We’re on our way to explore a really interesting part of the extensive site on the Volcanic Tablelands that’s been occupying our time of late. To date we’ve been exploring up and down ridges, and while today’s look is also at a ridge, there are several interesting features here. For one, we’ll see some grinding slicks in a very interesting configuration, a narrow passage full of petroglyphs, an awesome housing circle, some cupules with a secret, and, of course, petroglyphs!
Let’s go look!
We’re moving over to the last, easternmost outcropping. This view is kind of end-on from the northern side, looking southwards. We’ll first explore the northern part, starting with the petroglyphs you can see on the rock face there, and then squeeze through a narrow passage in the outcropping and wrap back around to the front, exploring an interesting alcove as we go. Finally, we’ll walk around the back of the outcropping, ending our route with some outlying petroglyph boulders.The bird prints are back! The one down low is very large. There’s also another nice pair higher up the boulder. At the very top is a panel of petroglyphs on a boulder slanted to face the western sky. Most of the large petroglyph panels at this site faces skyward or westerly – due to the fact that that’s the sides of the outcropping that is nicely varnished and smooth. There are some larger panels facing northerly, which we saw in the previous entry. Did you notice what looks like cupules in that boulder? We’ll look at those a little later – there’s a surprise there!Did you see the boulder in the bottom right of the previous picture? It has some pretty basic petroglyphs, nothing like the well-defined petroglyphs we’ll see soon on the more varnished boulders. Here is a close-up. Mostly small circular designs, plus a small Rectilinear element in the top left.In between this large boulder and the rest of the outcropping is a narrow passage. See the petroglyphs? There’s a shallow shelf at about chest height on the southerly side of the passage, and there is a lot of petroglyphs carved in that space. Let’s go have a closer look.There we go. The passage is pretty narrow – single file only. This made it hard to photograph the petroglyphs! Close to the camera is a rake-like design. Beyond that, the shelf widens a bit, and there is a lot more room for petroglyphs.Fortunately a wide-angle lens can give you a lot of detail in tight spaces. Here’s the part of that rake-like element that was closest to us in the previous shot. Rather than pecked, it seems to be mostly incised. Possibly the row of shallow dots visible in the right half was added later, since the rock seems to have weathered slightly differently in that area.The first part of the element, which is really a separate collection of lines.Just beyond this panel is a wider shelf with plenty of petroglyphs. Some of the elements look vaguely Representational, like hand prints.What followed next was a lot of tippy-toe, hands above my head, angling the camera every which way work in the tight passage to try and get the full panel in view. Most shots are off-center, a little high, a little low … but practice makes perfect and I finally nail a very nice overview of the boulder. Interesting – right on the upper left corner you can see some more petroglyphs that you wouldn’t even see walking through the passage unless you’re really tall. On this shelf we see plenty of densely carved petroglyphs. Look closely and see how many common Great Basin elements you can find. Quartered circles? Rectilinear grids? Shield designs? How about a burst element? And what about some less common ones? Do you see the bird prints in the lower right? How about the suspected handprint? And how about those squid/comet elements? This is a very interesting panel that is kind of hard to see from ground level. Also note that the teal-colored lichen covers up more petroglyphs – you can look closely and discern elements underneath. Let’s have a look from a different angle. It is possible to climb up the outcropping and – very carefully! – look down on the panel, as seen here.Slightly different angle, showing the panel dead square from above. As you’ve surely learnt by now I milk any “I was up way high on a rock for this picture, you know!” for maximum effect!Often the pictures I take show the panels nicely but the angles are such that you don’t really get a good appreciation for the contours of the rock face. As this angle shows, there is plenty of curve to the shelf that these petroglyphs are on.We’ve made it through the passage, and now we’re wrapping around to the left. This is an alcove in the rock – in fact, this is the hollow boulder that the large bird print petroglyph we saw in the overview was on! Remember that I said that the cupules on that rock hid a surprise? You can see a hint of it here … three dots of light in the wall of the alcove. They may have started out as cupules, but three of them are bored straight through the rock now. There are also some petroglyphs on the lip of the alcove.Here is a closer look. On the lip of the alcove is a circular element that at first looks bisected, but if you look really close you’ll see it is really a circle around an element made up of a horizontal bar and some vertical lines. The rock is very smooth here, as if the element was smoothed by touch over time. Right at the top of the picture is a single deeply incised horizontal line. It also looks like there is some red pigment in that element. Let’s see if some DStretch helps clear that up.It does! The pigment is painted inside the element in the circle.A nice close look at the three holes in the alcove wall. It looks as if an attempt was made to create fourth hole from this side, but it wasn’t completed. Also – note those yellowish brown, oval nodules in the wall? If you look real close you can see some of them have horizontal stripes. Maybe those are trilobite fossils! Wouldn’t that be neat?A close-up look, near what looks like the attempt to create a hole from the inside of the boulder. I honestly can’t tell if those groves are some really delicately carved lines or not. Maybe? Probably? But could be a fossil? Hard to tell!Have a look here, as I scoot back out of the alcove. This looks like some anthropomorphic petroglyphs, on the lip just a little to the left of the circle element we looked at first. And again, there is a nodule in the upper right of the picture that has the same vertical groves as the one we just looked at.An overview of these two elements, plus a couple of the holes through into the alcove. Those holes faces westerly but even in the afternoon when we visited no direct sunlight shone through them, and there are no remarkable features at the back of the alcove that they may have illuminated.We’ve now wrapped back around to the front of the boulder. As shown before, we have a clear bird print here, two more up above, near the upper edge of the picture, and a rather nice panel we’ll look at soon peeking out in the top right. But back to the center of the picture – there are several cupules and some holes in this boulder. The three that goes straight through the rock are the two fully inside the haphazard, unclosed circle, and the one right above it. The cupule right on the line does not go all the way through. The other three taper as they go deeper into the rock, making it clear that they were all created from this side. The one indentation we saw from inside the alcove was an attempt to go the other way, but it was not finished.Close look at the largest two holes.Let’s work our way up the boulder. The first interesting look is these two bird prints. We’ve seen bird prints occur in pairs all over this site – in fact, that is THE unifying element here. This isn’t the last we’ll see of them!Here’s a really nice view of that upper panel, again obtained by climbing up all kinds of treacherous boulders. What a lot of detail – bisected circle, shield, vertical design, squiggle line, burst element, bird prints ( lower left ) … wow. There’s a lot of exposure up here, but it seems like this panel’s creator wasn’t afraid of heights.After all that excitement it is time to walk around the rear, easterly part of the ridge. There are several scattered petroglyphs here, as well as an extremely well-preserved housing circle, so it will be worth our while. For starters, notice these two incised petroglyphs, hidden in a cleft between two boulders. We only found them because we were clambering all over, looking at every rock.I hopped down into the cleft to take this close-up.This part of the outcropping has some grinding slicks, suggesting that more utilitarian activities of daily life took place here.Higher up on the outcropping there are several delicate petroglyphs, including a quartered circle.From up here I can tell that the next outcropping over is worth a visit. I see some squiggly lines, like snakes, and a Rectilinear element.Close-up of the squiggle lines. Some are pretty delicate!The far side of this boulder holds a surprise. This is right on the edge of this petroglyph complex, but … look at that! Bird prints! Lots of bird prints!A little further along is a panel of meander lines.At first glance this is just a boulder with a very large grinding slick on it, but look closely … pretty soon you see some spindly petroglyphs nearby. That’s interesting. Now look more closely at the grinding slick. What do you see around its edges?So, this is a very interesting feature of this site, and not the only example of it. You can clearly tell that the grinding slick obliterates some petroglyphs on this boulder. This isn’t especially common at petroglyph sites but it does occur. In this case it is hard to tell whether the slick is contemporary with the petroglyphs or not. There’s not a whole lot of difference in weathering. It seems really odd that petroglyphs, which often have spiritual meaning, is so intermixed and even superseded by grinding slicks, with an altogether more utilitarian purpose of food preparation. Still, we don’t have the whole story here. Maybe this was a spiritual act, potentially drawing power from petroglyphs? Maybe to prepare food for someone with a very important task to carry out? We really don’t know.Before we move on to explore some more, here’s an overview of this rock face with its petroglyphs and grinding slick. It was very hard to see in the previous picture, but there’s a burst element right by the grinding slick.Some more grinding slicks on a nice flat boulder.And just below that, a really nice housing circle. Honestly, this is probably the best preserved housing circle I’ve ever seen. A nice backing against the outcropping, two very nice walls coming out to the entrance … this would have made a nice spot for sure. Being on the easterly side of the outcropping the morning sun would help dispel the chill in the morning, and the outcropping would have shielded the harsh afternoon sun in summer, too. Atop the boulder forming the back wall there are a couple of grinding slicks.Another look at that housing circle. It is very well-preserved.Not too far away I find an additional boulder with delicate squiggle lines on it.The outcropping peters out but I explore some low-slung boulders nearby and find a reward – more grinding slicks! These are some distance away from all the housing circles.That’s not the only grinding slick in the vicinity. Here’s another, very small slick, on a boulder that also has some shallowly pecked petroglyphs.Finally, here’s another boulder, also with grinding slicks, again clearly overlaying petroglyph elements. A lot of effort went into the Rectilinear squiggle line spanning the width of the boulder, as well as the smaller elements, but the boulder was repurposed for grinding slicks.A closer view.A really close view at one of the slicks. It even looks like it might have been a bird print that was overlaid by the slick – notice the darker, bird print shaped area in the lower portion of the slick.One more look at the boulder. Looks like the upper design was made up of cross shapes and bird prints, same as the large boulder we looked at when we started off, before the grinding slick obliterated some of the design.A spindly, shallowly pecked shield design on one of the boulders.Close by, an intricate net-like design, again very shallowly pecked. Some petroglyphs are very easy to miss – they’re deeply varnished and unless the sun throws them into relief, almost impossible to see as well.Two slicks packed in tight on a small surface.
Wow, that was a lot to see in a fairly short span of time! To me the grinding slicks overlaying petroglyphs is really interesting. That could mean many things – maybe the petroglyphs were made first, slowly fell out of prominence and meaning, and the surfaces were repurposed for food preparation. This theory isn’t really supported by the appearance of the boulder – the petroglyphs and the grinding slick seem to be weathered about the same amount. Maybe the petroglyphs were just decorative, contemporary with the slicks, and it really didn’t matter that they were overlaid? That seems hard to believe too – the petroglyphs are well-made, and there are many boulders suitable for grinding slicks in the vicinity. Maybe they are remnants of a ritual: first the petroglyphs, then the slicks? We really don’t know.
If you visit this site, treat it with respect. Take great care not to disturb the site – no rocks, lithic scatter, anything of that nature is yours for the taking. Leave everything just as you found it. It is only because others before you did the same that you got to visit and enjoy this site in the first place.
