During a busy winter season we managed to slip away to the backcountry one weekend day. On my wish list were three sites – two I’ve never been to and one I had been to but haven’t documented very well during prior visits.
As sometimes happens, the sequence of events for the day ended up putting us in an interesting spot … but I won’t talk too much about that here. This site was the 2nd of the three sites we were trying to visit, and the time we spent at it, as well as the time we spent hunting fruitlessly for the first site, put us at the third site at just the wrong time, where we ended up getting snowed out of the backcountry!
It was still a bright, sunny morning when we got to this site, so let’s have a look at what we found. The site isn’t very large – a single rock shelter, a small bedrock mortar station, and a scatter of milling slicks and obsidian chips. There is a perennial water source nearby, so it could have made a good settlement water-wise, but the elevation is just too low to make food sources like piñon pine nuts readily accessible. The rudimentary nature of the bedrock mortars seem to bear out the fact that this site wasn’t occupied for extended periods of time.
This is one of the larger milling stations we found. There are several grinding slicks at a comfortable working height atop this rock.
Of course, there’s also some lithic scatter to keep our interest. These are some of the smaller flakes.
We walked along the banks of a small perennial creek with canyon walls rising on both sides. There’s a shelf on one side of the creek, laid down by occasional flooding, that consists of decomposed granite and several large boulders. This is where we found the grinding slicks as well as this rudimentary bedrock mortar station.
The mortars are shallow and the surrounding granite is stained from many years of rain water leeching minerals from the rock.
At one of these stations, someone had placed a stone that seems like a good fit for a pestle, or mano, to match the mortar. I examined it and found it to be about the right shape and weight, but the point was as rough as the rest of the stone. I’d expect an actual mano to be a little more smoothed, but maybe this one just didn’t see much action. It looks more suitable in the picture than it did in person!
Our explorations are suddenly rewarded when we find this overhang with pictographs.
It’s pretty cramped, in fact way too cramped to be a habitation site, but there are some well-preserved red pictographs under this overhang. Closer inspection also reveals some white pigment. Exciting!
Before we crawl into the shelter, let’s have a look from out here with DStretch. This may be the best overview we get. The shelter is sized to the “barely admits one” standard.
To my eye the pictographs appear to date from at least two separate times. Over on the left, we have thicker lines, apparently applied with a pretty wet paint with burgundy undertones, and over on the right, some thinner lines applied with drier pigment.
With this DStretch enhancement you can hopefully see what I mean – the lines on the left are thicker and saturated the rock face more than the lines on the right did. Also note that this overhang was apparently favored by wasps … the outlines of several wasp nests remain ( shown a dirty khaki in this enhancement ). I’m glad the wasps are gone – I’ve certainly had my share of wasps over my lifetime so far, and I really don’t enjoy interacting with them, since they tend to be very sting-y. Finally, in the lower left quadrant of this picture you can see some white pigment underpinning the red elements.
This is the most peculiar element at this site. What an unusual shape. There’s a single streak of pigment down in the center right portion of the picture, too.
Over on the right, we have elements in a more orange-ish hue than the rest of the shelter. There are some idiosyncratic elements here – elements I haven’t really seen outside of this shelter. The large element in the lower right certainly qualifies as unusual. Even the element just above that seems odd – it reminds me a little bit of pelt figure elements, such as those seen at Burham Canyon, “What Lies Beneath“, or Potwisha, but it isn’t quite the same.
This DStretch enhancement, focused on the grouping of elements that appear to have been painted with thicker, less wet pigment with a orange-ish hue, shows that element again, as well as a chain-like element of small circles and another abstract element that is vaguely pelt-like. In the background we can see the other part of the panel as well. The lines are much thicker and less regular in that part of the panel, and if you look closely, you’ll see that it is mostly made up of shields. There is a large bisected circle and two quartered circles,
The shelter is cramped, bit by squirming around a little more we can take a better look at the chain. It ends in a smudged element, and there is also a very faint circle between the other two elements.
Up on the ceiling is one more element in the orange-ish paint.
What you see is what you get with this one!
Time to stretch out and take a really good look at that second panel. Here you can see all of it. Red and white pigment, but the panel is rather fragmented. Exfoliation has taken a toll.
With the right DStretch enhancement we can smooth away some of the black on the rock face so we can focus more on the red and white elements. Now you can see the large circular elements more clearly. There are some large abstract Linear elements around it them. It is hard to decide exactly what they look like due to the damage. On the lower left there might be a rake, or a symbol with trailing diamond shapes, similar to some sites in Joshua Tree National Park. There’s a roughly drawn bisected circle up in the center right of the picture. The entire bottom part of this panel has flaked away, judging by this picture.
A different DStretch enhancement of the same shot. Pay attention to the top right – it looks like a long rake element in a dark red hue is stretched across the ceiling there.
Yes – it is hard to see, but it is there!
A bit more visible with DStretch.
After examining the panel I gaze out at the bright skies. Nice, peaceful spot.
Time to leave the shelter. As I exit I notice a grinding slick on a flat rock right by the shelter.
This style seem different from anything local. Inyo/ Tulare area?
Yeah, definitely some Tulare influence here, I think. The chain and the vaguely “pelt”-like figure both are similar to designs on the western side of the Sierra, too.
But the shield designs … those are more of a Great Basin style. Interesting confluence of styles!