MACAWS IN ROCK ART – AGAIN. PART 1:

Because of the length of this column I will present it in two parts. Part two will follow this next week.

Scarlet macaw. Image from Archaeology magazine, September/October 2015, page 16.

Along with burials of parrots and macaws from the American southwest, there are many images of these beautiful birds painted and pecked by Ancestral Puebloan people. I have written columns previously on them (available through the cloud index at the bottom) but when additional material becomes available I try to update a subject.

That is the case now as I have some new images and information to add to my previous writing on the subject.

“Archaeologists have known for more than a century that the prehispanic Pueblo people of the American Southwest acquired goods from Mesoamerica. Such items included marine shell from the Gulf of California, raw copper and crafted copper bells from West Mexico, cacao from the Neotropics, and tropical birds such as scarlet and military macaws whose feathers were important in ritual. Scarlet macaws (Ara macao) are the most exotic birds recovered by archaeologists excavating settlements in the SW from southern Utah and Colorado to northern Mexico.” (Watson 2015:8238) While there are colorful birds in nature in these regions (Western tanager, Flicker, Bluebird, Goldfinch) none of the native birds can match the striking colors of the various macaws and parrots from farther south. And, in a culture where colors were pretty much limited to the colors of nature, the radiant colors of these birds would be striking.

Macaw/parrot petroglyph, Springerville Miniature Style, Apache County, Arizona. Image from Ekkehart Malotki, The Rock Art of Arizona, 2002, Kiva Publications Inc., Walnut, California, figure 276, page 134.

Whether these imports arrived on the backs of long distance traders such as the Aztec pochteca, or were traded step by step up a chain of stages from their origins in Mesoamerica is not yet certain.

Boca Negra Canyon, Petroglyph National Monument, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Photograph Peter Faris.

“Along with cacao, shell, and copper, these birds signal the type of long-distance transport of goods often argued to have been an important dimension of emergent sociopolitical complexity in prehistoric societies. Like cacao, to which access was probably restricted to high status individuals or groups, the acquisition and control of scarlet macaws was likely the province of social and religious elites.” (Watson 2015:8238)

In the words of the Billie Holiday song God Bless the Child, “them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose.” You would have had to possess great status and importance to own a macaw, and owning a macaw would reinforce your status and importance. This importance would be a major factor in the creation of images of macaws and parrots in rock art of the American southwest.

Two Macaws facing in upper left,  Petroglyph National Monument, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Photograph by Paul and Joy Foster.

Polly Schaafsma said in 2022 “Macaws and other parrots are portrayed in the ancient pictorial records of farming communities throughout much of the U.S. Southwest and adjacent regions. Their immediate sources of procurement, patterns of trade, management issues, ritual use, and wider connections to politics and social hierarchy are among the subjects concerning these colorful tropical birds in the north of their native habitat.” (Schaafsma 2022:241) We need to remember that the people only had what nature provided at that time, no artificial colors and dyes. And, although some minerals, animals, and plants were quite colorful much of their surrounding would have been quite drab by today’s standards.

Painted kiva mural. Pottery Mound Pueblo, New Mexico. Internet image, public domain.

The descendants of Ancestral Puebloans tend to be culturally somewhat conservative, holding on to their practices and adapting their ceremonies into today’s circumstances. The ceremonial importance of these continues to this day. “Today, these members of the Psittacidae family continue to be highly valued for their cosmological symbolism by the Pueblo people in New Mexico and Arizona. - - Parrots and macaws appear in Ancestral Pueblo imagery possibly around1000 CE. The pictorial evidence from the Pueblo past indicates that first and foremost the members of the parrot family, and most notably the scarlet macaws, were associated with the sun, just as they are today. Accordingly, they are linked to summer and the growing season, while their red, blue, and yellow feathers echo the hues of rainbow and the many colors of maize (Tyler 1979:13-38). Their directional symbolism, due to their red color and place of origin is in the south.” (Schaafsma 2022:241) One interesting question would be if the importance of color and direction existed in Ancestral Pueblo belief before the availability of macaws and parrots, or can the color and directional significance be attributed to association with the arrival of the first birds traded north.

The association of macaws and parrots with the Sun, warmth and the south is echoed by Frank Waters (1963:67) who wrote that the Parrot Clan symbolized the south in Hopi belief because they arrived at Hopi from the south after their migrations. Dennis Tedlock (1993:165) also makes the association with the south “which is where parrots and macaws now come from.”

Macaw/parrot petroglyph. Image from Ekkehart Malotki, The Rock Art of Arizona, 2002, Kiva Publications Inc., Walnut, California, figure 192, page 101.

Hamilton Tyler (1979:26-7) discusses modern pueblo ceremonial dances in which people wear headdresses of macaw feathers on their head instead of tablitas. As a tablita’s stepped-fret design represents clouds this reinforces the sky and weather implications of macaws and parrots – sky; cloud; rain; rainbow; macaw/parrot. Weiner (2015:232-3) agrees with the weather implications and adds that a parrot or macaw can learn to speak words, a talent that would make them doubly exotic and impressive. The striking visual impact of a macaw is generally recognized, but here Crown reminds us of an aspect of the parrots and macaws that would have been seen as even more remarkable – they could speak, and in your language. This would guarantee the social status of the owner of one. A bird that speaks human words would seem magical, so not only were they kept for their feathers, but as amazing companions and ceremonial participants.

Part 2 of this column will be posted next week.

3D IMAGES ON ROCK PROJECTIONS:

Large and small faces on projecting corners of rock, Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, New Mexico. Photograph by Peter Faris.

We are used to thinking about rock art as being created on the flat face of a cliff, boulder or cave wall. There are many examples, however, where the image is carved or painted on an uneven surface, not just rough, but over or around a projection of the rock face. In many instances this seems to be an attempt to create a three-dimensional image.

Closeup of the small face on a projecting corner of rock, Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, New Mexico. Photograph by Peter Faris.

At the Three Rivers petroglyphs site in New Mexico there are a number of human face petroglyphs. They are not as ornate as many from the Rio Grande area so it is not clear whether they are intended to represent masks or not. Some of them, however, have been carved around the corner of a boulder in a seemingly intentional effort at three-dimensional imagery. These images were carved by the Jornada Mogollon people between about 900 and 1300 CE.

By its very nature rock art is produced on generally uneven surfaces so there is some depth variation in most examples. This seems different, however, this looks very much like the corners of boulders were sought out to carve the faces on to produce the three-dimensional effect.

'Corner Mask', 3D face on a rock projection. Photograph provided by Margaret Berrier.

DStretch enhancement of the 'Corner Mask', 3D face on a rock projection. Photograph provided by Margaret Berrier.

Margaret Berrier (personal communication 2026) described these faces as “corner masks” and provided me with pictures of one that she has in her possession, adding she knows of another one. I am not completely comfortable with designating many of the faces at Three Rivers as masks. They lack much of the decorative detail found in acknowledge mask images from elsewhere in the southwest. I rather think that some of them are simply meant to be faces, perhaps portraits. Of course, if they have the added details they can and will, of course, be defined as masks. 

Face on a projecting corner of rock, Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, New Mexico. Photograph from pinterest.

At the Three Rivers Site government signage identifies the makers of the imagery as Mogollon people, various other references use the phrase Jornada. In fact the people of the region of the Tularosa Basin, which the Three Rives Petroglyph Site is on the edge of, are referred to as Jornada Mogollon so the terms seem to be used almost interchangeably.

Face on a projecting corner of rock, Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, New Mexico. Photograph by Peter Faris.

In his 1998 book ‘Signs of Life: rock art of the Upper Rio Grande’, Dennis Slifer calls the petroglyphs of faces found in the Upper Rio Grand ‘masks.’ “Apparently the masks represented ancestral spirits, similar to the kachinas of the modern Pueblo people. Consequently, the meanings must have been similar to those of Hopi, Zuni, and other pueblos in the Upper Rio Grande region.” (Slifer 1998:188) As I said above, however, Slifer’s masks usually have more detail and decorative elements than the faces at Three Rivers.

Face on a projecting corner of rock, Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, New Mexico. Photograph by Peter Faris.

Polly Schaafsma (1992) somewhat splits the difference as she refers to “Masks and faces are featured in both Jornada Style paintings and petroglyphs. These elements are only occasional in western Jornada Style sites, including the Mimbres Valley, but figure more prominently in the rock art of the Rio Grande Valley and the Tularosa Basin” (p.67). Schaafsma has also recognized the phenomenon of faces on rock corner and projections, stating “Variations on the mask themes are faces lacking outlines and masks carved on rock angles. The latter, in which the corner becomes the nose region or the most prominent part of the face, are not unusual.” (p.67) Polly’s description here is right on, when the faces are produced around the corner of the rock the nose is generally right on the angle.

Face on a projecting corner of rock, Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, New Mexico. Photograph by Peter Faris.

Joan Price (2018:185) presented a couple of interesting theories about the possible reason for these corner depictions at Three Rivers. “Innumerable glyphs of faces and maps span smooth or sharp corners of single stones with facial directional orientation or continual lines, chains of simple visual elements, feet, animal tracks and more. These wrap around stones were termed ‘animated canvas’. Concave or convex surfaces selected for glyphs take into consideration the play of light and/or dark over the course of a day suggesting a core   concept in Puebloan and other indigenous languages of balance between opposing forces within a person and a stone that emphasizes that idea.” (Price 2018:185) First she suggests that they were produced to emphasize the effects of light on the differing angles of the rock, and second that this is related to the concept of opposition between dark and light, winter and summer, etc. that is so prevalent in the beliefs of people in the American southwest.

I wish I could present numerous examples of these faces from many other sites, but alas, I cannot. Although I have found records of some outside of this area there do not seem to be any locations with anywhere near this large a concentration.  In this case it seems to have been primarily a local idea that came and went with the Jornada people in the area of the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site (either that, or there are just a whole lot of them that I have not been able to find records for). And anyone who does have this information please let me know. In either case, the prevalence of them at this location lead me to conclude that the carvers of these faces were purposely giving them three dimensions in their portrayals in an attempt to make them more lifelike.

REFERENCES:

Berrier, Margaret, personal communication, February 2026.

Price, Joan E., 2018, Clay and Stone: Petroglyphs at Three Rivers Petroglyph Site Compared with Mimbres Ceramic Painted Bowls, pp. 177-192, in Collected Papers from the 20^th Biennial Mogollon Archaeology Conference, October 11-13, 2018, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, edited by Lonnie C. Ludeman. Accessed online 17 December 2025.

Schaafsma, Polly, 1992, Rock Art in New Mexico, Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Slifer, Dennis, 1998, Signs of Life: rock art of the Upper Rio Grande, Ancient City Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

PETROCOINS AND PICTOCOINS, INVEST IN ROCK ART:

Gold petrocoin, designed by Dall3.2.

It is high time that we students of rock art get out of our ivory towers and start participating in the world of greed and commerce. To this end RockArtBlog is announcing a new cryptocurrency Petrocoins and Pictocoins. Get in on the excitement now and don’t miss out on the valuable opportunity to cash in.

Gold petrocoins, designed by Dall3.2.

Petrocoins and Pictocoins are a computer-based cryptocurrency backed up by what we value so highly, rock art.

Silver petrocoin, designed by deepai.org.

It pretty much all started with Bitcoin, a free-market decentralized cryptocurrency. People were jumping on this bandwagon in the early 2000s, especially President Donald Trump. It seems like pretty much anybody in the news today has started their own cryptocurrency so I am proposing a new one for rock art enthusiasts, Petrocoins and Pictocoins.

Silver petrocoin, designed by deepai.org.

AVAILABLE IF YOU CAN FIND THEM!

Invest now in the exciting and profitable new opportunity to make a fortune without lifting a finger.

Silver petrocoin, designed by deepai.org.

Available on April 1 – April Fool’s Day!

AN ASSUMED WESTERN MESSAGE PETROGLYPH READ WITH BLISS SYMBOLS:

       

The Cameo Colorado Panel. Photograph by John Greer.   

It should go without saying that any mark made on rock has significance to the study of rock art. What we dismiss as vandalism is also data. One longtime mystery in the study of rock art has been symbols that are commonly called Western Mystery Petroglyphs or Western Message Petroglyphs (WMPs). These are usually dismissed as ‘modern hoaxes,’ even vandalism.

These have been seriously studied for some time by Leigh Marymor who has made considerable progress in analyzing some of the inscriptions. 

“The term “Western Message Petroglyphs” (WMPs) refers to a number of petroglyph sites found scattered among eight western states that are recognized by their shared image content and layout. The imagery is drawn largely from a mash-up of late historic Native American sign-gesture language and picture-writing traditions inter-mixed with pan-cultural imagery from around the world. An increasing number of sites that fit this mold have been reported over the past 85 years or so, currently numbering [40] in all. There is no question that these sites date to post-European contact based on images in some panels that depict Euro-American cultural content (e.g., western-style house, rifle, whiskey keg, horse, etc.). The post-contact era is also apparent in the method used in rendering the engraved images evidenced by the smooth angular lines and chisel strikes produced by metal tools.”(Marymor 2023)

Drawing of the Cameo Blissymbolics panel by Daved Lee.

The fact that they were apparently created with metal tools has led much of the field of rock art research to discount them as not worth serious study. But they are also data and should be studied for possible significance.

Far and away the greatest progress on finding meaning in these enigmatic passages has been made by Leigh Marymor.

“Marymor is a past President of the American Rock Art Research Association and has served several terms as chair of their Conservation Committee. He has received numerous awards for his work in Conservation and Preservation activities, as well as lifetime achievement in rock art studies and documentation. Leigh Marymor is also the Compiler of Rock Art Studies: A Bibliographic Database. The RASBdb project is a searchable bibliographic database of the World's rock art literature and contains more than 55,450 citations as of January 2026. The RASBdb was hosted as a joint project between the Bancroft Library (University of California - Berkeley) and the Bay Area Rock Art Research Association (BARARA) from 2003 - 2016.  In fall of 2016, BARARA affiliated with the Museum of Northern Arizona to continue the free and open access to the  RASBdb Project." (https://mna.academia.edu/LeighMarymor. 2026)

Marymor has recently made a further step in this study by reading one assumed Western Mystery Petroglyph inscription in the little-known form of picture-writing known as Blissymbolics.

As perhaps the most knowledgeable researcher on WMPs Marymor describes them as following.

“While shared imagery and historic landscape settings bind WMP sites together as a coherent whole, stylistic and compositional variations exist. Classic examples feature narrative picture-texts arranged in one line, or in two or more parallel rows (Figure 1), but the database also includes examples of WMPs laid out in clusters, brief phrases, and minimalist panels limited to one or two images (Marymor 2023:2, 14).” (Marymor 2026:9)

By applying statistical analysis to these inscriptions, Marymor not only found them worthy of serious study, but he also made notable progress in deciphering some of them.

“Approximately 70% of the WMP’s 255-image vocabulary appears to derive from a mash-up of late historic Native American picture-writing traditions. Another 24% of the images borrow from diverse global systems (e.g. Maya, Egyptian, Chinese), and the remaining 6% are generic or unidentified (Marymor 2023:4). The repetition of individual images, image compounds, brief image phrases, and formal layout among WMP panels support the hypothesis of a shared authorship—a central author operating with a small group of others who were in-the-know, operating between approximately 1880 and 1930 (Marymor and Marymor 2016:76–78).” (Marymor 2025:9)

In 2026, Marymor turned his attention to a supposed WMP inscription that had been discovered near Cameo, Colorado. 

”A linear rock engraving at Cameo, Colorado, was initially documented on the MysteryGlyphs.com website by Provo, Utah, independent researchers Terry Carter and Shawn Davies (n.d.). Leigh Marymor first encountered a photograph of the Cameo rock engravings there in 2014 and agreed with Carter and Davies that the linear march of pan-cultural ideograms appeared to represent the WMP style. Also, the semi-remote site location conformed well with the pattern seen at other WMP sites. Western Message Petroglyphs are located along historic wagon and rail corridors, dating to the period of western expansion at nodes along those routes that share associations with historic town sites, mines, quarries, and often times, features of the Mormon cultural sphere. The Cameo panel is located on a semi-remote rock wall adjacent to an old horse trail at the head of Main Canyon. The WMP panel overlooks the Palisades coal mining district located in the far distance down canyon.” (Marymor 2025:9)

 Charles Bliss demonstrating Blissymbols to young disabled language student. Public domain image from letterformarchive.com.

In a search for more information Marymor (2026) “uploaded a drawing of the Cameo panel to Google Chrome’s image search engine in January 2025.” This resulted in the revelation that images from this inscription were a 100% match with a writing system known as Blissymbolics.

The Cameo Colorado panel deciphered in Blissymbolics by  Leigh Marymor.

“Blissymbolics—a pictographic writing system developed by Charles K. Bliss between 1942 and 1949. Charles K. Bliss, an Austrian chemical engineer, semiotician and Jewish holocaust survivor, fled with his wife to a refugee community in Shanghai during World War II, and eventually settled in Sydney, Australia. From 1942 to 1949, Bliss passionately pursued the development of a universal picture-writing system that would enable communication without reliance on alphabet-specific systems. He developed his system with hundreds of picture words and thousands of complex image compounds, complete with rules of syntax and spacing. Although the project dominated the rest of his life, his universal picture-writing system never achieved wide acclaim. Blissymbolics was adopted for use with disabled and language-challenged children, eventually enabling many who were completely language deprived to learn how to communicate using his system of Blissymbols . The persistence of his system is evidenced by the works of the Blissymbolics Communication International Foundation, its website, and teaching resources on Bliss Online (n.d.) that include an online dictionary and Blissymbol writing and translation toolkit.” (Marymor 2025:10) With this lead toward possible meaning Leigh was able to translate the inscription. His resulting translation read “I want to walk out of here and possess a woman, in order to feel excited, I’ll walk with no clothes on.” (Marymor 2025:11)

His assumption, based upon the remote area of the inscription, is that the risqué engraving is analogous to Basque sheepherder arborglyphs found throughout the mountainous West. A remarkable detective story with a very amusing conclusion. Congratulation to Leigh Marymor and the other people who were involved. For full details of the search and the solution read the original paper by Leigh Marymor listed in the References below.

NOTE 1: The Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database search engine at the Museum of Northern Arizona is located at: https://musnaz.org/search_rock_art_studies_db/.

NOTE 2: Several other individuals are listed in Marymor’s article as having been involved in finding the solution – Terry Carter, Shawn Davies, John and Mavis Greer, George Decker, Amy Marymor, and Judy Hilbish.

NOTE 3: I wish to express my gratitude to Leigh Marymor for permission to use his material and images, and his generous assistance with final corrections and editing.

REFERENCES:

Marymor, Leigh, 2025, A Western Message Petroglyph Site Falls from the Nest: Reclassifying the Cameo, Colorado, Panel through Blissymbolics, La Pintura, Volume 51, No. 3, Fall 2025, pages 9-12.

Marymor, Leigh, 2023, Western Message Petroglyphs: A Faux Indian Picture-Writing Project in the American West. Arts 12: 7. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010007. Accessed online 12 February 26.

Wikipedia, Bliss Symbols, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols.

SECONDARY REFERENCES:

Marymor, Leigh, 2023, Western Message Petroglyphs: A Faux Indian Picture-Writing Project in the American West. In World Rock Art Topical Collection, edited by R.G. Bednarik. Arts 12(1):Issue 7. MDPI AG, Basel. Electronic document,https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/12/1/7, accessed November 6, 2025.

Marymor, Leigh, and Amy Marymor, 2016, Western Message Petroglyphs: Esoterica in the Wild West. In American Indian Rock Art, Volume 42, edited by Ken Hedges, pp. 67–79. American Rock Art Research Association, San Jose, California.

A PETROGLYPHIC RECORD OF PHARAONIC CONQUEST IN THE SINAI:

 There is a lot of activity in the rock art world in Egypt. Reports of new discoveries are seemingly coming out more frequently then ever. A recent report by Mustafa Nour El-Din, and Ludwig D. Morenz (2025) ascribed a petroglyphs panel in the Sinai Peninsula to a period of Egyptian military expansion as a record of conquest.

The conquest panel, lines marked in on photograph.  Photograph by M. Nour El-Din, drawing by E. Kiesel.

Writing for Archaeology Magazine online Dario Radley set the scene as follows. “Mustafa Nour El Din of the Aswan Inspectorate at the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities documented the carving during a field survey. Egyptologist Ludwig Morenz of the University of Bonn led the study of the images and inscriptions. The panel shows a large figure with raised arms facing a kneeling man struck by an arrow. The wounded figure’s posture signals defeat and submission. Nearby, a boat appears carved in outline. Early Egyptian art often used boats as symbols of royal power and state presence.” (Radley 2026) A section of the panel above the boat has been battered out to remove part of the image. This likely represents another example of the instances in Egyptian history where one Pharaoh attempted to have a predecessor erased from their history.

The conquest panel close-up, lines marked in on photograph.  Photograph by M. Nour El-Din, drawing by E. Kiesel.

El Din and Morenz (2025) interpret the panel as following. “Looking at the inscription we might understand the figure of the striding man as a representation of the god Min himself, but lacking specific iconographic indications. However, we should also consider the early date from a time of developing iconograpic conventions in depicting gods in the Nile Valley as well as the cultural periphery. We cannot properly decide, whether the striding man with raised arms depicts an Egyptian ruler (but no name or title is given) or the god Min (the inscription supports that understanding, but the iconography is different from what we might expect for Min: no crown, no phallus). If the striding man would have been depicted with the red crown he can be identified as Egyptian king, but that iconographic identification remains doubtful. Considering the inscription, it does not seem impossible to understand the main figure in the scene as an image of the god Min. Furthermore, looking at the entire composition, we can assume the boat to have been associated with the Egyptian ruler, the triumphant man with god Min and the subdued and killed man with the local inhabitants.” (El Din and Morenz 2025:87) Identification of the figure with the god Min is postulated because of a nearby text carved into the cliff which reads “(God) Min, ruler of copper ore / the mining region.” (El Din and Morenz 2025:87) Whether or not the large figure is the Pharaoh or the god Min the Pharaonic presence is definitely indicated by the presence of the Egyptian style boat.

The conquest panel drawing by E. Kiesel.

This panel is likened to a propaganda poster from the government. “Researchers see the composition as a message placed in a visible location along a travel corridor. The standing victor likely represents Egyptian authority under divine protection. The kneeling figure represents local inhabitants. The imagery forms a narrative of domination linked to resource control. Such visual claims supported economic expansion and reinforced ideological control over distant zones.” (Radley 2026) In this case, the nearby copper mines.

So, is this panel a historical record, or an illustration of a myth or legend. “When looking at scenes of violence, the fundamental question of historical reality versus ideological patterns and visual staging arises, and this seems a big question deserving future research. However, the historical significance of this 5,000-year-old rock picture depicting a scene of Pharaonic dominance lies in its value as evidence of Egyptian colonization of south-western Sinai during the Proto- and Early Dynastic periods. Why did Egyptian extensions of territorial claims beyond the Nile valley happen and why so early? To answer these questions, more detailed archaeological research in this area is needed. However, thanks to the surveys conducted by Mustafa Nour El-Din, we already know some metallurgical installations for copper processing (in this area), as well as copper slag, awaiting publication. It is likely that Wadi Khamila was already an important mining area for raw materials, especially copper ore and perhaps also turquoise, during the 4th/3rd millennium BC.” (El Din and Morenz 2025:90) As the military strength of the Egyptian empire was based upon copper the explanation of this panel as marking a site of early Egyptian expansion and conquest for mineral wealth seems to make the most sense. The presence of copper ore and processing, as well as possibly turquoise, would make this an important acquisition.

NOTE: Some images in this column 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:

El-Din, Mustafa Nour and Ludwig D. Morenz, 2025, Wadi Khamila, the god Min and the beginning of Pharonic Dominance in Sinai 5000 years ago, freunde-abrahams.de. Accessed 30 January 2026.

Radley, Dario, 2026, 5,000 year old rock art in Sinai shows early Egyptian conquest and control of copper mines, 30 January 2026, Archaeology magazine online, https://archaeologymag.com. Accessed online 30 January 2026.

 

A ROMAN STONE GAME BOARD:

 

Roman stone game board. Internet photograph, public domain.

I have published a number of columns in the past on RockArtBlog about game boards in rock art (see the cloud index at the bottom). This one is about an example attributed to the Romans from between seventeen and fifteen hundred years ago that was found in the Netherlands.

“A limestone object recovered from the Roman settlement of Coriovallum, now Heerlen in the Netherlands, has provided rare evidence for how people played board games during the Roman period. The object, preserved in Het Romeins Museum, carries a pattern of incised lines on a flattened surface. Archeologists long suspected a link to play, yet no known Roman or earlier European game matches the design.” (Radley 2026) This presented researchers with a fascinating mystery. Can they find out what game was played on an unfamiliar board from that long ago? “Researchers used AI to reconstruct the rules of a board game carved into a stone found in the Dutch city of Heerlen. The team concludes that this type of game was played several centuries earlier than previously assumed.” (Phys.org 2026)

“Coriovallum was a Roman town in the province of Germania Inferior founded under the reign of emperor Augustus (27 BC–AD 14) and inhabited until the fall of the Western Roman Empire in AD 476. The remains of Coriovallum lie beneath present day Heerlen.” (Crist 2026:112)

The game board with pieces in place. Photograph from Universiteit Leiden. 

Although the artifact’s provenance, the details of its discovery have been lost it is believed to have been excavated in Heerlen during the late 19^th or early 20^th centuries. “Contextual dating, based on the typical archeological strata of Heerlen, places the creation and used of this board between 1,700 and 1,500 years ago.” (Carvajal 2026)

The flattened stone board has a pattern of lines engraved into the upper surface. “The engraving consists of a rectangle defined by a perimeter groove within which four diagonal lines intersect to form a kind of X shape, accompanied by a single straight horizontal line at one end of the rectangle, and apparently simple but enigmatic configuration.” (Carvajal 2026) This is really not how I would describe the design of the lines on the surface, but interestingly, instead of a series of similar boxes, pits or outlines the design essentially consists of a large rectangle divided up into differing sized rectangular and triangular spaces. The design is symmetrical with both ends the same.

Roman game pieces from Coriovallum. Image from Het Romeins Museum.

These questions particularly interested an archeologist named Walter Crist. “Archeologist Walter Crist encountered the stone in 2020 in the collection of the Thermenmuseum – which has since been renamed the Roman Museum. The worked limestone slab, measuring 21 by 14.5 centimeters, was found in the ground in Heerlen in the late 19^th or early 20^th century. Heerlen was once the important Roman settlement of Coriovallum. Crist specializes in ancient games and was immediately intrigued.” (Phys.org 2026)

Crist assumed that playing a game on this board would leave microscopic wear marks that might point to directions of movement of pieces. “Crist examined the stone under a microscope. ‘Wear was visible on the lines of the stone, exactly at the places where you would slide your playing piece.’ He enlisted the help of researchers from Heerlen and Maastricht. Restaura restoration studio from Heerlen produced highly detailed 3D scans.” (Phys.org 2026) They found the traces they were looking for suggesting possible patterns on the stone surface.

The wear patterns that were detected apparently followed along the diagonal lines on the stone. “To test whether play could explain the wear, researchers combined archeological observation with artificial intelligence-driven simulations. The team used the Ludii system, a platform designed to model historical board games. Two automated players competed against each other on a digital version of the stone board. The simulations drew from many rule systems recorded for small Northern European games, including examples from Scandinavia and Italy. The results showed strong agreement between the observed wear and simulations based on blocking games. In this type of game players aim to restrict an opponent’s movement rather than capture pieces. The simulated play repeatedly concentrated movement along the same lines seen on the stone surface.” (Radley 2026) While the results of the artificial intelligence analysis seem to confirm gameplay, they could not actually replicate for sure the actual game, which Crist (2026:1) refers to as Ludus Coriovalli.

Possible placement of pieces for the game as determined by AI. Image from Crist et al.

“The use wear on the stone was plausibly created through gameplay, moving playing pieces of a size and material composition consistent with examples common at Roman sites, including Coriovallum. - The fact that the observed wear pattern is only apparent in parallel with the incised lines suggests that those lines were meaningful for the action that produced abraded wear along them.” (Crist 2026:121) Although the wear on the stone surface was not as serious as the wear on the Monopoly board I played as a kid, it could be detected with microscopy. And the wear patterns suggested the possible movements of the pieces.

NOTE: Some images in this column 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:

Carvajal, Guiellermo, 2026, A Roman Board Game Found in Ancient Coriovallum Rewrites the History of Strategy Games, 10 February 2026, https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2026/02/a-roman-board-game-found-in-ancient-coriovallum-rewrites-the-history-of-strategy-games/. Accessed online 10 February 2026.

Crist, Walter et al., 2026, Ludus Coriovalli: using artificial intelligence-driven simulations to identify rules for an ancient board game, Antiquity, Vol. 100 (409), 111-126. Accessed online 11 February 2026.

Phys.org, 2026, Rules of unknown board game from the Roman period revealed, 10 February 2026, Leiden University. Accessed online 10 February 2026.

Radley, Dario, 2026,  AI simulations reveal a Roman era board game in the Netherlands, pushing Europe’s blocking games back centuries, 10 February 2026, https://archaeologymag.com/2026/02/roman-era-board-game-in-the-netherlands/. Accessed online 10 Feb. 2026.

 

 

MUSIC IN ROCK ART – HORNS:

 There are a number of ways that rock art and music can go together or interact. I have written a number of previous columns on this which can be references through the cloud index at the very bottom of the blog. Music might accompany rites or ceremonies being enacted at rock art sites. Alternatively, the making of music can be the subject of the rock art itself. This column is going to be about representations of the playing of a type of aerophone – the horn. According to Wikipedia “an aerophone is a musical instrument that produces sound by causing a body of air to vibrate.” This includes variations of flutes, whistles and horns.

Field drawing of horn players, Guruve, Zimbabwe. Image from Kumbani and Diaz-Andreu.

A recent report on the rock art of Zimbabwe (Kumbani and Diaz-Andreu 2024) looks at the subject of musicians in rock art. They have designated a panel at Guruve as three men playing what they identify as trumpets. They point to three types of aerophones: trumpets, flutes and bullroarers. “These were probably made of bamboo.” They report that more than ten sites have been recorded displaying trumpet players. The trumpets are distinguished from flutes “primarily based on size or length of the pipes. Trumpets are typically longer than flutes. Flutes generally do not extend beyond thye player’s abdomen. In contrast, images of potential trumpets in rock art show that these instruments often extend past the abdomen and reach close to the knees.” (Kumbani and Diaz-Andreu 2024:15-16) These rock art images are attributed to the San people.

Scandinavian Lurs. Internet image, public domain.

Ancient Scandinavian war bands had a distinctive type of trumpet known as a Lur. Wikipedia describes a Lur as “a long natural horn without finger holes that is play with a brass-type embouchure. Lurs can be straight or curved in various shapes. The purpose of the curve was to make long instruments easier to carry (e.g. for marching, like the modern sousaphone) and to avoid directing the noise at nearby people.” (Wikipedia) There are some examples of Scandinavian rock art that show Lurs being played.

Panel from Kivik burial cairn, and isolated figure of Lur player. Image from The Kivik King's Grave.

One great example can be found in the Kivik burial cairn. “Few burial monuments in Scandinavia have been as well studied as Bredarör on Kivik, a  Bronze Age cairn, located half a mile north of Simrishamn on the southeastern coast of Skåne. Dated to roughly 1600 BC, and perhaps earlier, the site measures 75 meters in diameter. It is the largest mound of its type in Sweden. Systematically plundered for building materials in centuries past, a central stone chamber was uncovered in 1748, containing a central stone-cist, measuring 3.8 meters long by 1 meter wide, formed of upright stone slabs, the size of a human grave.” (The Kivik King’s Grave) On one of the stone slabs a pair of Lur players can clearly be seen, perhaps indicating it had a role in a funeral ceremony. This monument has undergone considerable excavation and reconstruction/restoration since its discovery in 1748. Such efforts, from that long ago, did not measure up to modern standards of archeology so we cannot be sure that what we see today is accurate to its original condition. I am assuming, however, that the petroglyphs of the Lur players are fairly accurate although, as we can see, it has been treated to the Scandinavian practice of paint in petroglyphs.

Lur players from Tanum Petroglyph Site, Bohuslan, Sweden. Internet image, public domain.

A major rock art site, the Tanum Petroglyphs, also includes an illustration of Lur players. “The Rock Carvings in Tanum (Swedish: Hallristningsomradet Tanum) are a collection of petroglyphs near Tanumshede, Bohuslan, Sweden, which were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1944 because of their concentration. In total, there are thousands of images called the Tanum Petroglyphs on about 600 panels within the World Heritage Area. These are concentrated in distinct areas along a 25 km stretch, and cover an area of about 51 hectares (126 acres or 0.5 km square). While the region was on the coastline when the drawings were made, it is now at an elevation of 25 m.” (Wikipedia)

Moqhith Wilderness, Utah. Photograph by Michael Lau.

Flute player, Mesa Prieta, New Mexico. Photograph by Katelyn Bird.

In the prehistoric New World trumpet-like aerophones were often conch shells pierced at one end and often with a mouthpiece of resin built up. Many of these have been found in the ruins of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, where they may have been used for signaling or for ceremonial purposes. That said, I know of no imagery that might illustrate these. If any reader has examples of Southwestern American rock art of conch players I will be grateful to see such examples. I am struck, however, by the resemblance of the Zimbabwe musicians above to flute-player representations from the Southwest.

NOTE: Some images in this column 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:

The Kivik King’s Grave, https://www.germanicmythology.com/MISCELLANEOUS/KivikGrave.html. Accessed online 20 October 2025.

Kumbani, Joshua and Margarita Diaz-Andreu, 2024, The art of music. The representation of musical instruments in the rock art of Zimbabwe, October 2024, Azania Archaeological Research in Africa (online in ResearchGate). Accessed online 18 October 2025.