CUMULATIVE VANDALISM - THE IMPORTANCE OF ROCK ART RECORDING:

Ute panel, Sego Canyon,

Utah. Photograph: Peter

Faris, August, 1993.

Left side of Ute panel, Sego

             Canyon, Utah. Photograph:
              Peter Faris, August, 1993.

We all have seen examples of rock art panels badly vandalized in many different ways, and we know of cases that have been reported from all over the world. I was recently looking at rock art photographs online and ran across a photo of the wonderful Ute Indian pictograph panel  from Sego Canyon, Utah, a site I have visited a number of times. I thought this photograph looked different than I remembered so I went into my files and found a photograph that I had taken of the same panel in August, 1993. I present both photographs here for your perusal, and to illustrate my premise of the importance of not only recording rock art, but of making those records available to other students of the field for comparison.

https://www.eskimo.com/~noir/

southwestrockart/thomp6.jpg

At this level I can see two alterations to the panel right off. The first is the addition of the name Jesus above the shield in the center. The second alteration is the apparent addition of a ring of white hand prints around the shield on the left.

https://www.eskimo.com/~noir/

southwestrockart/thomp6.jpg

In my 1993 photograph of this panel the large initials "F.B." can already be seen so that vandalism occurred prior to that year. Scanning photographs online of this panel I found one taken between 2003 and 2007 according to its labeling that has the name "Jesus" added but no hand prints around the shield on the left. So we can probably assume that the name "Jesus" was added between 1993 and the 2003-7 period. The hand prints appeared after the 2003-7 period. In this way we can begin to chart the progressing cumulative vandalism of this important panel. Indeed, a person could make quite a project out of accumulating a number of photographs of the same panel over a broad span of years and record the history of its desecration. If anyone out there has any further information on the apparent vandalism of this important rock art panel I would be happy to hear it. Let me know!

NOTE: I would be remiss in not mentioning the possibility that the hand prints could have been added to a photograph of the panel digitally (i.e. Photoshopped), but I am not skilled enough with computers to detect such alteration. If this were the case I hope someone will also let me know that.

NOTE: Digital copies of all my rock art photographs, with the pertinent information on time and place, are in the Colorado Rock Art Archives at the Pueblo Regional Library, Pueblo, Colorado.

RESOURCE:

The photo with added hand prints was found at the website https://www.eskimo.com/~noir/southwest/rockart/thomp6.jpg .

THE LOW-DOWN ON HIGHEST ALTITUDE ROCK ART CLAIMS:

Pictograph at Abri Faravel,

southern France, 7,000' in elevation.

www.livescience.com

An article published online at Live Science, by Stephanie Pappas, Live Science contributor, and titled Highest-Altitude Prehistoric Rock Art Revealed, claims that pictographs found at a rock shelter in the southern French Alps named Abri Faravel, are the highest-altitude examples of rock art ever recorded. "In 2010, researchers found paintings decorating the ceiling of the rock shelter, consisting of parallel lines as well as what look like two animals facing each other. Excavations reveal signs of human activity starting in the Mesolithic (the period between about 10,000 B.C. and 5,000 B.C.) and extending all the way to the Middle Ages." (Pappas 2016) Abri Faravel is located at 2,133 meters (approximately 7,000 feet) elevation.

Pictographs at Abri Faravel,

www.livescience.com

Now I have read a number of Stephanie's articles in the past and am generally a big admirer of her writing. The blatant inaccuracy of this one, however, just cannot be passed up. I reread it for accuracy and found the statement that they are the "highest-elevation prehistoric rock paintings ever discovered." (Pappas 2016) As I looked at it again I knew that this just could not be right so I got out my topo maps and checked some sites from around Colorado that I was pretty sure would come in at over 7,000 feet above sea level in elevation.

Promontory on a ranch outside of 

Clarke, Colorado. 7,500' - 7,800' elevation.Photograph

Peter Faris, July, 1986.

Carrot man pictograph on a ranch

outside of Clarke, Colorado.

Photograph Peter Faris, July, 1986.

Cactus man pictograph on a ranch

outside of Clarke, Colorado.

Photograph Peter Faris,
July, 1986.

I found a couple of good examples from right here in Colorado. My first example is from a rock shelter north of Steamboat Springs, outside of Clarke Colorado, on a private ranch. This is a small shelter on a high promontory in the neighborhood of 7,500 to 7,800* feet in elevation from my topo maps. In this unlikely location we found a couple of red-painted figures and some undecipherable marks, which seemed to be Fremont in style (although what Fremont were doing up there is a mystery to me).

La Garita painted panel, San Luis

Valley, Colorado. 7,700' - 7,800'
elevation. Photograph Peter Faris,
May, 2006.

My second example is the painted pictograph site from La Garita in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. This wonderful site is assumed to be Ute in provenance. It is somewhere around 7,700 to 7,800* feet in elevation as best I can work out from the topo maps. 

So what about this claim that Abri Faravel contains the highest-altitude rock art ever recorded. Did the original authors provide Stephanie with inaccurate information, or was it just a misinterpretation. I will certainly give her the benefit of doubt. I suspect it was a misinterpretation of a statement sort of like "it is the highest site discovered in (southern France, or Europe, or wherever)" that just got misunderstood. But it brings up a great question. What would the highest elevation rock art site be? If you have some candidates please let me know. Where is your highest elevation rock art site?

Disclaimer:

* * I did not get my elevations from USGS topo maps, but with the Colorado Atlas and Gazetteer from DeLorme, so I can only claim that the elevations I cite above are my best estimates.

REFERENCES:

Pappas, Stephanie,
2016, http://www.livescience.com/54889-highest-altitude-prehistoric-rock-art-revealed.html

A NEW DISCOVERY OF SPANISH CAVE ART HAS BEEN REPORTED:

Site archaeologist Diego Garate
looking at cave paintings representing
horses in the Axturra cave.
Photograph: AFP/Getty Images.

A story by Ciaran Giles, writing for Associated Press in Madrid, Spain, on May 27, 2016, outlines the discovery of new cave art in northern Spain.

"Spanish archaeologists say they have discovered an exceptional set of Paleolithic-era cave drawings that could rank among the best in a country that already boasts some of the world's most important cave art." (Giles 2016)

Bison image from Axturra Cave.

(Diputacion Floral de Bizkaia.)

Outlined bison image from Axturra

Cave. (Diputacion Floral de Bizkaia.)

"Chief site archaeologist Diego Garate said Friday that an estimated 70 drawings were found on ledges 300 meters (1,000 feet) underground in the Axturra cave in the northern Basque region. The engravings and paintings feature horses, buffalo, goats and deer, dating back 12,500 - 14,500 years ago." (Giles 2016)

"The cave was discovered in 1929 and first explored in 1934-35, but it was not until 2014 that Garate and his team resumed their investigations that the drawings were discovered." (Giles 2016)

"'No one expected a discovery of this magnitude,' said Jose Yravedra, a prehistory professor at Madrid's Complutense University. 'There are a lot of cave with drawings but very few have this much art and this much variety and quality.'" (Giles 2016)

Bison image with what the chief site

archaeologist identified as 20 lance

wounds. (Diputation Floral de Bizkaia.)

Outlined bison image with what the chief

site archaeologist identified as 20 lance

wounds. (Diputation Floral de Bizkaia.)

"Garate highlighted one buffalo drawing, which he said must have the most hunting lances stuck in it of any such drawing in Europe. He said most hunting drawings have four or five lances but this had almost 20 and it's not clear why." (Giles 2016) For the record I count more than twenty.

I find it to be marvelous, and very exciting, that such discoveries are still being made with such frequency. The more we discover, the more remarkable our ancestor's deeds really were.

REFERENCE:

Giles, Ciaran,

2016     https://www.yahoo.com/news/spain-cave-art-trove-found-1-000-feet-144318822.html?nhp=1

The photographs that accompanied the article being reviewed were provided by Diputation Floral de Bizkaia.

SOME BEAR PAW PRINTS IN ROCK ART:

Bear paw prints, found in the 1st

canyon north of Dominguez

Canyon, Mesa County, Colordo.

Photograph Peter Faris, June 1980.

8-toed bear paw print,
Dominguez Canyon, Mesa

County, Colorado. Photograph

Peter Faris, 1980.

Back in the 1980s, James D. Keyser pointed out the value of sources of Plains Biographic Style art such as robe painting and ledger book art as a lexicon for understanding Plains Biographic Style imagery in rock art. Since then he has used these insights as the basis for his tremendous contributions in interpreting so much of the rock art of the northern Great Plains. Other possible sources of factual comparisons could be name glyphs, shield symbolism, and horse and tipi painting.

Sieber Canyon, Mesa County, Colorado.

Photograph Peter Faris, 1981.

Green River, Utah. Photograph

Paul and Joy Foster.

Fremont Indian State Park, Utah.

Photograph Peter Faris, 1992.

I have since suggested that Hopi Clan registers might serve the same role as a valuable lexicon for many Ancestral Pueblo rock art symbols from the southwest. A wonderful reference into many of these symbols is found in a 1894 document from Hopi clan chiefs to U.S. government officials in Washington D.C. urging them to cease the reallocation of Hopi lands into individual holdings, and also to designate official Hopi reservation boundaries. This document “was signed in clan symbols by 123 principals of kiva societies, clan chiefs, and village chiefs of Walpi, Tewa Village, Sichomovi, Mishongnovi, Shongopovi, Shipaulovi and Oraibi.” (Yava 1978:167) These identified symbols surely provide a useful lexicon for rock art imagery in the Southwest.  

Hopi Petition of 1894, Page 9.

Bear Clan Sign, Hopi Petition of

1894, Page 9, No. 70.

Bear Clan Sign, Hopi Petition of

1894, Page 11, No. 84.

Bear Clan Sign, Hopi Petition of

1894, Page 12, No. 95.

Bear Clan Sign, Hopi Petition of 

1894, Page 14, No. 122.

Bear paw prints are one common symbol in rock art from the Southwest, and indeed from the rest of North America as well. Of course, a Hopi clan register lexicon cannot be imagined to apply to examples from areas with different cultures, but within the greater Ancestral Pueblo cultural area we can assume that their beliefs influenced all peoples to some extent.

 The examples I have herein are from the area where the Fremont culture predominated prehistorically and that Numic peoples inhabited historically, in these examples Ute and Paiute peoples. It is assumed that some cultural influences and transference occurred between northern tier Ancestral Pueblo and southern Fremont peoples so perhaps a case might be made for a Bear clan among various groups of Fremont peoples. We know that the bear was of great importance to Ute peoples, their annual Bear Dance being one of their most important annual gatherings.

So I think it reasonable to suggest that a bear paw print petroglyph or pictograph found within the greater Ancestral Pueblo area of the southwest might be a clan identification symbol, while other areas would require knowledge of the mythological and cultural symbolism of the bear to make an educated guess as to its meaning. Last week I reviewed a book by James Keyser and George Poetschat, Seeking Bear: The Petroglyphs of Lucerne Valley, Wyoming, does an excellent job of addressing Bear symbolism in that area of Southwestern Wyoming. It could (it should) serve as a model for examining meaning in rock art of other areas.

Note: One other remarkable things about bear paw prints is that, unlike most animals, if they are well made you can differentiate the front print from the rear print. The rear print may be associated with locomotion/travel but the front print is the one associated with danger. That is the one the bear rips you with. This suggests that front and rear paw prints might have different meanings when reproduced on the rocks.

REFERENCES:

Keyser, James D. and George Poetschat,

2015    Seeking Bear: The Petroglyphs of Lucerne Valley, Wyoming, Oregon Archaeological Society Press, Portland. www.oregonarchaeological.org.

Yava, Albert

1978    Big Falling Snow: A Tewa-Hopi Indian’s Life and Times and the History and Traditions of His People, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

SEEKING BEAR, A BOOK REVIEW:

 Cover.

I want to introduce you to another wonderful book by Jim Keyser and George Poetschat, Seeking Bear: The Petroglyphs of Lucerne Valley, Wyoming, 236 pages. Published in 2015 by the Oregon Archaeological Society Press, Portland, with well over 100 illustrations and tables it is another in their series of in-depth studies of rock art of the northern Great Plains and Basin. The Lucerne Valley, Wyoming, is an area in southwest Wyoming that has not been studied extensively in the past, so this volume greatly expands knowledge of rock art of that part of Wyoming and the adjacent areas of Colorado and Utah.

Title page.

Among these contributions to rock art knowledge are documenting the presence of rock art styles in the Lucerne Valley which are known from other areas, expanding the knowledge (at least my personal knowledge) of them and enlarging the region that they are pertinent to.  The first of these is the Classic Vernal Style of Fremont rock art which is found so magnificently around Vernal, Utah, and the Dinosaur National Monument. I had not known of any examples of that style of petroglyph farther north than Brown's Park, Colorado (although it is close enough to be expected). Also images in the Lucerne Valley were documented that the authors attribute to the Uncompaghre Style of rock art, named for examples around the Uncompaghre Plateau, south of Grand Junction, Colorado.  Also the authors explain one image in terms of the meaning of elements of the Dinwoody Style of petroglyph found in the Wind River Valley farther north in Wyoming. These examples of relating images to styles from other locations illustrates that the people of the Lucerne Valley were tied in to the cultures of their larger world, whereas we have tended to overlook that area as an isolated border region between other populations (once again affirming that it is dangerous to use our modern assumptions in evaluating past cultures).

In analyzing the images illustrated in the rock art panels, Keyser once again illustrates his amazing ability to see fine detail and to recognize elements overlooked by other people. This book provides many succinct demonstrations of how much can be learned by really detailed examinations of rock art. One example is a listing of six animals at one site and noting the position of the tail of each animal. Elsewhere the shapes of antlers on cervids are also compared.

One of the high points to me in reading this book is the authors' ability to explain many of the concepts that we often feel strongly about but have not reasoned through. On page 148, a discussion of rock art symbols and their meanings provides a masterful summation of many of the various popular and New Age explanations of rock art that frustrate so many real students of the subject. Also, on page 186, their detailed presentation on the perennial idea that rock art represents "hunting magic" could be used in any college anthropology class on the subject. 

Five stars for excellence.

All-in-all, Seeking Bear, is a highly detailed, relentlessly educational presentation of the rock art from a little known area which ties it inexorably into the larger whole world around it. My only (and I emphasize only) criticism of this wonderful volume is its lack of an index. For someone like me, who enjoys pursuing a train of thought, idea, or insight, through a volume by referring to the index this was a frustrating absence. I actually had to read it through from beginning to end, and perhaps this was their intention all along. Watch out -you just might learn something. Once again, my gratitude to Jim Keyser and George Poetschat for this contribution to rock art studies and literature. Thank you.

Keyser, James D. and George Poetschat,

2015    Seeking Bear: The Petroglyphs of Lucerne Valley, Wyoming, Oregon Archaeological Society Press, Portland. www.oregonarchaeological.org.

ROCK ART, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE:

Disclaimer: Except for the direct quotes following, the content of this posting is completely my speculation, and neither Dietrich Stout or Scientific American can be held responsible for any mistakes or errors. 

We rock art enthusiasts have long believed that the beginnings of rock art indicated a certain level of intellectual development in our human ancestors. Now, a remarkable article in the April, 2016, Scientific American (Vol. 314, No.  4), by Dietrich Stout titled Cognitive Psychology/Tales of a Stone Age Neuroscientist, suggests that learning to make rock art may have been an important factor in that intellectual development.

Oldowan chopper, Wikimedia.

Public domain.

Acheulian hand axe, Spain.

Wikimedia. Public domain.

Stout reported that he and his collaborators learned to knap stone, to recreate Oldowan type stone tools (2.5 to 1.2 million years BP), and Achulean type stone tools (1.6 million to 200,000 years BP). This process of learning to knap stone, and then the production of the tools, proceeded with a series of brain scans to attempt to identify any neural changes.

            "We suspected that learning to knap would also require some degree of neural rewiring. If so, we wanted to know which circuits were affected. If our idea was correct we hoped to get a glimpse of whether toolmaking can actually cause, on a small scale, the same type of anatomical changes in an individual that occurred over the course of human evolution.

            The answer turned out to be a resounding yes: practice in knapping enhanced white matter tracts connecting the same frontal and parietal regions identified in our PET and MRI studies, including the right inferior frontal gyrus of the prefrontal cortex, a region critical for cognitive control. The extent of these changes could be predicted from the actual number of hours each subject spent practicing - the more someone practiced, the more their white matter changed." (Stout 2015:33-34)

Rhinos, Chauvet Cave.

 Wikimedia. Public domain

Lion Man, Hohlenstein-Stadel.

Public domain.

But, what excited me more upon reading this is that the creation of the two tool types left detectable differences in the brain changes. This leads me to what I believe to the reasonable conclusion that the creation of any two types of object would have different effects upon the development of the brain of the creator. In other words, cave painting and Paleolithic bone and ivory carving would have enhanced the development of the brains of their creators, and thus I think I can safely assume that this would also apply to the act of creating petroglyphs and pictographs. That the creation of this rock art not only signaled a certain level of cognitive development, it actually contributed to that development, and the different types of creations made different contributions to that development.

"The results of our own imaging studies on stone toolmaking led us recently to propose that neural circuits, including the inferior frontal gyrus, underwent changes to adapt to the demands of Paleolithic toolmaking and then were co-opted to support primitive forms of communication using gestures and, perhaps, vocalizations. This protolinguistic communication would then have been subjected to selection, ultimately producing the specific adaptations that support modern human language." (Stout 2016:35)

Westwater Creek, Bookcliffs,

Grand County, Utah.

Photograph: Peter Faris,

September, 1981.

Sproat Lake, Vancouver Island,

British Columbia, Canada.

Photograph: Peter Faris, 1995.

So, if all this is really true, by extension, I believe we can postulate that the creation of this art influenced the creation of culture, and the form or type of art created determined the type of that influence. In effect, this seems to imply that the act of painting pictographs would influence the development of the brain in a different way than the carving of a petroglyph. This suggests that we may someday be able to analyze the art to predict the type of culture that produced it, and vice versa; that we may be able to analyze a culture and predict the kind of art it produced. In any case I will be eagerly waiting for further elaboration of this truly exciting investigation, and I hope that it will lead to proof that rock art influenced the development of intelligence, language, and culture. 

REFERENCE:

Stout, Dietrich

2016    Cognitive Psychology: Tales of a Stone Age Neuroscientist, pages 28-35, Scientific American, Volume 314, Number 4, April, 2016.

Wikipedia

PETROGLYPHS - DIRECT VS. INDIRECT PERCUSSION REVISITED:

Hammerstone below petroglyph

panel, Wild Horse Draw, Canyon

Pintado, CO. Photograph 

Peter Faris.

On January 17, 2010, I posted a column on http://rockartblog.blogspot.com, Petroglyphs - Direct Vs. Indirect Percussion? In this I argued that most, if not all, petroglyphs had to be created by direct percussion and gave the reasons for this belief. I was recently informed by James D. Keyser of a paper that he and co-author Greer Rabiega published in the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, 1999, Vol.21, No. 1, pages 124 - 136, entitled Petroglyph Manufacture by Indirect Percussion: The Potential Occurrence of Tools and Debitage in Datable Context. Keyser's comments concerning examples of indirect percussion are well reasoned and quite convincing, and are based on experiments reproducing fine or narrow lines on stone by striking a "chisel stone" with a hammer stone.

Rock art on boulder,

Airport Hill, St. George, UT.

Photograph Peter Faris, 2002.

Hammerstone on boulder,

Airport Hill, St. George, UT.

Photograph Peter Faris, 2002.

In his e-mail to me Keyser stated :

"I just look for the evidence, and where one finds very precise dints repeatedly aligned with one another to form all or part of a design the chances are that that design (or the very precise part of it) was produced by indirect percussion. Very finely made antlers (and other extremities) on small images of deer in Valcamonica rock art are a good example, but there are many others. Most often the examples of this sort of work that I can think of off-hand are small parts of  larger figures (but the entire figure itself is still not very large—say a deer that can be covered with a playing card)." (Keyser 2016)

"When a small part of a glyph occurs routinely (like the aforementioned Valcamonica antlers) without even one misplaced dint it begins to defy statistical probability that these were done freehand—when such a simple solution (indirect pecking) was available and can provide a guarantee that no dint will be miss-hit. If such finely produced antlers were relatively rare—so that there were a few of many that had no miss-hit dints, then one could argue that the very precise ones were simply normal variation, but when one sees dozens of examples of such deer at site after site—all of whom have antlers, legs, hooves, and open mouths—with nary a miss-hit dint in the bunch—a student must begin to look for a way that this was done that essentially “guarantees” accuracy EVERY TIME THE STONE IS STRUCK. Indirect percussion is the only means by which this can be accomplished (with such a guarantee) that I can come up with....I’d be glad to know." (Keyser 2016)

Hammer stone used with chisel

stone in experiments showing

evidence of impact with the chisel

stone on its side. (Keyser , James

D., and Greer Rabiega, 1999).

I am actually more convinced by what he did not find than by what he did. Keyser reports large numbers of fine lines in petroglyphs with no evidence of the mis-strikes that one would expect to find if only direct percussion had been used to produce them. Now this is a telling argument and I take it very seriously as I have to agree with Jim that the lack of missteps is suggestive of an accuracy very difficult (I am sure he would say impossible) to achieve with only direct percussion.
I do feel compelled to note, however, that this paper and communication are both about an experiment, and that he has not yet reported finding such chisel stones. Admittedly, there has probably been little awareness of their possibility so no one has looked for them. Also, Keyser also commented that as they are smaller and lighter than the hammer stones they may have regularly been carried away as useful tools, not dropped in the ground when the petroglyph is done as so many hammer stones were, " that’s the beauty of a chisel stone—you can carry two or three dozen of them with the same weight as a single good-sized hammer stone." (Keyser 2016)

Bird Rattle carving petroglyph,1924,

Writing-on-Stone, Alberta, Canada.

Blackfoot.

I am enclosing this picture of Bird Rattle producing a petroglyph at Writing-on-Stone, Alberta, Canada, in 1924, as it is the only illustration I could find of petroglyph production in an authentic context. It really does not apply to the question here, however, as this petroglyph was produced by incising, not by pecking, so the techniques under discussion were not used by Bird Rattle.

Bird Rattle carving petroglyph,1924,

Writing-on-Stone, Alberta, Canada.

Blackfoot.

Note: until such a chisel stone is reported in context at a petroglyph site this is all conjecture based only upon logic and his reported experiments, but then my original statement was also. Remember, the absence of proof is not proof of absence. So, thank you to Jim Keyser for his information and help. I appreciate that you took the time to help me clarify this question. Correction noted Jim, and thank you. I will temper my opinion accordingly. 
And I also must confess that I have never examined the fine lines in a petroglyph for this phenomena, superimposition yes, mis-strikes no. So in the future I will have another line of evidence to look into. 
Those who would like to dig a little deeper into this example are referred to the 1999 paper by Keyser and Rabiega, cited below.

REFERENCES:

Keyser, James D., personal communication, May 7, 2016.

Keyser , James D. and Greer Rabiega,

1999,  Petroglyph Manufacture by Indirect Percussion: The Potential Occurrence of Tools and Debitage in Datable Context, Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, Vol.21, No. 1, pages 124 - 136.