T-SHAPED DOORWAYS, BALLCOURTS, PIPETTES, AND THE WIND:

T-shaped doorway, Porcupine House, Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, June 1981.

What do the T-shaped doorways of the 4-Corners area and the I-shaped ballcourts of Mesoamerica have in common. Just possibly the Hohokam pipette symbol is what they have in common, or more precisely, perhaps both of those shapes influenced the development of the pipette symbol.

T-shaped petroglyph, Square Tower Canyon, Hovenweep National Monument, San Juan county, Utah. Photograph Peter Faris, 28 May 1988.

Ruin of T-shaped door in foreground. Aztec Ruin, Aztec, San Juan County, New Mexico. Internet photograph, public domain.

T-SHAPES: Lekson states quite unequivocably that the T-shaped doorway originated in the 4-corners region in the areas influenced by Chaco Canyon and spread from there. “And we can say with some confidence that T-shaped doors began at Chaco, proliferated across the Four Corners during Aztec’s era, and all but disappeared from the northern Southwest at the same time they reappeared far to the south, at Paquime and the Casas Grandes region. T-doors are, indeed, all over the map, but in sequence: T-doors followed the Chaco-Aztec-Paquima meridian. If some enterprising graduate student crossed their eyes and dotted the Ts into a GIS with time periods, they would pop up first around Chaco and at a few of its outliers, then show strongly at Aztec and throughout its region, and finally all but vanish in the north and explode at Paquime and all over northern Chihuahua.” (Lekson 2015:85) The T-shape is not only seen in doorways in the American southwest. There are also examples found in rock art in various locations.

T-shaped petroglyph embellished at top. Northwest New Mexico. Photograph Wendell Wilmoth.

T-shaped doorway, Casa Rinconada, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Photograph Peter Faris, August 1984.

Mayan T-shaped wind symbol, 'Ik'. Internet illustration, public domain.

Callis (2021) sees the influence as having gone the other way. “It is proposed here that the T- or Tau-shaped doors so emblematic of Southwestern architecture after AD 1000 are the result of that contact. T-shapes similar to those in the North American Southwest are found as wall perforations at the late Classic – and highly unique – site of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico. Furthermore, although not readily evident, the doorways of many Terminal Classic Maya structures also incorporate the T-shape. T-shapes are also found as architectural elements in other features, such as friezes, throughout Mesoamerica. That the T-shape is a representation of the Mayan glyph Ik’ – that signifies both wind and breath and, by extension, life or spirit – is widely accepted within the Mesoamerican context. This paper demonstrates through comparison with Maya and other Mesoamerican architecture, as well as analysis of known Southwest-Mesoamerican contacts and known instances of cultural diffusion, that these Mayan T-shapes, the most basic form of the Mayan glyph Ik’, also inspired the T-shaped doors of the Southwest.” (Callis 2021:1)

What we do know is that whichever way the influence of the T-shaped door went it can be found both to the north and the south of the Hohokam region so it is certain that they were exposed to it and knew of it.

Pipette, Cochise County, Arizona. Photograph from Arizona Memory Project.

PIPETTES: The pipette symbol is centered on the Hohokam region (although examples have been found farther away). Pipettes are basically a series of squares connected by a central passage. Wright and Russell (2011)  illustrate approximately 60 pipettes from rock art sites in their paper (incidentally they also include five T-shapes, supposedly as half pipettes, and a few images that I did not include in this count because I just cannot agree with their identification of the symbol as a pipette). In their paper Wright and Russell mostly picture pipettes with two (28) or three (24) lobes, although they also have a single square they so identify as well as some with four (5) and five (3) lobes.

Hohokam Pipette symbol, Pima Canyon, Arizona. Photograph Debbie L. Wise.

Hohokam Pipette symbol, Hieroglyphic Canyon, Arizona. Photograph Dale O'Dell.

“We submit that the compartmentalization of the cosmos into containers was  a conceptual metaphor of the tiered cosmos. This metaphor was embedded in the Uto-Aztecan language shared across Mesoamerica and the Greater Southwest and materialized in pipette symbolism. The distribution of the pipette compares favorably with the spatial extent of Wilcox’s (1987) ‘Mesoamerican cosmological metastructure’, supporting our assertion that the pipette was a key symbol of this religious structure with roots in Mesoamerica. While there is no evidence for pipette imagery in Southwestern material culture prior to AD 600, scenes of transcendence are known from Archaic Chihuahuan contexts.” (Wright and Russell 2011:377-8) In other words Wright and Russell are suggesting that the pipette symbol represents tiers of the cosmos with a passage up through them (for the entry of humans). This does not, however, account for the facts that the pipette symbol is so similar to the I-shaped ballcourt of Mesoamerica, and the fact that Mesoamerican culture had a large influence on Hohokam culture, including ball courts.

I-shaped ballcourt, Zapotec, Monte Alban, Mexico, ca. 500 - 100 BCE. Internet photograph, public domain.

Mayan I-shaped ballcourt, Cihuatan site, El Salvador. Photograph Wikipedia.

BALLCOURTS: One of the iconic features of Mesoamerican urban sites is the ballcourt. Many of these were formed in the shape of the capital letter “I”.

Ballcourt of Gravel, Mixtec, Codex Yuta Tnoho, Online illustration, public domain.

I-shaped ballcourt, Paquime, Chihuahua, Mexico. Online photograph, public domain.

“In contrast to the lowlands, the first highland ballcourts date to over a millennium after the Paso de la Amada court. The first securely dated full-sized ballcourts, from the end of the Middle Formative (600 to 500 BCE, occur at the central Mexican highland sites of Capulac Concepcion and La Laguna. While exhibiting different orientations, both courts have similar sizes and shapes: lateral mounds terminate in closed ‘end zones,’ giving the court, in plan view, the I shape so typical of later ballcourts throughout Mesoamerica. In Oaxaca, I-shaped ballcourts, interpreted as boundary and defensive mechanisms associated with a state game centered at the Zapotec urban center of Monte Alban, first appeared in the final portion of the Late Formative.” (Blomster and Chavez 2020) While these are named Ballcourts, and we certainly believe that the Mesoamerican ball games were conducted in them, they are also believed to have served a number of other functions, ritual and otherwise.

So, with the main sequence of construction (with T-shaped doors) at Chaco occurring between 850 and 1125 CE, and with the peak of Hohokam culture dating from between 850 and 1400 CE, and with Mesoamerican ballcourts recorded from 1400 BCE to the 1500s CE we have sufficient time overlap for the influences from the north and the south to come together with the Hohokam, resulting in the pipette symbol.

So is the T-shape half of an I-shaped ballcourt? Is a two-lobed pipette a I-shaped ballcourt, or two T-shapes together end to end? Is a three-lobed pipette a ballcourt and a T-shaped doorway connected? I really cannot say, although I do believe that those more conversant with Hohokam than I should take a detailed look at it. What I can say is that with the influences from both the north and the south converging on Hohokam that amalgam is certainly a possibility.

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:

Blomster, Jeffrey P. and Victor E. Salazar Chavez, 2020, Origins of the Mesoamerican ballgame: Earliest ballcourt from the highlands found at Etlatongo, Oaxaca, Mexico, 13 March 202o, Science Advances, Vol. 6, No. 11, KOI”10.1126/sciadv.aay6964

Callis, Marc, 2021, Ik’ Way: The Mayan Origin of T-Shaped Doors in the North American Southwest, Southwestern Lore, Summer 2021, Colorado Archaeological Society

Lekson, Stephen H., 2015, The Chaco Meridian: One Thousand Years of Political and Religious Power in the Ancient Southwest, Rowman and Littlefield, Boulder, Colo.

Wright, Aaron M. and Will G. Russell, 2011, The Pipette, the Tiered Cosmos, and the Materialization of Transcendence in the Rock Art of the North American Southwest, Journal of Social Archaeology, 11(3), pages 361-386

TALLIES IN ROCK ART REVISITED:

Station 16, Jeffers Petroglyph Site, Minnesota. 

Internet photograph, public domain.

Many instances of tallies have been identified in rock art. It is often assumed that any panel that has repetitive elements is a tally. There is another sort of count that I believe we should also be aware of – a register. There are many nuances to the meanings of both terms but, for the purposes of this paper, I am going to use the following definitions.

Tally - "A continuous record or count of a number of things or people." (Cambridge.org)

Register - "A list or record of acts, events, etc." (dictionary.com)

Hopi Clan Registry, Willow Springs, Arizona. Photograph Paul and Joy Foster.

So a tally is a count of items, and a register is a count of events or occurrences. For example, the Hopi Clan Registers at Willow Springs, Arizona, are not tallies by these definitions, but lists of events - the event being a visit by a member of a clan to Willow Springs. These have been interpreted because members of the Hopi Clans have provided testimony explaining them. The meanings of other tallies and registries are much more problematical however.

In the photograph above (top of page), from the Jeffers Petroglyph Site in southwestern Minnesota, Rauff (2013, 2015) identifies the dots as tallies because they represent a count of something.

Awl sharpening grooves with petroglyphs and tallies, Purgatory Canyon, Bent County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, 9 July 1998.

Some rock art enthusiasts designate ranks of tool sharpening grooves as tallies because of their groupings. I see many of those groupings as coincidental; the grooves are in the same place because that rock is particularly good for sharpening a bone or antler awl, or because there is a comfortable rock in front of it to sit on while working, etc. I also question many of them because the depth is excessive, much deeper than necessary to make a simple tally notation. There are, however, sites where tool sharpening grooves are lined up like tally marks, and accompanied by other clues such as other tally seeming notations and other petroglyphic images deeply engraved or pecked. This site from the Purgatoire River in southeastern Colorado exhibits all three; tally-like markings, deeply engraved petroglyphs, and tool or awl sharpening grooves. This opens up the possibility that the grooves really may have been intended as some sort of tally.

“There are essentially two approaches to interpreting tallies that have not been explicitly identified by their makers. The first is to uncover a structural isomorphism between the count and grouping of tallies and that of some natural phenomenon. Marshak made use of this technique in postulating astronomical counts in tally marks on Paleolithic bones.” (Rauff 2013:83)

“The second approach is a kind of cultural triangulation that attempts to match the tally marks with identifiable objects or events that are culturally associated with the rock art. Merrell, for example, believes that the tallies in the Lava Tube Cave petroglyphs in Idaho ‘denote cave visits or perhaps represent caches of meat stored in the caves’ (p.36). As another example of this second approach consider the tally marks that are known as part of the vertical series.” (Rauff 2013:84) While there may be tally marks in Lava Tube Cave I seriously doubt that they represent caches of meat stored in the caves. First, why would you use a permanent mark to represent a temporary resource? And second, I do not believe that the people who cached the meat supply would then leave a sign announcing it to all and sundry. I believe they would have wanted to protect that knowledge.

Vertical Series rock art, southwest Montana.

Keyser and Klasses, 2001, fig. 16.6, p. 286. 

Among the rock art that strongly suggests that it represents tallies is the Vertical Series Tradition of the Northern Plains. “The rock art of the Vertical Series Tradition is among the most enigmatic and intriguing on the Northwestern Plains. It consists mostly of repeated nonrepresentational symbols arranged in multiple vertical columns or series – the characteristic that gives this tradition its name. The repetition of simple geometric shapes and their consistent arrangement into rows or columns gives the strong impression that they are part of a structured system of communication. Perhaps these symbols form an incipient ideographic notation system – an early precursor to true writing.” (Keyser and Klassen 2001:281)

In other words, perhaps the number of the symbols represents an aggregate number of things and the shape of the symbol represents the thing being counted.

"Music," Purgatoire Canyon, southeast Colorado. Photographs Peter Faris.

Some sets of symbols carved into the cliffs if the Picketwire River in southeast Colorado consist of a long horizontal line with shorter vertical lines appended vertically beneath it, each short, vertical line terminating in a pecked circle. Dubbed “music” by the locals, these signs somewhat resemble signs described in Garrick Mallery’s report as notation of passing time. In his report “Picture Writing of the American Indians”, Garrick Mallery gave the following description of time notation by the Dakota tribe.

Year tally, Garrick Mallery, fig. 182, p. 265.

“Dr. William H. Corbusier, surgeon, U.S. Army, gives the following information: ‘The Dakotas make use of the circle as the symbol of a cycle of time; a small one for a year and a large one for a longer period of time, as a life time, one old man. Also a round of lodges or a cycle of seventy years, as in Battiste Good’s Winter Count. The continuance of time is sometimes indicated by a line extending in a direction from right to left across the page when on paper, and the annual circles are suspended from the line at regular intervals by short lines as in Fig. 182.’” (Mallery 1893:265)

Hicklin Springs, 5BN7, Colorado. Field drawing, Peter Faris, 26 September 1992.

Also from southeastern Colorado is this panel from the Hicklin Springs site, 5BN7, in Bent County. James Rauff included it in his 2015 paper as his figure 14 misattributing its source, having picked it up from a publication which had also misattributed it. This is, in fact, my drawing of the panel from a rock art recording project in 1992. Rauff notes the dot patterns and defines them as tallies. “A similar complex is shown in Figure 14, and archaic petroglyph from southeastern Colorado. The regularity in the dotted grids suggests that the dots were pecked into an intentional pattern with, perhaps an intentional count.” (Rauff 2015:17) There are indeed many other dot patterns at 5BN7, and some of them may well be tally counts.

Baca County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, February 1996.

Finally, I want to again bring up the line groupings so often interpreted as Celtic “Ogam” by amateur epigraphers in the southeastern Colorado/western Oklahoma area. While some of these petroglyphs may resemble Celtic Ogam, to me they exhibit the characteristics of tallies more, and for the purposes of this analysis I so designate them.

Along with the question of which rock art represents a tally and which is just a pattern or design is the question “a tally of what?” In most cases I believe this is just not definable – the production of rock art being a very subjective process tallies very seldom include the necessary clues. They are, however, another sign that the people who produced it thought and felt like us, they are another sign of our common humanity.

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.

PRIMARY REFERENCES:

Keyser, James D., and Michael A. Klassen, 2001, Plains Indian Rock Art, University of Washington Press, Seattle.

Mallery, Garrick, Picture Writing of the American Indians, in Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnography to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1888-1889, by J. W. Powell, Director, Government Printing Office, Washington DC., reprinted in two volumes in 1972 by Dover Publications, Inc. New York.

Rauff, James V., 2013, Rock Art Tallies: Mathematics on Stone in Western North America, Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 76-88, July 2013.

Rauff, James V., 2015, Mathematical Ideas In North American Rock Art, paper presented at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, San Antonio, Texas, Janluary 2015.

SECONDARY REFERENCES:

Merrell, Carolynne L., 2007, Lava Tube Dave Pictographs in the Great Rift of Southeastern Idaho, in American Indian Rock Art, Vol. 33, Don D. Christensen and Peggy Whitehead, eds. American Rock Art Research Association, Phoenix, AZ. Pages 27 – 40.

STORY TELLING - BIOGRAPHIC NARRATIVES IN ROCK ART:

It is quite common in looking at rock art to have the feeling that the images are telling a story, and that you can almost understand it, almost being the key word here. Although many rock art researchers deny that we can interpret the imagery we find, I disagree - at least in some cases. Some rock art is obviously telling a story and we are meant to be able to decipher it.

Bird Rattle (Blackfeet) carving his petroglyph,1924, Writing-on-Stone, Alberta, Canada. From James Keyser, 2004, Art of the Warriors, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

A prime example of this is Bird Rattle’s panel from Writing-On-Stone at Alberta, Canada. As explained by Klassen, Keyser, and Loendorf in their paper in Plains Anthropologist (2000) “The recent discovery of photographs and narrative of a 1924 trip by Roland Willcomb and Piegan elder Bird Rattle demonstrates that a well-known historic petroglyph at Writing-On-Stone was carved by this Plains Warrior as part of the Biographic rock art tradition.” (Klassen et al. 2000:189)

       Bird Rattle's panel, Writing-On-Stone,           Alberta, Canada. Photograph Peter Faris,                           June 25, 2016.

Bird Rattle and Willcomb had met in 1923 in the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. Willcomb had come to the West as an engineer and in the summer of 1923 joined the Montana Highway Commission, overseeing the building  of roads on the reservation from 1923 to 1925. After meeting Bird Rattle a close friendship developed between Willcomb and him which lasted until the death of Bird Rattle in October 1937. (Klassen et al. 2000:191-2)

         Bird Rattle's panel, Writing-On-Stone, Alberta, Canada. Figure 7, page 196, Klassen                        et al., 2000.

“Within a year of their meeting, Willcomb had arranged to take Bird Rattle on a visit to Writing-On-Stone. Apparently, he had been told of this ‘place of mystery, where the ghosts live’ and he wished to experience it himself. Their journey to Writing-On-Stone was documented by Willcomb with a series of photographs, and he later audio recorded a narrative of the journey, apparently based on his original notes and letters. On the morning of September 13, 1924, Willcomb and Bird Rattle, accompanied by a second Piegan elder, Split Ears, and Jack Wagner, who acted as interpreter, left Browning in Willcomb’s car. The party drove north to the Canadian border. There they were joined by two of Willcomb’s friends from Great Falls.” (Klassen et al. 2000:192-3)

Coso range, California. Photograph Paul and Joy Foster.

The example in the panel from the Coso Range in California by Paul and Joy Foster is another candidate for such attempts at interpretation. Although some of the elements are a little hard to make out what I see in it is; a large anthropomorph holding what might be an atlatl in his right hand with a projectile point superimposed over the end of it. Five more, carefully delineated projectile points are seen on the right side of the panel for a total of six. Additionally, six zoomorphs are illustrated, one overlapping the anthropomorph and five more on the left side of the panel. If this is not a “mighty hunter” bragging I don’t know what would be. I have been around hunters and fishermen enough to know their bragging when I hear it, or in this case see it. “Six animals with six shots.”

Of course, such interpretation is not acceptable in Archeology, but it is fairly common in Art History, so I reserve the right to indulge in it periodically.

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: 

Klassen, Michael A., James D. Keyser, and Lawrence L. Loendorf,  2000, Bird Rattle’s Petroglyphs at Writing-On-Stone: Continuity in the Biographic Rock Art Tradition, Plains Anthropologist, Vol. 45, No. 172, pp. 189-201.

PAINTINGS FROM A TOMB IN THE ALTAI MOUNTAINS, SIBERIA, RUSSIA:

         

Karakol tomb, Altai Mountains, Siberia. Photograph by Vladimir Kubarev.

A tomb excavated in 1985 in the Altai mountains in Siberia contains features which prompt some interesting speculation and conclusions. The tomb itself is dated to the Karakol culture from the 2^nd millennium BCE.

Painted panel, Karakol tomb, Altai Mountains, Siberia. Photograph by Vladimir Kubarev.

“Karakol culture (Turkic Black lake) is a Bronze Age archaeological culture of the 2^nd millennium BCE in the Altai area. - Karakol culture was discovered in 1985 near (the) village of Karakol in Altai. In the Altai territory, the Bronze Age extended from the 3^rd to the 2^nd millennium BCE, bronze was the main material for tools, weapons and jewelry. At that time in the Altia territory lived people of the Karakol and Afanasiev cultures. Most of the investigated Karakol culture burials are located on the banks of the river Ursul and its tributaries.” (Wikipedia)

      Petroglyph panel, Karakol tomb, Altai    Mountains, Siberia. Photograph by Vladimir                              Kubarev.

“Some of these burials were found in elaborately decorated tombs, built of slabs of rock engraved and painted on the inside. The earliest were engraved visuals of elk, mountain goats and running people with round horns on their heads.

Then the slabs of rock with the petroglyphs were broken off the mountain, taken into the tomb and turned upside down to decorate its insides.

Next and slightly on top of the petroglyphs were made drawings of eleven human-like figures.” (Siberian Times)

Karakol tomb, Altai Mountains, Siberia. Photograph by Vladimir Kubarev.

Specularite. Online photograph, Public Domain.

Interestingly, the bodies buried in the tombs had also been painted. “The remains of people buried inside the stone graves were also painted with the same colours, with spots of red ocher found below the eye sockets and traces of a black and silvery mineral called Specularite prominent in the eyebrows area.”(Siberian Times)

       Red ocher pictograph, Karakol tomb,     Altai Mountains, Siberia. Photograph by                            Vladimir Kubarev.

The vivid red pigment was made from heat-modified ocher. The authors concluded that varying levels of heat were carefully controlled to create various shades of red. “A team of scientists from the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, Russia’s leading research and development centre for nuclear energy, working with the Paleo-Art Centre of the Institute of Archeology, proved that the red parts of (the) tomb drawing were made of thermally modified ocher. The white-coloured sections of the artworks were made by scraping which revealed light-reflecting rock crystals. For the black colour, the prehistoric artists of Karakol used soot.” (Siberian Times)

The real question here is whether the decorations were created specifically for the tomb they decorated, or if the tomb builders took previously created rock art from another location to use in decorating the burials.

In other words, was the decoration deliberately manufactured for this tomb (and if so, where) or was it gathered opportunistically from other locations.

     Karakol tomb, Altai Mountains, Siberia.             Photograph by Vladimir Kubarev.

Different styles of painting on the various panels suggest multiple origins for the panels, as if they were originally done at different times by different people. Given the variations in technique and style we might assume that the rock art was even done by different cultures. This would suggest the gathered opportunistically option.

It also suggests that the burial of this man was more important to the population there (and then) than the original purpose the rock art was created for; i.e. if the rock art had been created by a previous population in that region, whatever their motivation, it was now overridden by the need to decorate this man’s tomb. The culture had either shifted (and with it the commitment to the art), or this man was so important that the art should be repurposed for his burial tomb. It is clear that this art was still considered to have value because it was utilized in such an important context.

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 this subject you should read the original report listed below.

REFERENCES:

Siberian Times Staff Reporter, 2019, Revealed: the Sophisticated Techniques of Ancient Artists Who Created these Fantastical Images, 12 June 2019, The Siberian Times.

Wikipedia, Karakol Culture, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakol_culture