The Counsel Rocks rock art site is fairly well-known and very well-researched. The centerpiece of it is “Womb Rock”, thought by some to be linked to the Lone Woman of the Cave legend, and by others to be a solstice observation site, but there is a lot more to this area than just “Womb Rock”.
We visited in late spring and it was already getting to be a bit hot. But once we reached the site and started exploring the heat was forgotten. What a treasure!
In this post I’ll take a look at some of the more minor elements of the site – petroglyphs and pictographs tucked into nooks and crannies away from the centerpieces of the site. In a way these are even more exciting for me to find – bits of rock art that almost seem hidden on purpose. So let’s look!
As we walk towards where we think the site is, we are rewarded by this boulder. The boulder is enormous, and the petroglyph element is probably at least six feet wide.
Shortly thereafter, we find a rather nice little petroglyph panel tucked under an overhang on this boulder.
A close-up of the panel. There are several interesting elements here – a squiggle line, a capital I-shaped element that is common in the Mojave, some dots in rows ( another fairly comment element ), and what looks like a depiction of a hand.
A close-up of the hand. Pictograph hand-prints may be my favorite kind of pictograph – an actual handprint, made by another human who knows how long ago! – but any Representational element is fun to find.
As we explore further I spend a lot of time ducking down under overhangs and looking in nooks and crannies. This overhang looks like it has some red pigment. Let’s look!
No, I’m pretty sure these are just natural. This happens a lot, too – peering at rocks trying to decide if there’s anything there, and if there is, whether it is natural or not! DStretch on a tablet really helps with this.
Soon, we get to the first fantastic site. The opening in this boulder leads to a small cave with some marvelous pictographs which we’ll look at soon, in another post. The hollow at the top of the boulder holds some petroglyphs on the dark portion lower right and getting to them is a dangerous climb, which we did not attempt. Instead, my brave companion hoisted himself into the long niche on the left of the boulder. This niche is about five feet off the ground and about five feet tall, too. From there, he leaned over precariously and waved some cameras at the petroglyphs until we got some good shots.
The petroglyphs. This shot took some effort.
I really appreciate these pictures because of how hard they were to get, so I’m going to show another one!
Finally, a nice overview picture where you can clearly see all the elements. These are nicely detailed petroglyphs – the element on the left kind of looks like a snake, there’s a small pinwheel enclosed in a circle surrounded by symmetrical squiggle lines, some artistic meander lines and another snake-like elements with outlines.
We won’t look inside that boulder just yet – let’s move over to the right and look at some of the other niches and alcoves in these boulders. Here is one with some red pigment.
More to it than meets the eye, isn’t there?
Another alcove contains a small pictograph.
There’s also a bisected circle just above it, as DStretch shows us.
I find another small alcove, close to the ground, and sit down to look. I immediately pop back up with a yelp. Here I’m pointing towards the tiny cactus I sat on. This isn’t even the first time I’ve sat down on something spiky! Sorry about that, little cactus. But my butt was a lot more giving than your little dome – you’re fine!
It was worth the assault on my dignity, though. Look at all these little pictographs!
Here is a nice DStretch look. This alcove is very cramped and hard to photograph, so we’ll look at a few more shots in order to see all the elements.
The easterly edge of the alcove.
A burst element and some tally marks. Other parts of this site are thought to be solstice observation stations, and there might be something similar motivating the number of these marks and the position of the burst element, too.
Another look at the back of the alcove. Looks like red and white pigment was used, and notice something else that is very curious – looks like the rough rock was polished first, and the elements drawn on the smoother surfaces.
A good DStretch version of these pictographs.
With a last glimpse at one of the alcoves we saw earlier, we are done looking around the outside of this site.
Stay tuned for a further exploration of this site!