This site is also in a very remote part of Joshua Tree National Park. The boulder itself looks very promising – grotesquely hollowed – but the pictographs themselves are rather nondescript. The ceiling of the hollow boulder contains a few red elements as well as evenly distributed splatters of black pigment down the two sides.

These splatters of black pigment form an interesting counterpoint to what is present at the Lone Woman site – at that site the alcove next to the Lone Woman pictograph is splattered in red and there are some black pictographs present. Here, the splatters are black and the pictographs are red.

Some of the red elements are neatly drawn circles. Unlike the circular elements commonly found in pictographs and petroglyphs, most of these are not bisected or filled with shield-like designs or connected together.  Instead they are perfectly formed circles in their own right.

All in all this site is a bit of an odd duck! It is a pity that the elements have faded so badly. Even though the deep hollow looks like it should be well protected from the elements, the rock obviously didn’t get this way without erosion working on it. That same erosive factors are now quietly at work to remove all traces of pictographs inside the boulder.

There is a large hollow in this rock. The pictographs are to the left of the light brown deposit running from bottom left to top right at the back of the rock. There are splatters of black towards the rear. The red pictographs are closer to the ceiling.

Traces of red pigment near the center of the hollow. Some of the black pigment splatters can also be seen.

A little below the red traces is a fairly large black element.

This area seems to have quite a bit of red pigment. Let’s see what DStretch can show us.

The elements are still hard to discern, but there appears to be a circular element and some smaller lines here.

There are some very faint red lines mixed in with this area of black splatter. Maybe these will show up more clearly with DStretch.

They do! Here are some circles of red pigment, almost perfectly proportional.

Let’s look a little more closely at the area in the lower part of the previous picture. Even now the red pigment is very hard to see.

After fiddling with a DStretch algorithm the red element in the center is shown to be a circle with a couple of lines below it. The element to the right of it is more interesting: here we have a single bisected circle, with a few faint spots of pigment below it that might have formed part of a Rectilinear element at some point.

One of the less faded areas of red pigment, right above the large black element.

DStretch doesn’t really make it any clearer.

One thing that is notable about this site is its acoustic properties. It is well-known that many rock art sites are chosen for acoustic properties, most often because of an echo from a slightly concave rock wall. In this case the hollow boulder is a nice amplifier, as one would expect from such a shape.

There are no signs of habitation nearby – no mortars or grinding slicks, no rock shelters with smoke-strained ceilings, no lithic scatter. Reaching this site from known habitation spots takes some effort. It is curious that it is out here at all. Maybe someday, after I’ve forgotten the tiring and tedious slog to reach it, I will be back to look around more.  ( Companion’s Note — Oh hell no, not doing that again! )

If you do visit, you’ll find the site undamaged by human hands. Please leave it just as you found it. Your touch damages the fragile pigment. Take pictures and otherwise leave them be.