Over the winter we found a small site with some unusual imagery out in Joshua Tree. Some of the elements are reminiscent of the pictographs at Counsel Rocks, which lies many miles to the north. This site seems like it was part of a habitation site at some point because there is a pretty big patch of midden a short distance away, but I didn’t find any grinding slicks adjacent to it.
The shelter has a large crack in the ceiling which I think is helping water get in. The pictographs are in many places quite faded. After I spent a lot of time trying to photograph the very cramped shelter as best I could, I looked up at the ceiling crack, which had a nasty-looking spider web in it. With my eyes adjusted to the gloom I could see a very faint element on the ceiling. This turned out to be an interesting find.
Let’s take a look!
A small shelter – must not bypass! We left the wash we were traveling down and headed on up.
As I approached the shelter I noticed a good-sized patch of midden which extends all the way to the shelter entrance.
The first elements to catch your attention are these, painted close to the ground. The wide angle lens make the shelter appear larger than it actually is.
Red elements with white outlines are not very common in Joshua Tree National Park. I have seen them in the Mojave Preserve. These angular elements also remind me of Mojave-style pictographs.
The left-side element appears to have some tines, and the right-side element is a set of two wavy lines with some white around it.
It looks like the red squiggles have their own white outlines, with a white line in between, and then the rectangular outline. There’s also a very faint line coming in from above the tined element.
The other really obvious element nestles just inside the overhang. This boulder has two entrances, so the pictographs are in a low tunnel underneath.
This element looks like the “diamond chain” elements found at the Diamond Solstice and Born Again sites, but instead of diamonds it has orbs, and instead of red, it is painted in white, with red overlays. The second and fourth globes are hollow while the other two are solid. Both hollow globes have red embellishments. The “tail” of the rightmost red element seems to have a cross symbol in it, but if you look really closely you’ll notice it is the same shape as the other red element ( circle with a hollow “leg” laying inside the white globe’s own hollow stem ) and then the leftmost red line connects back to the circle with a dogleg. Within this shape what looks like a cross is really only a t-shape.
After sitting in the shelter for a while my eyes adjust to the gloom and I start looking for faint elements. In this part of the shelter I do see some additional red on the ceiling, but the dark patches are hiding whatever was once there. In the top left you can see the start of the next panel we’ll look at. The perspective is misleading on this picture, which is taken with a wide angle lens pointed straight up. That element in the upper left is actually on the wall behind me.
There is a rather busy panel, all in red, behind me. By turning around and tilting the camera more, I capture some of it.
There we go! We see the tine and squiggle elements we already looked at peeking out at the bottom. Some new elements are visible: a burst element, some Rectilinear elements, a dumbbell, and some others. All in all a very interesting panel. From this perspective it seem clear that the line that starts at the burst element’s upper ray extends all the way over the ceiling, but is now hidden by the dark patch on the ceiling that shows up as teal in this DStretch enhancement. It appears that the concentric element by the burst also has some double red lines extending the same way, now also hidden. Finally, the hollow dumbbell element on the left seems to have a very thick line doing the same – extending from the line coming off of its bottom circle and over the ceiling.
Let’s look at a picture taken at a less exotic angle. The previous angle really showed those lines running over the ceiling though, so it was a good one to take. They’re easy to miss if you just focus on one panel at a time.
DStretch added. The element in the upper center is another that is painted in red and white. I think there is a fuzzy symbol to the left of the dumbbell shape that may be a shield design, too.
Here is another DStretch angle ( since the faded panel is hard to examine with the naked eye ). You can see the shield on the left more clearly, and might that be the remains of an anthropomorph below it?
Next, let’s have a really close look at the Rectilinear element. Not all the tines appear to meet, and the design doesn’t appear to be fully closed either. It is similar to an element at Aiken’s Arch, as well as to an element elsewhere in Joshua Tree, at the Double Scoop site.
At some point I glanced back at the pack explosion that happened at one entrance when we dug into the packs for the cameras. I have no idea how that pack of Skittles ended up in that bush!
Towards the other entrance everything is calm. This entrance is the easier one to get in.
I mentioned a faint, interesting element on the ceiling earlier. This element is close to the entrance we just looked at. See if you can find it in this picture.
Very faint, but this is a set of two bisected circles. This element occurs in great numbers at the Hidden Cave location, and a few other spots in Joshua Tree. At those other sites it is often associated with possible pubic ritual elements.
After exiting the shelter I examine the midden deposit. On the surface of it I find some chips – possible lithic scatter – and I also find a small sherd.
The wash below has a larger sherd that we find as we leave the site.
What do the elements at this site mean? Who made them, and when? These are questions that come to mind each time you’re at a site like this. In this case, I don’t have clear answers. The globe structure and the bisected circles reminds me of other sites that have pubic ritual connections, but most of the elements here are unusual for the area. Maybe the community that lived here had a bride or a groom brought over from the Mojave, and this site depicts a merging of cultures for this group.
Regardless, visiting this site in its quiet corner and spending some time thinking about the past was a rewarding experience. I replaced the scatter and the sherds where I found them and we walked away. There was no footprints nearby when we visited, and soon the footprints we left will be smoothed out too. We stepped lightly here, as we always try to. If you visit this site, leave it just as you found it. There will be other desert wanderers stopping by long after you left, and they would also like to see this site as it was when you found it.