We were poking around in the Eastern Sierra foothills one spring day, looking for pictographs, and found a nice little site tucked away in a wide canyon.
First we found some big slabs of granite poking out of the dirt downslope with plenty of bedrock mortars on the exposed surfaces. Then, when we turned around to look at the slope above us, a prominent rock formation caught our eye.
We thought to ourselves: well, maybe we are not the first people attracted to it … so we climbed up to it to took a look, and we found a small pictograph site!
Let’s take a look. This is a fairly simple site, with a single large panel and a few outlaying elements, but it forms part of a much larger habitation complex. By the way, all the pictographs in this area seem to share a common theme. I will be posting about all of them. See if you can find all the pictograph panels that belong to this site by comparing the site themes.
While wandering the outskirts of the Eastern Sierra we found this well-used bedrock mortar station. The most fascinating thing about it is how there are several very shallow holes interspersed between the deeper ones. I wonder why.
There’s a second, smaller station a short distance away. Creating these mortar holes took some time. Can you imagine how long it took to wear a hole in granite using another piece of granite as a pestle? And how hard it was to pound that heavy stone in the mortar, over and over again?
Finally, we see a third station, close to the creek bed running through this site. The proximity to water makes sense because if these mortars were used to grind acorns, water would be needed to leech tannin from the ground acorn.
We wandered upslope a bit and noticed the outcropping in the background. It is massive. On our way there we travelled past the boulder in the foreground and found a single pictograph at its base, under the overhang.
Just one pictograph! It looks a little like an arrow pointing the way to the main panel.
The main outcropping has a really nice panel, though. There are also two isolated pictographs way up high on the outcropping. You can see one in the lighter colored patch at right corner of the base of the upper section of the rock. The second one is up even higher, on a darker part of the rock.
A little bit of DStretch to have a better look at where those two small elements are. How on earth did their creator get up there? The two rocks are too far apart to form a chimney for climbing.
Let’s crouch down and look at the main panel. Unfortunately, as you can see here, the top portion of the panel exfoliated recently, taking some of the pictographs with it. ( It is the lighter colored portion of rock. ) The rest of the panel shows many sunburst elements scattered in the lower portion.
With DStretch we get an idea of what the remainder of the panel looked like. It looks like there were some more burst elements up there. If anyone has a photo of this panel in its original state to share, I can link to it if you’re willing to share! Also note that the lower panel has a row of tally marks in the lower corner.
When I turn my head I notice that somebody had visited here since the damage occurred and had neatly tucked the exfoliated and broken pieces under a nearby overhang to preserve them.
In fact, when we inspect the ground below the panel we find a couple of other tiny pieces to tuck under the overhang as well.
A short distance away there is a grinding slick on another boulder. I can see how the shade would have been attractive!
Looking up at the towering outcropping, I wonder again how those two pictographs got up there. The bottom one is dark and well preserved – looks almost modern to me, like paint, not pigment – but the upper one looks authentic.
Here’s a really zoomed in look at the upper element.
A circle with two vertical cross bars.
The other element. I’m not sure if that’s authentic or not.
This was an interesting site to visit. It is a pity about the exfoliation. If you visit this site, take care with it and don’t touch the rock surface! It isn’t very stable.
Much like several other site, it amazes me how the creators managed to climb that high up to create some of these pictographs. Ladders or ropes, or just really good rock climbing skills. I love how this site maintains its astronomical theme (stars) with the nearby solstice aspect. Did you run into the modern happy/sad sculpture by the mortars?
I’ve been to a few sites where I just could not imagine climbing up to the areas where the pictographs or petroglyphs were! There’s some sites on the Volcanic Tablelands that are like that, and also some others in the Sierra. It is obvious that this entire site shares a theme, which is really amazing. I did not run into any sculpture down by the mortars, though. I wonder if it was removed or damaged, or if I maybe just didn’t see it? I’ll be back to this site sometime over the winter, I’m sure, since there’s still some other things in the area I want to investigate, so I’ll look around in more detail then!