Tag Archives: cupules

“Three’s Company” Petroglyphs

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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!

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“Circles in the Sand” Petroglyphs

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We’re continuing our exploration of a wonderful habitation & petroglyph site in this entry.

In the previous entry we finished walking a ridge of volcanic tuft from north to south, noting the numerous bird print petroglyphs atop the ridge. In this entry, we’ll walk back up the ridge on its easterly side. There are numerous housing circles on this side, as well as petroglyphs, and the ground is littered with lithic scatter.

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“For The Birds” Petroglyphs

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This entry is a continuation of the previous entry in the series, further examining a large petroglyph site on the Volcanic Tablelands.

In this entry, we will finish examining the top and westerly side of ridge we’ve been following. We’ll also peek over the ridge to get a glimpse of what awaits us in the next entry.

Remember that I pointed out some bird-print like petroglyphs previously? Well, this part of the site takes that quite a bit further. All along the top of the ridge we’ll find a progression of bird prints, usually in sets of two, all the way down to a large boulder with a whole jumble of bird print petroglyphs. Quite amazing.

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“Rattle River” Petroglyphs

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This entry isn’t named for anything specific to the petroglyphs. Instead it is named after what the trip to see it was like! This is one of the last sites we visited using our little red truck, and no other site came closer to breaking the truck than this one did.

The funny thing is that there are two ways to get to it: the way we approached ( scenic but brutal for a tiny stock truck: down a rocky canyon with a river we had to ford multiple times ) or the way we left ( nice flat graded dirt road! ) Never have I been more thankful to get back to the pavement in one piece – not even that one time we — cough — walked for miles, didn’t find anything and ended up getting stuck in deep sand for an hour ( and we had to dig out with a flat rock because we didn’t expect to get stuck and didn’t have a shovel. )

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“Cupule City” Petroglyphs

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This site is no secret – the local community knows all about it. Several dirt roads lead up to it and a stone boundary keeps away the vehicles. The ground around the site is scattered with modern debris – shotgun shells, bottles, broken glass – and the petroglyphs themselves have been vandalized by tracing over them and in one case by carving crude additions into the rock. A sign warns rock climbers away from the petroglyphs but the site is nonetheless covered in climbing talc and some of the vandalism is far enough above ground that it was likely done by a climber.

That’s a depressing introduction, isn’t it? Don’t let that scare you away – this site is still really interesting and has some amazing and unique features! For example, the number of cupules and mortars ground into the rock at this site is amazing. How much time did it take to make them all, and what meaning did they have?

The petroglyphs themselves are big and impressive despite the vandalism. Most of them have been filled in with red pigment, an uncommon feature for petroglyphs. There are a few other sites in the same area where the petroglyphs have also been carefully painted in with red pigment.

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Twin Tanks area Petroglyphs

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Reaching the Twin Tanks area in Joshua Tree National Park from the Twin Tanks backcountry board requires a little bit of a hike, either cross country proper or up a wide wash.

The tanks referred to are dams built by cattle ranchers to enhance natural tanks that were used for years prior by the Native Americans who lived in the area.

The tanks are interesting enough by themselves, but today’s entry is about the older history of the area.

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“Petroglyphs and Pictographs and Mortars, Oh My!” Site

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Often a site consists of a handful of pictographs, or a few petroglyphs, or perhaps a granite slab hosting bedrock mortars. Sometimes, the mortars and the pictographs go together. Other times, there might be grinding slicks close to petroglyphs.

This is the first time I’ve found all three in one location!

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