreciation of what the horse and rider together can represent, but shown as an abstract concept instead of an individual portrayal. These modes of representation are both classifiable as iconic. Klassen (1998:53) noted that mounted Horse motifs do not intrinsically display a greater degree of narrativity than that noted for the unmounted Horse motif.

Equestrian figure, Hayden, Routt County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, 1986.

Images portrayed in the Iconic mode lack time sequence relationships (Maurer et al. 1992:23) so they do not represent a specific time, place, or event, but rather evoke the eternal present of the spirit world. Iconic images can be recognized as presentations of sacred subject matter and themes, such as the objects and beings associated with visions and medicine powers. Furthermore the thematic and formal repetition of Iconic motifs reflects the ritualized nature of sacred activities (Klassen 1998:45) 

The development of horse imagery through the Iconic Mode presents the early phases of Plains Biographic Style art.

Equestrian figure, Shield Cave, Glenwood Canyon, Eagle County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, 1991.

As the use of, and dependence upon, the horse became integrel to Indian societies Iconic portrayals continued to be produced in some instances (such as records of visions) but the bulk of these were supplanted by portrayals in the Narrative Mode (Faris 2001:5-6). The Narrative Mode represents the more familiar imagery that we are used to in Plains Biographic Art, in with the artist is recording a deed or event, or telling a story. This can also be seen in rock art produced in the Plains Biographic Style. I will go into this in the next part of the series.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Ewers, John C., 1997, Plains Indian History and Culture: Essays in Continuity and Change, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman..

Faris, Peter K.2001, Horse Petroglyphs as Indicators of Cultural Transformation, pages 1 - 13, in Southwestern Lore, Winter 2001, Vol. 67, No. 4, Colorado Archaeological Society, Denver.

Klassen, Michael A., 1998, Icon and Narrative in transition: contact-period rock art at Writing-On-Stone, Southern Alberta, Canada. In The Archaeology of Rock Art, edited by Christopher Chippindale, and Paul S. Taçon, pp. 42-72. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Maurer, E. M., L. Lincoln, G. Horse Capture, D. W. Penney and Father P. J. Powell, 1992, Visions of the People: A Pictorial History of Plains Indian Life. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Secoy, F. R., 1966, Changing Military Patterns on the Great Plains (17th Century through Early 19th Century), in Monographs of the American Ethnological Society No. 21. Edited by Esther S. Goldfrank, University of Washington Press, Seattle.


Saturday, March 9, 2024

HORSE PETROGLYPHS AS INDICATORS OF CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION – PART 1:

Horses at Little Bighorn (Custer) battlefield, Montana. Photograph Peter Faris.

Every once in a while, inexplicably, some of the columns disappear from RockArtBlog. Now I have no idea if this is done by blogger.com, by hackers, or poltergeists, but I have found it has happened again. A series of columns on horses in rock art that I posted years ago just isn't here anymore. Therefore I am rewriting this series of columns under the title Horse Petroglyphs as Indicators of Cultural Transformation.

Horse petroglyph, Purgatoire Canyon, Bent County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris.

The acquisition of horses by Native peoples led to a rapid transformation of Plains Indian life. Not only was the horse a powerful agent of change to the tribes of Plains and Plateau Indians who acquired it, it became a symbol of that change as well. The style of portrayals of horses in rock art changed over the years indicating the people’s attitude toward, and cultural assimilation of, the horse. This process is illustrated by examples of horses in rock art as well as other media used by Native American artists. (Faris 2001:1)

Horse petroglyph from Writing-on-stone Provincial Park, Canada. Photograph Peter Faris.

I first addressed this subject in my 2001 publication of Horse Petroglyphs as Indicators of Cultural Transformation, in Southwestern Lore, Winter 2001, Vol. 67, No. 4, the quarterly journal of the Colorado Archaeological Society, pages 1 - 13. It resulted from a period of research into various horse petroglyphs and pictographs with attention to the implications that details of the portrayals might carry. Starting with the fact that the presence of the horse at all allows us to make age estimates I wanted to look for other forms of information that the horse images might infer. Michael Klassen’s 1998 paper on Icon and Narrative in transition: contact-period rock art at Writing-On-Stone, Southern Alberta, Canada. In The Archaeology of Rock Art, edited by Christopher Chippindale, and Paul S. C. Taçon, pp. 42-72. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, presented the concept of the varying Modes of Plains Biographic art and provided the framework that I had been looking for. The results, although now somewhat dated, may still prove of interest and provide some value in our thinking about contact period rock art.

Lakota Painted Shield cover, ca. 1850. Illustration from Norman Feder, American Indian Art.
Cheyenne sunshade, 1860s, collected at Fort C. F. Smith. Illustration from Feder, American Indian Art.

The acquisition of the horse by the societies of the Great Plains is reflected in the art that was produced by members of those societies. Those portrayals consisst of images painted on hides for shields, war shirts, robes, and tipis, as well as later in ledger books. Other examples may be found that were created in quillwork or beadwork on clothing and leather accessories. The most durable examples of their art are the petroglyphs and pictographs caved into cliffs and boulders, or painted in rock overhangs and caves. Horse images in rock art can be divided into two modes designated iconic and narrative (Klassen 1998:44) which represent the Plains Ceremonial and Plains Biographic traditions defined by Keyser (1977:49-55). The designation of Iconic Mode refers to images created for what appear to be spiritual purposes and Narrative Mode designates images that seem to record events and illustrate deeds. In this context mode refers to the qualities of the image that provide insight into the artist's attitude toward the subject. Mode is thus essentially independent of stylistic qualities. (Faris 2001:1) 

Horse petroglyph, Purgatoire Canyon, Bent County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris.

The importance of the horse can be inferred from their frequency of portrayal. Mayhall (1987:159) found that "the most frequently depicted figures were those of horsed, showing the concern of the Plains Indians with the horse, its capture, and its use", and Keyser (1987:52) states that "horses are second only to human figures as the primary components of Biographic art." Plains Indian artists reflected aesthetic concerns in their use of horse imagery, yet their representations also reflect the broader social contexts in which the images were produced. These broader contexts were also reflected in horse images produced in rock art.

Picture Canyon, Baca County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris.

Iconic Mode: Iconic portrayals present the subject as an essentially isolated figure, essentially as a record of the subject as a repository of spiritual power, not as part of a larger event or composition. Earlier portrayals of the horse tend to present it as an isolated figure, without accessories or specific details, and usually without a rider or other human accompaniment. This implies that the concept of the horse was seen as an "other", something with medicine power of its own that can be spiritually, if not physically, separate from the people in general and from the individual in particular. The horse is present because of that spiritual power, or the impact it separately has upon the life of the people. It was seen as a special contributor to the well-being of the society. (Faris 2001:4-5)

There were some stylistic changes in horse portrayal with the passage of time. Ewers (1939:33) noted that the hook-like hoof had a wide distribution in the early nineteenth century paintings of horses. It may be seen (painted) on hides from tribes as remote from one another as the Blackfoot and the Wichita. This wide distdribution, coupled with the fact that this feature is usually a part of a relatively crude representation of the horse, suggests that it is an old way of representing the hoof in Plains Indian painting which was later discarded in some localities where a more realistic form of hoof came into use along with a more realistic representation of the entire animal. (Faris 2001:5) This hook-like hoof can be found on early examples of horse imagery in rock art that represent the early Iconic Mode. 

I have presented this earliest form of Iconic Mode horse portrayal above. Subsequent postings will follow the development of horse portrayals in rock art imagery and will illustrate their transition from later stages of the Iconic Mode to the Narrative Mode as Plains Biographic art is elaborated and spread. The style of these portrayals suggests the stage of incorporation of the horse into the cultures of the Native Americans and gives us a basis for rough estimates of the date of the portrayal as well.


REFERENCES:

Ewers, John C.1939, Plains Indian Painting, A Description of an Aboriginal American Art. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto.

Faris, Peter K.2001, Horse Petroglyphs as Indicators of Cultural Transformation, pages 1 - 13, in Southwestern Lore, Winter 2001, Vol. 67, No. 4, Colorado Archaeological Society, Denver.

Keyser, James D.1977,  Writing-On Stone: Rock Art on the Northwestern Plains. Canadian Journal of Archaeology, 1:15-80.

1987, A Lexicon for Historic Plains Indian Rock Art: Increasing Interpretive Potential. Plains Anthropologist, 32(115):43-71.

Klassen, Michael A., 1998, Icon and Narrative in Transition: contact-period rock art at Writing-On-Stone, Southern Alberta, Canada. In The Archaeology of Rock Art, edited by Christopher Chippindale, and Paul S. Taçon, pp. 42-72. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Mayhall, M. P.1987, The Kiowas. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.


Sunday, March 3, 2024

GEOGLYPHS - GIANT CHALK FIGURE OF HERCULES IDENTIFIED AS SAXON MUSTERING SITE:

          

Cerne Abbas Giant, near the village of Cerne Abbas, Dorset, England. Online image, public domain.

Some of the world’s most famous geoglyphs are the chalk figures found in England. The Uffington White Horse, the Long Man of Wilmington, and perhaps the most famous of all the Cerne Abbas Giant.

“The Cerne Abbas Giant was formed by cutting trenches two feet deep into the steep hillside and then filling them with crushed chalk. Some scholars believed the giant might date back to the Iron Age as a fertility symbol. Local folklore holds that copulating on the giant’s crotch will help a couple conceive a child, and there is an Iron Age earthwork known as the Trendle at the top of the hill in which the giant has been carved. However, there is no mention of the figure in a 1540s survey of the Abbey lands, nor in a 1617 survey conducted by the English cartographer John Norden.” (Ouellette 2021)

Chalk-filled trench of Cerne Abbas Giant. Online image, publlc domain.

“A study conducted in 1996 observed alterations in certain characteristics over time. It concluded that when originally carved, the figure had a cloak draped over its left arm and potentially held an object, speculated to be a severed head beneath it is left hand. Tests conducted by the National Trust in 2021 determined that the giant was carved in the Anglo-Saxon period between AD 700-1100, when the land was owned by the West Saxon royal family in the 9th Century and 10th Century.” (Milligan 2024)

Sculpture depicting Hercules, late Roman, Corbridge, England. Corbridge Roman Town Museum. Photograph Copyright Carole Raddato.

This figure has since been recognized as a representation of the Classical Hercules. The draped cloak and severed head align with Classical representations of the demigod.

“The club is the clue, according to the new study. Hercules was one of the most frequently depicted figures in the classical world, and his distinctively knotted club acted as an identificatory label, like the keys of Saint Peter or the wheel of Saint Catherine. Hercules’ signature mantle—his cloak—may have also been included in the original Cerne Abbas outline, draped over the giant’s free hand, the researchers hypothesize.” (Anderson 2024)

“A further study by researchers from Oxford University now suggest that the figure was a muster station for West Saxon armies during a period when Saxon kingdoms were in conflict with invading Vikings. According to the researchers, the giant’s position, protruding from a ridge and situated near major route ways, combined with nearby fresh water souces and the locality to a West Saxon estate made it the perfect mustering spot.” (Milligan 2024)

So, perhaps now we know.


NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Anderson, Sonja, 2024, This mysterious Hillside Carving is Actually Hercules, Researchers Say, 2 January 2024, https://www.smithsonianmag.com. Accessed online 4 January 2024/

Milligan, Mark, 2024, Mystery of Cerne Abbas Giant solved?, 1 January 2024, https://www.heritagedaily.com. Accessed online 2 January 2024.

Morcom, Thomas and Helen Gittos, 2024, The Cerne Giant in Its Early Medieval Context, Speculum, Volume 99, Number 1, Published by University, https://doi.org/10.1086/727992. Accessed online 10 January 2024.

Ouellette, Jennifer, 2021, Archaeologists “flabbergasted” to find Cerne Giant’s origins a medieval, 12 July 2021, Ars Technica, https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/. Accessed online 10 January 2024.                                       

 

 

 

 

Saturday, February 24, 2024

HUMAN INTERACTION WITH GIANT GROUND SLOTHS:

Artist's rendition of human interacting with a Giant Ground Sloth. Image from www.extinctanimals.org.

One of the iconic megafauna of the Paleolithic period is the Giant Ground Sloth with more than a dozen related species of Giant Ground Sloths distributed throughout North and South America. Ground Sloths ranged in size from small, just a few pounds, to the truly giant Megatherium. Interest in Megatherium began centuries ago, President Thomas Jefferson had tasked Lewis and Clark to attempt to locate them in the West on their journey of exploration.

Human with Giant Ground Sloth skeleton. Internet image, public domain.

“Megalonyx, which means ‘giant claw’, was a widespread North American genus that lived past the close of the last Wisconsin glaciations, when so many large mammals died out. Remains have been found as far north as Alaska and the Yukon. Ongoing excavations at Tarkio Valley in southwestern Iowa may reveal something of the familial life of Megalonyx. An adult was found in direct association with two juveniles of different ages, suggesting that adults cared for young of different generations. The earliest known North American Megalonychid, Pliometanastes protistus, lived in the southern U.S. about 9 million years ago and is believed to have been the predecessor on Megalonyx. Several species of Megalonyx have been named; in fact it has been stated that ‘nearly every good specimen has been described as a different species.’ A broader perspective on the group, accounting for age, sex, individual and geographic differences, indicates that only three species are valid (M. leptostomus, M. wheatleyi, and M. jeffersonii) in the late Pliocene and Pleistocene of North America, although work by McDonald lists five species. Jefferson’s ground sloth has a special place in modern paleontology, for Thomas Jefferson’s letter on Megalonyx, read before the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia in August 1796, marked the beginning of vertebrate paleontology in North America. When Lewis and Clark set out, Jefferson instructed Meriwether Lewis to keep an eye out for ground sloths. He was hoping they would find some living in the Western range. Megalonyx jeffersonii was appropriately named after Thomas Jefferson.” (Wikipedia)

"The earliest megatherid in North America was Eremotherium eomigrans whish arrived 2.2 million years ago, after crossing the recently formed Panamanian land bridge. With more than five tons in weight, 6 meters in length, and able to reach as high as 17 feet (5.2 m), it was larger than an African bush elephant bull. Unlike relatives, this species retained a plesiomorphic extra claw. While other species of Eremotherium had four fingers with only two or three claws, E. eomigrans had five fingers, four of them with claws up to nearly a foot long." (Wikipedia)

We now have a number of lines of proof of human interaction with Giant Ground Sloths. Speaking on the PBS Newshour about the recent discovery of Paleolithic footprints at White Sands of both animals (including megafauna) and humans, David Bustos of White Sands National Park stated "We were brushing out a set of sloth prints, and Matthew found the human pring right iside the middle of the sloth print. And that's sort of sealed the deal, Oh, yes, you definitely have the megafauna and humans together. So that's sort of where the the human side of the story all began." (Sy and Jackson 2022)  




"A human footprint is shown above with a raised heel mark inside the larger, curved footprint of a giant sloth. Below, researchers mapped the sloth and human tracks to re-create the chase scene, with 'flailing circles' to mark where the the animal reared up on two feet to defend itself."  Illustration from Garisto, 2018.

"Tests of sediment showed the sloth and human prints were made at the same time. An analysis of the track also suggested the two species were interacting with one another. 'We're getting a view into the past, of an interaction between two species,' says Sally Reynolds, a paleontologist at Bournemouth University in Poole, England. ' This was a moment of action, a moment of drama.' Raynolds, Bustos and their colleagues reconstructed the chase. Humans stalked a sloth, of several sloths, which the hunters surrounded in the open. At seven places, a sloth reared up on its hind legs - towering over the humans - to fendd off an attack. But the chase continued, with the humans in hot pursuit. The encounter 'wasn't luck or happenstance; it was cold calculation,' Reynolds says. 'Our intention was to kill them.' The trail of footprints ends, though, and it's not clear who came out victorious." (Garisto 2018) This would have been a windfall of food for the Paleolithic hunters, although difficult to procure.

So, we now have evidence of humans tracking and hunting Giant Ground Sloths, is there any other evidence of interactions? "The Santa Elina rock shelter in Central Brazil shows evidence of successive human settlements from around the last glacial maximum (LGM) to the Early Holocene. Two Pleistocene archaeological layers include rich lithic industry associated with remains of the extinct giant ground sloth Glossotherium phoenesis. The remains include thousands of osteoderms (i.e. dermal bones), three of which were human modified." (Pansani et al. 2023)



Giant Ground Sloth osteoderms drilled and polished for use as adornment. Images from Pansani et al., 2023.

In this case the term modified means holes drilled in the osteoderms, apparently for use as jewelry. The modifications include the drilling of the holes as well as polishing. "We document the smoothing of the surface; traces of stone tool interaction with bone, including incisions and scars, scraping marks, scratches, percussion notches; polish and gloss; use-wear smoothing of the rim and the attachment systems. - Unmodified mylodontid osteoderms show a naturally rough external surface, notably different from the smooth polished surfaces of the three human-modified osteoderms. Among the thousands of fossil osteoderms on the site, the perforated and polished state of the three osteoderms studied here is exceptional." (Pansani et al. 2023)

So now, in addition to apparent hunting of Giant Ground Sloths by early human inhabitants, we have the use of parts of the animal for adornment. 


Panel and close-up of the image from La Lindosa, Colombia of what is assumed to represent an adult and juvenile Giant Ground Sloth interacting with humans. Online image, public domain.

My final example of human interaction with Giant Ground Sloths comes from a painted cliff in Colombia. Among the recently recorded pictographs at the remarkable site of La Lindosa in Columbia is a figure that has been identified as a Giant Ground Sloth. "The animal is accompanied by an offspring and surrounded by animated miniature men, some of whom extend their arms towards the painting. The relationship of the animal with the men appears to be central to the artist's message." (Irarte et al. 2020) This could almost be considered a visual illustration of the interactions recorded at the White Sands track site of human interaction with one or more ground sloths. Identification of this animal as a Giant Ground Sloth is apparently based on body and head shape, the relative length of front and rear legs, and an emphasis on the toes and claws projecting from the feet. It is being shown with an offspring is reminiscent of the Iowa discovery of an adult skeleton with two juveniles referenced above from Wikipedia.

Given the size of these creatures, and the length of their claws, they would have been formidable prey for early human residents in the New World.

NOTE 1: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

NOTE 2: I have recollections in the past of having seen a photograph of a petroglyph of an animal in Brazil somewhere that had been identified as a Giant Ground Sloth. But, apologies, I have been unable to relocate it. If anyone knows of such a picture please share it with me for posting on RockArtBlog.

REFERENCES:

Garisto, Dan, 2018. Footprints prove humans hunted giant sloths during the Ice Age, 25 April 2018, https://www.sciencenews.org. Accessed online 3 January 2024.

Irarte, Jose, et al., 2022, Ice Age megafauna rock art in the Columbian Amazon?, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0496.

Pansani, Thais R. et al., 2023, Evidence of artefacts made of giant sloth bones in central Brazil around the last glacial maximum, Published online by Royal Society Publishing, 12 July 2023, DOI:10.1098/rspb.2023.0316. Accessed online 20 Novmeber 2023.

Sy, Stephanie, and Lena I. Jackson, 2022, Ancient Footprints in New Mexico raise questions about when humans inhabited North America, 4 April 2022, PBS Newshour, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/ancient-footprints-in-new-mexico-raise-questions-about-when-humans-inhabited-north-america#transcript. Accessed online 9 February 2024.






Saturday, February 17, 2024

THE OLDEST KNOWN ROCK PAINTING IN AUSTRALIA:

17,300 year old kangaroo dated with mud dauber wasp nests. Illustration from Finch et al.

Back on 20 June 2020, I wrote a column titled “Dating Australian Rock Art With Mud Wasp Nests” about using small samples of mud wasp (or mud dauber) nests that overlay old pictographs to date them using optically stimulated luminescence dating. This practice has now produced dates for an image in the Kimberly region in Australia as old as 17,300 BCE.

17,300 year old kangaroo dated with mud dauber wasp nests. Illustration from Finch et al.

“In two of the most extensive provinces for painted rock art in Australia, the Kimberley and Arnhem Land, naturalistic animals are the most common subjects in the oldest stylistic period on the basis of superimposition analysis, but there is debate about their antiquity and the adequacy of the definitions of these earliest styles. The same or similar animals are also depicted in more-recent art periods, but using different stylistic techniques (for example, solid or regular infill rather than irregular infill, and solid infill of the extremities of the head, tail and limbs); further evidence is therefore required to test these ideas as no old, radiometric age constraints have been published for any of these motifs. In the Kimberley region, it is now known that paintings from the superimposed and inferred to be more-recent Gwion stylistic period proliferated around 12 ka18, so the generally agreed relative rock art sequence predicts that the earlier paintings of naturalistic animals should be older than this.” (Finch et al. 2021)

12,700 year old kangaroo pictograph. Ian Waina nspecting the painting. Photo via Peter Veth, Balanggarra Aborigina Corporation. Illustration by Pauline Heney and Damien Finch.

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating relies on the transfer of energy from cosmic rays to crystalline materials. If these materials are in the light the energy bleeds back out but, if they are in complete dark the energy accumulates and is stored up until it can release. If this small piece of material is hidden underground (or incorporated into a mud wasp nest) it can be taken back to the archeologists lab and handled under controlled conditions. Then, when hit with a pulse from a laser the energy is released at once, its intensity indicating how much had built up and thus how long it was in the dark. If the mud wasp nest was taken from the surface of a rock art image, the date found in it represents the possible minimum age of the image. It can be older, but not younger, then the OSL date.

The team recording rock art. Image from www.bbc.com.

“In the Kimberley rock art stylistic sequence, these naturalistic animals belong to the earliest known phase of painted rock art, the Irregular Infill Animal Period (IIAP). Notwithstanding the abovementioned debate about the classification of similar motifs in the Arnhem Land region (some 700 km to the east), we adopt the comprehensive definition of the Kimberley IIAP by Walsh and Welch as a starting hypothesis. This definition of IIAP motifs includes some styles of hand stencils, hand prints, stencils of boomerangs and other objects, and some freehand depictions of plants (such as yams), animals (particularly kangaroos but also echidna, birds, goannas, fish and possum) and, more rarely, anthropomorphs. Here we report radiocarbon ages determined from 27 mud wasp nests, which were collected from 8 separate sandstone rock shelters, that constrain the ages of 16 IIAP motifs. Fifteen nests overlay ten IIAP motifs and six nests were underneath a further five motifs. Importantly, three overlying and three underlying nests were dated from one further IIAP motif, thereby providing a bracketed age constraint for that individual painting.” (Finch et al. 2021) These bracketed ages give maximum and minimum ages for that particular image narrowing down its date.

“The age estimates for 27 mud wasp nests in contact with 16 different rock paintings of the Kimberley IIAP style suggest that these motifs were painted between 17.2 and 13.1 cal kBP. The age of one IIAP macropod motif is well-constrained by six radiocarbon dates on three overlying and three underlying wasp nests to be between 17,500 and 17,100 years old, corresponding to the middle of the age range for the European figurative motifs.

Rock shelter containing the 17,300 year old painting. Image from University of Melbourne, Australia.

This is a period during which sea levels in the nearby Joseph Bonaparte Gulf began to rise from a low of ~125 m below present sea levels during the Last Glacial Maximum (21±3 ka) but mostly before the rapid rise in sea levels between 14.6 and 8 ka. By 12 ka, the coastline to the northwest had advanced by around 300 km over the continental shelf toward the area in which our study was undertaken. Many generations of Kimberley coastal Aboriginal populations experienced a continuing loss of territory over these millennia. At around the same time, from 14 to 13 ka, a paleo-environmental record from a nearby mound spring and other Kimberley climate proxies indicate an improving climate with an increase in monsoonal activity and precipitation.”  (Finch et al. 2021) With a 300 kilometer advance of the coast during that period one has to wonder how many wonderful sites have disappeared.

In summary, the study found what they are pronouncing as the oldest rock art yet discovered in Australia. “These Pleistocene ages for naturalistic animal motifs from the earliest known period of Australian rock painting position this creative human activity at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum. The initial results from eight rock art sites in the northeastern Kimberley suggest an extended period for the Irregular Infill Animal style, from 17 to 13 ka. Many more dates from this period are required before the full chronological extent of the paintings still visible today can be determined. For now, a robustly dated, approximately 17,300-year-old painting of a kangaroo is the oldest in situ rock painting radiometrically dated in Australia.” (Finch et al. 2021) This is such a fortuitous and clever way to date rock art, working in a team with an insect to learn marvelous facts.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Faris, Peter, 2020, Dating Australian Rock Art With Mud Wasp Nests, 20 June 2020, https://www.blogger.com.

Finch, Damien et al., 2021, Ages for Australia’s oldest rock paintings, March 2021, Human Nature Behavior, doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01041-0. Accessed online 17 June 2023.

Saturday, February 10, 2024

ROCK ART FROM THE LOWER SAND CANYON IN THE MESA VERDE REGION, SOUTHWESTERN COLORADO, USA – IT TURNS OUT THERE IS ROCK ART THERE AFTER ALL – SURPRISE!

Sand Canyon petroglyph panel. Photograph from the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.

On September 19. 2018, I received an e-mail communication from one Mariette Eaton of the BLM who informed me that there wasn’t really much rock art in Canyon’s of the Ancients National Monument in southwestern Colorado. Her exact statement was “unfortunately there is not a great deal of rock art that is easily accessible.” This struck me as very strange because any canyon you enter in that part of Colorado (Montezuma County) is loaded with rock art and ancient ruins. I was also informed that Canyon of the Ancients was closed to visitation. On 1 October 2018 I posted a column titled “Public Access/Public Servants/Responsiveness/and Responsibility” in which I expressed dissatisfaction and disappointment at being turned away like that, let alone with Mariette Eaton’s lie. Incidentally, while we were at the Monument Headquarters one very nice park ranger confirmed that there was a huge amount of rock art there, and had no idea why I would have been denied visitation rights.

Now, I have found out that literally at the same time that I was being turned away with this brush off, a team of researchers from Poland was in there doing archaeological work, and recording Rock Art. Now, I have no objections to foreign visitors in our National Monuments, indeed I welcome them up to a point, that point being when Americans are being lied to and turned away. This Polish team was led by Radoslaw Polonka who has published a number of papers and chapters on the rock art of Canyon of the Ancients.

Palonka’s comments about Winter Solstice observation in December 2018 and Spring Equinox observation in March 2019 (page 251) would seem to prove that he was there at the same time that I was told that there is really not much rock art in Canyon of the Ancients. Additionally, Palonka’s three pages of References includes; David Breternitz, Kenneth Castleton, Sally Cole, Scott Ortman, Polly Schaafsma, Dennis Slifer, and Mark Varien as well as many others who seem to have thought that there was rock art in the area. But enough of my whining about Mariette Eaton’s lies, let’s look at some of the things that Palonka found in Sand Canyon of Canyon of the Ancients National Monument.

Sand Canyon petroglyph panel. Photograph from the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.

Palonka and team apparently did some very good work during their time in Canyons of the Ancients. They report on a number of sites we did not have records of up to now.

“Since 2011, archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow have been taking part in the Sand Canyon-Castle Rock Community Archaeological Project in the central Mesa Verde region. This research focuses on the reconstruction of settlement structure and documentation of rock art at dozens of sites that may have functioned as one Puebloan community. In particular, the project explores the inter-relationships between particular settlements, and the role of the towers and shrines as a means of visual communication in the functioning of this system.” (Palonka et al. 2020:492) This Krakow university must have one heck of an archeology program, references to it keep popping up in papers from all over the world.

“The team has also obtained dates from dendrochronological samples and pottery analysis that are more accurate than previously achieved. This evidence has allowed us to speculate that, contrary to some earlier research (or at least questioning if some or most), small sites may have functioned contemporaneously with the community centre. The community centre was the largest site in the community that also comprised public buildings, such as plazas or large kivas (ritual buildings). Together, these sites may have formed a community that was connected by strong religious and social ties.

Additionally, we have collaborated with the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, the Maryland Institute College of Art and the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office to gather more comprehensive information concerning past landscape use, based, in part, on the Pueblo oral tradition. Taken together, these findings illuminate the

Operation and final days of one of the largest communities of Ancient Pueblo culture in the Mesa Verde region in the thirteenth century AD.” (Palonka et al. 2020:492)

Three warriors, Castle Rock Pueblo community, Sand Canyon, Montezuma County, Colorado. Photograph from Radoslaw Polonka, 2019, Jagiellonian  University, Krakow, Poland.

They work focused on Castle Rock community in Sand Canyon of the Canyons of the Ancients.

”We documented ancient Pueblo rock art at 15 Castle Rock Community sites, represented by both petroglyphs and paintings, including warriors fighting with bows and arrows (a well known panel from Castle Rock Pueblo), concentric circles, spirals, zig-zag lines, bird tracks and foot- and handprints. Other motifs could be interpreted as being connected with astronomical observations. The rock art can be roughly dated to the Pueblo III period (AD 11501300), and was probably created sometime in the thirteenth century AD, based on stylistic comparison to other well-dated rock art panels. There are, however, a few cases where we can observe much older rock art within these Late Pueblo III settlements, including anthropomorphic figures with triangular or trapezoidal bodies that are either pecked (at site 5MT127: Vision House) or painted with red and white (at site 5MT264: The Gallery). They are often included in the so-called San Juan Basketmaker Anthropomorphic Style, examples of which are also present in nearby Mancos Canyon, and as far as Durango to the north-east. At least two sites in the Community, The Gallery and Two Story House, have surviving plaster murals on the building walls. These were placed in the buildingssecond storey, while the first storey could have served as storage rooms, based on its masonry, which is roughly shaped with no plaster or paintings on the wall, while the second storey has been done with more care and often contains plaster and murals. The example at Two Story House comprises brown/reddish and white murals, including what appear to be three roughly preserved triangles. Similar triangles are found in Cliff Palace and other sites from the Mesa Verde National Park. They may represent the mountains (perhaps different peaks of the Ute Mountains) and might have been important religious symbols for the local Pueblo society. As with most of the cliff-dwelling sites in the area, Two Story House faces south, with a clear view of Sleeping Ute Mountain range.” (Palonka et al. 2020:504) I have previously published about the three triangle depiction of mountains on RockArtBlog (see the cloud index at the bottom) and while Palonka suggests they may represent Sleeping Ute Mountain, my vote is for Huerfano Butte in northern New Mexico or San Francisco Peaks. But it might even be the case that all three are correct. Perhaps the ancestral pueblo peoples who found significance in the Three Mountain theme applied it to nearby features that they were familiar with, so at Mesa Verde the Huerfano Butte had this significance to them, and at Chevelon pueblo it might well have been the San Francisco Peaks while in the Canyons of the Ancients the Sleeping Ute range may have been their inspiration.

Sand Canyon mural painting. Photograph from the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.

Also recent articles in popular sources have been trumpeting some of their discoveries as newly recorded archeoastronomical sites.

“Some Pueblo period rock art iconography documented by our project may be connected with astronomical observations and could have served as a kind of calendar or solar/lunar markers, such as the petroglyphs at the sites 5MT129, 5MT261, 5MT1803, 5MT1823, and 5MT1843 and maybe the mural at the site 5MT264. These representations, with a fairly large potential for research, can shed new light on, for example, knowledge of celestial bodies and astronomical phenomena by the Ancient Pueblo communities once inhabiting these canyons. The observations conducted during the Winter Solstice in December 2018 and Spring Equinox in March 2019 at the Site 5MT129 in Sand Canyon brought very interesting results of light-shadow interactions with the particular sections of rock art panel, suggesting that it was some kind of solar marker or calendar, although further observation in the field and additional ethnographic analogies as well as consultations with different Pueblo groups elders are needed. It seems that, in addition to accurate documentation, visualization using new technologies like laser scanning and the photogrammetry may provide invaluable help. Conducting this documentation and later analysis in different graphic programs and a virtual environment (for example, using the RTI- Reflectance Transformation Imaging) allowed us to reveal many details and entire depictions that are not visible using only traditional documentation. Using these techniques we were able to document colored plaster and murals found on the walls of buildings at two sites of the surveyed area, The Gallery in the East Fork of Rock Creek Canyon, and Two Story House in Graveyard Canyon. They were done in reddish brown, white and yellow, and placed on two opposite walls of the second floor of Room B at The Gallery site, where even several layers of multicolored plaster have been preserved. The paintings on this mural include geometric images that have been preserved, such as dots, zig-zag lines or depictions of a snake and three birds, probably turkeys. At the Two Story House, along with the white/reddish brown plaster, there are geometric motifs, probably in the form of several triangles that might symbolize mountains. The rock shelter where the Two Story House site is located faces directly south to the highest summit in the area (Sleeping Ute Mountain), which rises to a height of around 3000 m above sea level, and is 34 km away from the site. It is a sacred mountain for the contemporary Ute Indians, who have a reservation there today, and it almost certainly had special significance for the ancient Pueblo Indians (modern Pueblo groups, like the Hopi, claim that this mountain certainly had a sacred meaning for their ancestors, who built stone settlements in rock niches). This may be just one example of the relationship of architecture, settlement location and rock art iconography to the surrounding landscape and probably religious practices associated with it an aspect that is still being studied by our project.” (Palonka 2019:251) I think that the archeoastronomical conclusions have to wait for considerably more research.

Sand Canyon petroglyph panel. Photograph from the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.

“The chronological and cultural associations of the Ancestral Pueblo petroglyphs are well established, based on style, content and associated archaeological data by previous research in the region. The oldest Ancestral Pueblo petroglyphs (c. 10001300 AD) include pecked and/or incised human figures with upraised arms and a few abstract motifs. They are located on the lowest section of the wall and have endured rough treatment by wind, soil deposits, sheep and cattle. Older Ancestral Pueblo petroglyphs may well be buried underground: our geophysics and test-pit excavations revealed the possibility that some structures are located approximately 1.62.0m deep (such accumulation of soil is probably due to catastrophic floods that occurred in the past).” (Palonka 2023:6)

Sand Canyon, Montezuma County, Colorado. Photograph by Radoslaw Polonka, 2019. - Listed as two "serpentine forms" these are probably rabbit sticks or fending sticks for fending off atlatl darts.

All in all this work provides considerable new data on an area that still has a great deal to tell us. Good work Radislaw Palonka. I’ll bet you can tell that I am jealous.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCE:

Faris, Peter, 2018, Public Access/Public Servants/Responsiveness/and Responsibility, 1 October 2018, https://rockartblog.blogspot.com.

Milligan, Mark, 2023, Archaeologists have discovered Pueblo astronomical carvings and paintings in Colorado, 13 December 2023, https://www.heritagedaily.com. Accessed 16 December 2023.

Palonka, Radoslaw, et al., 2023, Digital documentation and analysis of Native American rock art and Euro-American historical inscriptions from the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, Colorado, Antiquity, Vol. 97 (393), 1-9. Accessed online 16 December 2023.

Palonka, Radoslaw, 2019, Rock Art from the Lower Sand Canyon in the Mesa Verde Region, Southwestern Colorado, USA, KIVA, 85:3, 232-256, DOI:10.1080/00231940.2019.1643071

Palonka, Radoslaw, et al., 2020, Ancestral Pueblo settlement structure and sacred landscape at Castle Rock Community, Colorado, Antiquity, Vol. 94 (374), 491-511. Accessed online 16 December 2023.