This is a small pictograph site that we found while exploring a much larger complex in Kawaiisu territory. It consists of only two pictographs in a narrow rock shelter, but it seems to tie in well with the rest of the site. The pictographs at this location all seem to share a common theme.
Let’s have a look!
These pictographs are found on the ceiling of a low rock shelter. This site is in a drainage in the Eastern Sierra, in Kawaiisu territory. The shelter is much too low to be comfortable for sitting in, but the ceiling is blacked, I assume by soot!
The elements are fairly sparse, in red and black. Let’s take a look.
This is a rather nice little panel of pictographs, facing east from its perch on the western side of a low saddle.
The panel is not complete – in several places small flakes of the rock face have exfoliated away, taking the pigment with it. This effect is not very noticeable at first because the style of the panel is unusual, with lots of small, choppy elements interspersed with some well-made Representational elements. At first glance it just seems like the missing parts were intentional. But when you examine the rock face a little more you can tell by the color differences that the panel is exfoliating.
In the previous two segments on this pictograph site, found within a larger habitation complex in the Eastern Sierra foothills in Kawaiisu territory, I talked about how I came across the site, and what elements can be found on the left-hand part of the panel.
Now it is time to look at the last part of the panel, and then look at the panel as a whole.
I’ll note now that this site does have some interaction with the sun at significant times of the year such as the winter solstice, as documented by other visitors. I haven’t had a look at the site at suitable times yet, so I can’t yet comment on it in that regard! I’ve had some unfortunate adventures with two other “solstice” sites to date ( you can read all about the Diamond Solstice site or the Shooting Star site, if you like! ) and those were at dawn on a summer day when the only bad thing was waking up at 4am … there are no Starbucks locations close to any of these sites and I’m not much of a morning person! Then again, I’m not much of a person for resisting interesting things either, so … check back for more occasionally! I may well have shown up on a mid-winter’s day to see what happens then.
In Part One of this series on the “Black Hole Sun” pictograph panel I talk about how I discovered this pictograph panel in Kawaiisu territory in the eastern Sierra foothills and also showed an overview of the panel itself. Now, I would like to take a look at the left hand side of that panel and the elements that can be seen there.
This is a pretty involved pictograph panel within a larger habitation site. Researchers have tied this panel to solstice events, and the imagery certainly seem to support an astronomical observation angle.
That is very interesting by itself, but I also found this panel in a kind of roundabout way, and I thought this was interesting enough in itself that I would kick off a short series of posts about this site by writing about the discovery.
This pictograph site, in Kawaiisu territory, is one I’ve had my eye on for a while. Finally, we had a good opportunity to stop by, so we examined maps, punched some coordinates into the GPS, and set off.
We were poking around in the Eastern Sierra foothills one spring day, looking for pictographs, and found a nice little site tucked away in a wide canyon.
First we found some big slabs of granite poking out of the dirt downslope with plenty of bedrock mortars on the exposed surfaces. Then, when we turned around to look at the slope above us, a prominent rock formation caught our eye.
We thought to ourselves: well, maybe we are not the first people attracted to it … so we climbed up to it to took a look, and we found a small pictograph site!
Fish Cave can be found on the shoreline of ancient lake Lahontan. It was named for the fish fossils found nearby during the the earliest archeological investigations.
In Part 1 I posted about the pictographs that can be found at the “Diamond Solstice” site in Joshua Tree National Park. In this post, I will examine the theory of this site as a solstice observation site a little more.