We’re finishing up our exploration with some rather nifty petroglyphs.
The eponymous design – it does look a little like a snake with a shield design on its middle, as if it ate the shield. Interesting to me is that the design is obviously meant to look like this – no overlay of either design on the other ) but it looks like the snake motif is brighter than the shield, which suggests it was made later, and put around the shield design on purpose. It also looks a bit like a ladder towards the bottom, and a road towards the top. There are also other brighter squiggly lines on the boulder. Maybe the two shields ( there’s another one in the lower right ) were made first, and later the remaining designs added in a short period of time, based on the revarnishing.Close by is a boulder where we can see more dots, both on the boulder in the foreground and in the background, top right, where the Rectilinear design is. The nose of the boulder is completely covered with superimposed designs, removing almost all the varnish from it.A bit of an overview shot. The shield design on the narrow boulder was the first element I saw from off in the distance that clued us in to the treasures this ridge held. Do you see the big shield design, deeply carved on the front of the boulder? It is easy to miss when the other designs are more prominent at a glance. There’s also a burst-like element right at the top of the boulder. These designs are deeply incised and well-made, from the beautiful round shields to the firm, straight-lined Rectilinear elements.A deeply carved and rather weathered boulder. I don’t think the weathering means the petroglyphs on this boulder are necessarily much older than some of the others – I just think that because it is so low to the ground, wind-blown sand have had a better shot at eroding it. This boulder is also covered in lichen, unlike the surrounding boulders. Maybe just enough steam rising from the ground after rain to give the lichen a foothold here. Some species are very slow growing, maybe a quarter inch diameter in a century, so these petroglyphs may be quite old.I rather think the squiggly line on the boulder on the foreground was carved later – it is not quite as overgrown with lichen and it is much wider and deeper than the almost scratched designs that surround it.
Well, that’s a wrap for this entry! These petroglyphs were a good find, very interesting. A lot of density on some of the rock faces, and lots of indications that the site was repeatedly used over a long period of time.
