We’re continuing our exploration of a wonderful habitation & petroglyph site in this entry.
In the previous entry we finished walking a ridge of volcanic tuft from north to south, noting the numerous bird print petroglyphs atop the ridge. In this entry, we’ll walk back up the ridge on its easterly side. There are numerous housing circles on this side, as well as petroglyphs, and the ground is littered with lithic scatter.
The sheer size of this site is special – this was a very important place for many people. Its roots stretch back far. Dating done on the petroglyphs and materials recovered from this site dates portions of it back several thousand years.
As we walk back up the ridge we’ll encounter several housing circles. The eastern side of the ridge would have made for desirable shelter: the morning sun would be warm after the cool night and the outcropping would keep the hot afternoon sun at bay and also shelter the site from prevailing westerly winds.
Let’s look!
From atop the ridge we can look down at a large housing circle, right by a beautiful circle design with adjacent shield-like design.A closer look at the two designs. They are incised very precisely, with deep, narrow grooves. The indentation in between then is natural, but that doesn’t mean that the designs couldn’t have been placed deliberately around it. This interweaving of living space and petroglyphs occur throughout the site.Nearby is another, smaller housing circle.We’ve hopped down from the ridge and will now start walking back towards our starting point, exploring the easterly side of the ridge. You can see more housing circles in the distance, all nestled against the ridge.There is a lot of lithic scatter on this side of the ridge. Here’s a black chip, worn opaque from being exposed to wind-blown sand, and on the right is another chip with a rich reddish-brown color. There are several chips with that color at the site. While there is a lot of easily accessible obsidian in the area, these chips may have come from a bit further north where there was a quarry.An odd grouping of designs – the I-shaped elements brings graffiti to mind, but these are all authentic petroglyphs.Bet you thought that boulder was taller! This part of the outcropping is only a couple of feet tall.Another chip of that curious obsidian, dark reddish brown with flecks of black.This is a really neat boulder. The whole surface is covered with incised petroglyphs and ground cupules. The top left shows a squiggle line. Next to that are the most distinctive petroglyphs on the boulder, and a band of cupules runs down from the top right towards the lower left center. Finally, down close to ground, are multiple deep parallel lines. These grooves are reminiscent of tool sharpening.The cupules are quite deep and very weathered. Many of them has lichen growing in them. There are other cupule sites on the Tablelands too, so this rock isn’t unique. It is the most weathered I’ve seen so far, though. This is an old site for sure.The grooves at the bottom of the boulder up close. In the center is one with a very deep, narrow, recent-looking groove. Detail of the elements at the top. Looks like a circle separates the two Rectilinear elements that are prominent at the top of the boulder. There is another circle in the lower right of the picture. Otherwise, the boulder is packed with cupules.From this angle, it almost looks as if the cupules are laid out in a rough swirly pattern. It pays to view the elements at these sites from multiple angles. They are often positioned subtly and changing your vantage point leads to seeing something you might otherwise miss.We’re moving on past the cupule boulder now. It is barely visible in the left of the picture. Beyond, there are several larger boulders with elements to look at. Also note how the smaller boulders on the ground are arranged in circles or rows, marking where housing structures once stood. We’ll keep working our way north along the ridge.The petroglyphs on this boulder are mostly found on a narrow band of desert varnish but you can look closely and see several now weathered and indistinct elements on the lighter part too. Some of the materials found at this site was dated to ~4000 BC. Some of these elements may be that old, too. 6000 years is not a long time for a rock, so this boulder probably looked much the same back then, though the tufa is pretty soft and weathers easily.Did you notice how the gap below the petroglyph boulder was filled in with stacked rocks in that previous picture? Here’s a closer look. The prevailing wind comes from the west so filling in this west-facing gap helped the housing circle on the eastern side of the outcropping be more protected. Above, the darker band of the rock is richly carved with petroglyphs. This site is quite interesting for how it blends together petroglyphs with more utilitarian uses. That could be a sign of long occupation, where the use of the site changed over the years.The petroglyphs become better defined as the surrounding rock darkens. Several bisected circles here.Time to follow this narrow band of petroglyphs further. After a gap, we can see them continuing on up into the outcropping. Time to climb up and take a closer look!This upper grouping features the best preserved of all the elements on this side of the outcropping. That Rectilinear element in the background is pretty striking, too. That particular boulder is darkly varnished, and the bold, deep strokes of the petroglyph really stands out.Time to climb up and have a close look at those well-defined petroglyphs. And look here – we found more bird prints up here, didn’t we? On the left you can faintly see a Rectilinear element above the varnish, and then we have a row of three bird prints in the middle, as well as another Rectilinear grid. Interesting! But then again, from slightly lower down, the bird prints look a little bit like the torsos of people with their hands raised. You have to be really careful to not just decide what you think you see at these sites. Always remember that we really don’t know what most of these symbols mean.Further along the outcropping there’s an interesting-looking jumble of meander lines right up at the top of the outcropping. Time to climb up there and have a closer look! Also check out the big boulder in the foreground. Do you see the many faint lines on there? It is hard to say whether those are very faint petroglyphs, or natural lines. This tuff certainly has some creases in it that formed naturally as it cooled. Up close we see that the meander lines are eye-catching, but the rock down below appears to have some very deeply varnished, incised lines on it – similar to those lines below the cupules. Then again, they could also be natural. Look closely and see what you think!If you walk through this site too quickly you’ll miss a lot of subtle detail. There’s a spindly petroglyph up at the top right of the boulder in the middle of the picture, in the smoother darker area, and several more on the rocks below, including another bisected circle, and just to the right of that, several natural hollows in the rock were carefully outlined with circle petroglyphs. A close look at those outlined hollows. Unfortunately the camera didn’t capture the depth very well in this picture. Also in the lower left is one of the bisected circles.Overview, with the bisected circle in the middle. Pay attention, there is another one not far away.We’re coming to the end of the outcropping. There’s another large housing circle here. Beyond it, the two dark rocks on the ground have petroglyphs too. We’ll go that way now and have a look.The boulder in the foreground is pretty scoured but it has a richly carved assortment of weathered petroglyphs on it ( pardon the lens flare! ). There’s also a flattish boulder beyond it with petroglyphs, some more spindly petroglyphs on the dark boulder beyond that, and of course, several nicely defined petroglyphs on the light-colored boulder in the back as well.Closer look at that weathered boulder. Most prominent is the nice fishbone design in the lower center.On the flat boulder we have what looks like another bird print-like element in the center, some circles and squiggles above it, and several smaller, less distinct elements surrounding those.Above, there are several elements on the lighter rock. We’ll look at them in more detail next.First, we’ll look at the elements on the left of the boulder. The shield-like design is most prominent but also note the deeply carved but less striking circle to the right and below.Here is the central grouping of elements – a circle up top, some abstract elements made of circles and Rectilinear elements below that, and deeply carved Rectilinear element with a bisected circle below it.The element on the right. These grid-designs are very common in petroglyphs and even pictographs throughout the region.The spindly elements on the large rock are revealed to be two circles and some lines. Beyond this, the large boulder in the background to the right is the last one we’ll look at.Some rather nice elements up there! Of course, “up there” means I have to climb on up again, for a closer look. I haven’t fallen off any rocks yet, so here goes …Made it! Another crazy angle by a crazy photographer. Really interesting elements, nothing else like them at this site. Could that element in the lower portion be another bird print? I think that rather stretches it – instead it looks like this design is laid out around the natural fissure in the rock, with the line trailing away to the left following a ridge on the rock. There’s also a small shield-like circle nearby.Finally, let’s look at the other element up there. This looks like a diamond motif with some circles around it. One of the surrounding circles has several dots in it, the other has a double outline. That’s a lot of detail, carefully added to a petroglyph pecked on a rough surface. Someone took a lot of care with this.
Well, that’s it for this ridge! We’ve now walked all the way down it and back up the other side, so we’re pretty much back where we started. Our next goal is a taller, shorter outcropping about a hundred yards away. There, we will see some really nice petroglyphs and several more housing circles, again on the easterly side of the outcropping.
