BIGHORN SHEEP HEADDRESSES AND HORNED ANTHROPOMORPHS, PART 1 - ARCHAIC PEOPLES:

Bighorn Sheep, Archaic petroglyph,

Nine-Mile Canyon, Utah.

Photo Paul and Joy Foster, 

from Colo. Rock Art Archives.

(Note - the figure on the left

has his head posed in a rare

frontal position.)

Here in the west images of anthropomorphs with horned headdresses are found from the beginning. From Archaic rock art to present Puebloan katcina, headdresses with two bighorn sheep horns can be found. In an April 18, 2019, webinar titled Southwestern Rock Art and the Mesoamerican Connection presented to the Colorado Rock Art Association, Dr. James Farmer suggested that southern images such as Tlaloc were influenced by northern Barrier Canyon Style rock art (2019 Farmer, and 2019 Farmer, personal communication).

This may have also been the case with influences transmitted down through time, as well as from north to south, from Archaic cultures to the historic and modern Native American tribes of the Southwest. One theme which is common in Barrier Canyon Style rock art as well as rock art of the Fremont people is an anthropomorph wearing a horned headdress. Some of these headdresses are recognizable as pronghorn antelope horns, or deer antlers, but many appear to feature bighorn sheep horns. This is also the case with present day Puebloan peoples whose Aalosaka and Muyingwa kachinas wear bighorn sheep headdresses. Many of the Puebloan peoples also have Two-Horn Societies whose members wear two-horned headdresses. Indeed, a photo of such a headdress was included in the Fifteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1893-94, Government Printing Office, Washington D.C., 1897.

Bighorn Sheep Headdress, as

exhibited in Utah State University

Eastern Prehistoric Museum,

Price, Utah. Photo by Courtesy of

Dr. Tim Riley, Curator of Archaeology.

"An amazing artifact, a prehistoric bighorn sheep headdress, is part of the Tommy Morris collection exhibited at the College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah. The artifact was apparently found on the eastern edge of the San Rafael Swell near the Colorado or Green River. This region is home to both Desert Archaic and Fremont peoples, both regularly hunted bighorn sheep and created rock art galleries featuring horned anthropomorphs and bighorn sheep imagery. The San Rafael Swell is also the core area for the distribution of Barrier Canyon Style pictographs, and all major river canyons in this area include painted rock art galleries containing anthropomorphs, many of which are adorned with horn headdresses." (Garfinkel 2014:2)

Perhaps the most remarkable manifestations of the creativity of Archaic peoples are the Barrier Canyon style rock art panels mentioned above.

"The bighorn sheep headdress, as it appears in the display case in the Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum today, is tied together with cordage and is decorated with fifteen Olivella shell beads. This present configuration is partially a reconstruction of what Tommy Morris and previous museum curators thought the headdress might have look like when it was in use. It does not appear to be representative of how the artifact was originally found in the 1960s. Notes at the museum document that the headdress was found in two pieces with drilled holes in the cranium with six Olivella shell beads scattered around it." (Garfinkel 2014:2)

Barrier Canyon Style painted figures,

Sego Canyon, Utah.

Photo J. & E. Faris, June 1999.

Close-up of central figures,

Barrier Canyon Style painted figures,

Sego Canyon, Utah.

Photo J. & E. Faris, June 1999.

The Archaic culture in the American West is represented by the pre-agricultural hunting and gathering lifestyle. 

Coso rock art, Little Petroglyph

Canyon, California.

Photo Stephen Bodio.

Coso rock art, California.

Photo Gettyimages.ca.

One place that exhibits Archaic horned figures in great abundance is the Coso Rock Art District in California. These figures are presumed to date to many thousands of years BC, and represent one of the greatest concentrations of Archaic rock art in North America. Indeed, the early people who inhabited the Coso area also produced huge numbers of images of desert bighorn sheep, indicating a very early significant correlation between the sheep and horned anthropomorphs.

Barrier Canyon Style painted

figures, Sego Canyon, Utah.

Photo Peter Faris, August 1993.

In Utah and western Colorado this lifestyle culminated in the people who produced the distinctive Barrier Canyon Style rock art. "Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) describes a distinctive style of rock art which appears mostly in Utah, with the largest concentration of sites in and around the San Rafael Swell and Canyonlands National Park, but the full range extend(s) into much of the state and western Colorado. - These panels are believed to have been created during the archaic period (probably late archaic) and are estimated (from direct and indirect carbon 14 dates) to be somewhere in the range of 1500 to 4000 years old, possibly older - - clay figurines of a similar style found in Cowboy Cave (in a tributary canyon to Horseshoe Canyon) have been dated to over 7000 years old." (Wikipedia)

 Harvest Scene, Maze District,

Canyonlands, San Juan County, UT.

Photo Sherman Spear, June 1978,

with Marian Spear.

Harvest Scene, Maze District,

Canyonlands, San Juan County, UT.

Photo Don I. Campbell, May 1983.

"Given the need for more accurate dating of the headdress discussions ensued with the analysts at Beta Radiocarbon Laboratories. It was decided that the most accurate dates would not be on bone or shell but on the textile materials - that is the milkweed cordage that served to attach the beads directly to the bighorn sheep cranium. The radiocarbon age for this material provided a measured determination of 720 plus or minus 30 before present (BP) with a conventional age of 950 plus or minus 30 BP. With a 2 sigma calibration that radiocarbon date converts to a calendar age of AD 1020 to 1160 (cal 930 to 790)." (Garfinkel 2014:8) While this date is later than the Barrier Canyon Style art presented here, the fact that so many BCS figures possess horns suggests that earlier examples of the bighorn sheep headdress existed, but may not now survive. 

Horned Figure, Hueco Tanks, TX.

Photo Peter Faris, March 2004.

To be continued next week. 

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.

I wish to thank Dr. Tim Riley, Curator of Archaeology of the Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum, in Price, Utah for providing the photograph of the Bighorn Sheep headdress and accompanying information.

REFERENCES:

Farmer, James, Dr.

2019 Southwestern Rock Art and the Mesoamerican Connection, April 18, 2019, online webinar presented to Colorado Rock Art Association.

Garfinkel, Alan P.

2014 Age and Character of the Bighorn Sheep headdress, San Rafael Swell, Utah, July 9, 2014, AGG Associates Research Paper Number 3, Bakersfield, California, Available on Academia.edu.

Powell, John Wesley, editor

1897 Fifteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1893-94, Government Printing Office, Washington D.C.

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrier_Canyon_Style