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 1150–1300), 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 buildings’ second 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 3–4 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. 1000–1300 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 1.6–2.0m 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.