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.

ROCK ART STUDIES - AROUND THE EDGES (WARNING: THIS CONTAINS ACTUAL IDEAS, AND A FEW PICTURES):

Anubis Cave, NW Oklahoma,

On spring equinox,

March 20, 2015.

From the beginning, the study of North American rock art has attracted interest from unorthodox places. Indeed, when I started studying rock art in the late '70s the idea of studying rock art was itself unorthodox. Most archaeologists approached it as if it were somehow dangerous or unclean. One was not supposed to draw any conclusions from imagery because it could not be scientifically tested. As my background was Art History I had a different attitude - thank goodness. This interest (passion really) has afforded me some of the most wonderful opportunities and experiences in my life.

Phil Leonard in Crack Cave,

southeast Colorado,

March 20,2004.

Early on the fields of archaeology and astronomy were conflated into the study of archeoastronomy. These studies were magically granted legitimacy because there were things that could be measured, predicted, and tested. Also, early in the process of legitimizing rock art studies the field of epigraphy appropriated a certain bandwidth in the spectrum of rock art studies. Insinuating itself between pictorial rock art and historic inscriptions, epigraphy dealt with inscriptions that some people believed were written in historic scripts and languages, usually from Europe, Asia, or the Middle East. 

The Denver Post, Sunday, 

September 18, 2005.

As I live in Colorado, the epigraphic controversy mostly revolved around inscriptions supposedly written in ancient Celtic ogam (oggam, ogham - do not write me to correct my spelling, all have been used) although Phoenician and others have been identified as well. Many of these inscriptions were found to involve archaeoastronomy sites, and the site and the inscription were often presented as proof of each other's authenticity. I happen to know that some of the archaeoastronomy sites actually work as advertised, I have seen them do it. On the other hand I do not personally buy into the epigraphy theories of visitors from the Old World leaving inscriptions in the American West. I have, however, known many of the people on both sides of these arguments and consider them to be friends. I also have friends that I do not agree with on religious or political matters so that has not been a major problem for me. Indeed, I sometimes feel that these arguments bring a new perspective and passion to discussions that can get a little dry.

What I am leading up to with this is the work of Scott Monahan. Monahan is a videographer and documentarian who has been recording archaeoastronomic sites for over 30 years, and attempting to confirm some of the claims of epigraphers. To many of my friends that latter automatically disqualifies him from any serious consideration. But, think about this -  thirty some years ago a rock with runes on it from North America woulds have been laughed out of the building, now that we know of three possible Pre-Columbian viking settlements in North America what should the reaction be?  
In Scott's own words, "http://sacredequinox.com is my project's home page for promotion to the general public.  It features a widescreen slideshow of static shots from my documentary, captioned in lieu of narration, at the top of the page. Beneath the slideshow are links to 3 featured videos: a trailer, a teaser and a prequel. The prequel rebuts a widely-held misconception in the academic community that Ogham written horizontally on flat surfaces is illegitimate.  I filmed plenty of examples in Ireland matching the style found in our area in a 1980s video survey of the Emerald Isle.  Also, a video of University of Calgary's David H. Kelley's introduction to the Ogham alphabet and its genesis is linked, prominently, from my home page." (Scott Monahan)

Further, he continued with, "http://sacredequinox.com/library.html frames the controversy we, as members of the Western Epigraphic Society in the late 80s and early 90s, encountered in trying to interest archaeological and anthropological authorities.  This webpage provides specific context and supporting detail my documentary cannot due to the limitations of the medium and the need to keep a general audience's attention.  Therefore, your rockartblog audience is encouraged to examine, as well, a collection of 9 published and unpublished works I've assembled to provide "drill-down" context to the videos I've created." (Monahan)

Take a look, give him a fair evaluation, Scott is a serious researcher, with a different approach and belief set than mine, but that does not mean he doesn't have some good ideas. You might enjoy it. I always do.

Monahan, Scott

http://sacredequinox.com 

http://sacredequinox.com/library.html 

OGAM? OR RIBSTONES? IN COLORADO:

 Baca County, CO., Photo: Peter Faris, Feb. 1996.

Back in the late 1980s I took frequent trips down to southeastern Colorado to accompany my friend Bill McGlone on trips to rock art sites. Bill lived in La Junta, the gateway to literally thousands of rock art sites in the Purgatoire (Picketwire Canyon) and elsewhere in that region. As an amateur epigrapher Bill was fascinated by correlations between so-called abstract rock art and characters in some Old World scripts, and his first focus in that interest had been the linear groupings that believers call Ogam.

I was never able to share in the belief that Bill and his friends held back then that these groupings of lines consisted of Ogam inscriptions. In order to make any deciphering work at all they had to postulate a variety of Ogam not used in the Old World, an Ogam that consists of consonants only, and no vowels. Additionally, in order to explain the presence of Ogam in southeastern Colorado one has to invoke at least one pre-Columbian visit by a party of Celts from somewhere in Europe where Ogam writing was used. As no believable physical evidence of such an expedition has ever been found I was not able to agree to their arguments for the existence of actual Ogam inscriptions. Groupings of lines – yes, I saw hundreds along with Bill and his friends. Ogam – no. On my visits to the area I would usually stay with Bill McGlone and we would often stay up until late discussing/arguing about epigraphy and diffusionism. My often stated position in those discussions was that I was not able to agree that these were actual Ogam inscriptions, but that I did not have a better explanation so I could not prove that he was in error in this belief.    

I did try as many ways as I could come up with to define these lines as tallies of some sort. I was never able to prove that because I could not specify what they were counting. Oh, some might come close to enumerating the days in a lunar cycle, or the moons in a year, but I could never prove any connection. Vague suspicions do not hold up well in a debate with a person who deeply believes his position.

http://evergreentrad.blogspot.com/201007/of-

mia-pagans-and-viking-ribstones.html

Well now that better explanation has finally come along. Dr. Lawrence L. Loendorf in his book Thunder and Herds, Rock Art of the High Plains, has drawn attention to the resemblance of many of these groupings of lines to the so-called ribstones of the Northern Plains. “Ribstones may vary in their details but all consist of a long, vertical line or groove along the length of a boulder that is crossed by shorter grooves, creating a figure that represents the backbone and ribs of a buffalo.” “Plains groups like the Cree believed that ribstones embodied the spirit of a bison, which they honored by leaving offerings and saying prayers at sites where the stones occur.”  (2008:214)

Well done Larry, from now on I do have my better answer and in the event of a repeat of those debates of old I can cite you, and I no longer have to worry about taking a ribbing (or a stoning) over not having an answer.

REFERENCE:

Loendorf, Lawrence L.

2008    Thunder and Herds, Rock Art of the High Plains, Left Coast Press, Inc., Walnut Creek, CA.

BOOK REVIEW - IN PLAIN SIGHT:

In Plain Sight: Old World Records in Ancient America , Gloria Farley, 1994, ISAC Press, Columbus, Georgia.





This ambitious book recounts a lifetime of work by Gloria Farley, an influential proponent of North American epigraphy, the discovery and decipherment of petroglyphic inscriptions in languages from the Old World here in the New World. Believers are convinced that evidence exists for untold numbers of visitors prehistorically to North America from many different parts of the world including Europe, the Mediterranean, and Africa. Beginning with a fascination with the Kensington Rune Stone, Farley went on to discover and record petroglyph inscriptions in western Oklahoma, northeastern New Mexico, and southeastern Colorado, that she believed proved prehistoric visitation by parties of explorers. Reading this book really brought me a sense for her passion for the search, and her excitement at new discoveries and inscriptions. I came away with a strong feeling for her dedication to the importance of her quest.

The inscriptions discovered by Farley were, for the most part, deciphered by Barry Fell. Fell’s work is considered by most professional archaeologists to be seriously flawed, he worked almost entirely from drawings, photographs, and latex peels that his many followers (including Farley) sent him. It has also been proven that in many instances he (or the original site recorder) altered the images to improve his results. I have visited a number of the sites deciphered by Fell (and some of the sites recorded by Farley) and can attest to examples of inaccuracies and alterations in the images. It would be unfair to Farley, however, to blame her for all of Fell’s flaws. Unfortunately she believed in him implicitly.

Evaluating the claims in her book is really the only fair way to deal with her work. According to my notes, in her book Farley claims discoveries of inscriptions in 31 various Old World languages and/or scripts. I say languages and/or scripts because in many cases the inscription as deciphered is claimed to be a inscription in one language, but written in a different script. So for instance, an inscription might be read in the language of Phoenicia, but written in Numidian script. Also, there are a couple variants of Ogam found, and deciphered, which do not exist in the Old World (where most linguists insist the only real Ogam is found). As for subject matter, inscriptions cited in her book made references to at least 28 Old World deities from Scandinavia, through Europe and the Mediterranean, to Africa. Perhaps the hardest part for me to accept is the unbelievable proliferation of supposed evidence based upon the slenderest of influences. In case after case finding a petroglyph that looks like a symbol from some Euro/African script is later referred to with “we now know that travelers from (wherever) were here”. In one example a stone from Oklahoma that was carved with a horizontal line and three symbols was declared to actually be a Lybian boundary marker with a four-word sentence on it in the Egyptian language, but written in Numidian script. One rock shelter near the Colorado/Oklahoma border was found to have inscriptions in it written in Iberic, Numidian, Egyptian, and Ogam.

In my opinion Gloria Farley was a victim of the thrill of discovery, which can be quite addictive. The adrenaline rush of a good discovery on the scale of these supposed discoveries leads one to really want to repeat the experience. In the real world, however, scientific and historical discoveries are expected to live up to certain standards of proof. If you don’t subject your supposed discoveries to these standards of proof you don’t have to worry about being wrong. One really good rule of thumb to apply is “Occam’s Razor”, the dictum that states that the simplest, and easiest interpretation is most likely to be the correct interpretation. So we have to ask ourselves, what is easier to believe? Either an anonymous Native American carved an abstract symbol (or a doodle) on a rock face in southeastern Colorado, or a party of ancient Celts were in western Oklahoma and southeastern Colorado and they left proof by carving an inscription into a cliff in the language of the Numidians written in the script of ancient Carthage. Why Champollion’s decipherment of the Rosetta Stone in the 1820s is beggared by comparison! I know how I have to interpret this, how do you?

This book review was originally written for the Nov./Dec. online newsletter of the Pleistocene Coalition and can be seen with minor editing changes on that organization's website.

THE QUESTION OF OGAM IN NORTH AMERICA:

Supposed Ogam inscription in Crack

Cave, Baca County, Colorado.

Yes Virginia, in spite of all the skepticism, doubt, and confusion, there is such a thing as Ogam. Originally a Celtic alphabet it was used from perhaps the 4th to 10th centuries A.D. in Britain, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. A few hundred inscriptions survive there on stone monuments, mostly comprising personal names. As a script ogam consists of clusters of lines related to a vertical or horizontal ground line, longer and shorter, perpendicular or angled, above, below, or all the way through the ground line. These clusters or groupings of lines serve as the symbols of the alphabet, thus any language could be written in ogam although the language used in the known authentic inscriptions is Celtic.

Is there ogam in North America however? Theories about ogam inscriptions in North America are usually based upon the "voyages of St. Brendan", an Irish monk who supposedly crossed the sea to visit a "paradise" with a group of brother monks from Ireland in the 6th century A.D. St. Brendan, who was born in 484 A.D. and died in 577 A.D., and his companions were believed to have made a seven year voyage to the west from Ireland. Theories that the "paradise" they found was North America have been expounded to account for the presence of ogam inscriptions in North America. Some inscriptions in the eastern United States have been explained as the work of St. Brendan and his party, while inscriptions in the western U.S. are attributed to diffusion of this method of writing to native peoples from the party of Irish monks.

The main problem is that the inscriptions found in North America appear to be a variant of ogam that was not used in the British Isles. It appears to consist only of consonants and to contain no vowels. Archaeologists point out that there are no traces of that ancient celtic presence in North America (although the true believers have a couple of sites on the east coast of stone arrangements that they claim are celtic). This is countered by the true believers that the inscription panels are themselves identifiable artifacts of the truth of the theory.

There is one other aspect of this question that needs to be considered; what about all the panels of groupings of lines that are not readable by proponents of North American ogam? I believe that the believers would answer this with the position that the unreadable panels were made later, after the period during which the "real" ogam inscriptions were made, and that they represent Native American attempts to capture the magic of writing by imitating it.

What is my position on this? Well, I for one do not believe in the Celtic connection or North American ogam. I turn out to be one of the skeptics who just need a whole lot more concrete evidence before that theory will look plausible. So what do I believe that these panels of arrangements of lines actually are? I do not have the faintest idea other than probably some sort of count or tally. I have tried to compare some of them to natural cycles such as days, weeks, or months that would indicate recording the passage of time but I have had absolutely no success in this. My best personal guess is that they must be a count or tally. Perhaps they are the number of buffalo killed in a tribal hunt?

A good and close friend of mine, Bill McGlone (now deceased), was one of the primary proponents of the theory of North American ogam inscriptions. He had the faith that I do not, and Bill could believe in it because he could read it. As some other proponents have done Bill had learned enough ogam and a little basic Celtic and could find words (without vowels remember) in some of the inscriptions. In a couple of instances he and his co-researchers actually found inscriptions that they could translate, and then use that to make a prediction that could be checked against their translation. At one location known as Crack Cave in Baca county, near Springfield, Colorado, Bill read one inscription that he said predicted a significant alignment of light at sunrise on the day of the equinox (illustration above). At dawn on one spring equinox I sat deep in Crack Cave and saw a spot of light from the rising sun hit and illuminate a symbol carved into the cave wall that can be appears to be part of a sun disk.

Did this prove the accuracy of his theories, or was it just a coincidence? Many people see proof, I fear I still find it to be a coincidence that light hit that spot at that time. I will admit, however, that was a coincidence that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck when I saw it. The basic difference in believing or not believing in this theory, as in so much of the study of rock art, seems to be based upon faith. You are either a believer or a skeptic. I am a skeptic. On many occasions Bill and I would sit up until late at night (early in the morning) debating all sides of these questions.

No, I am not a believer in the presence of authentic ogam in North America. I am, however, totally grateful for all of the people with more imaginative theories in the interpretation of rock art. They keep the field from being too staid and academic and add interest to the study, just like all the spice adds interest to the pan of lamb and sets a good vindaloo apart from a pan of sauted mutton. So keep those theories coming in folks, I, for one, am grateful.