SPLIT ROCK SITE, PICKETWIRE CANYONLANDS, COLORADO – A POSSIBLE SOLSTICE/EQUINOX MARKER:

Split Rock site, Picketwire Canyonlands, CO.

Photograph: Peter Faris, 21 June, 1998.

This photo represents a fascinating possibility, not any sort of certainty, but I put it out here for someone to look into if interested. I took the picture on June 21, 1998, the Summer Solstice, about mid-afternoon, at the Split Rock site in the Picketwire Canyonlands, south of La Junta, Colorado. As you can see a finger-like pointer of sunlight is approaching a group of seven (?) engraved vertical lines carved inside the passage of the giant split boulder. Now I was not there at sunrise, or at noon, or sunset, so I cannot speak to how this played out, but it certainly is intriguing from an archaeoastronomical viewpoint. It occurred to me then, as it does now, that the outer lines on the grouping might mark the points reached by the finger of light on the equinoxes, and the midpoint on the solstices. And then there is that interesting spot of light centered on the fifth line from the left. I have not been back to the site and have not done the field research to prove any of this, but I pass it on to whoever is interested to check out. Just please cite me correctly and let me know how it plays out, we can publish it on RockArtBlog.