Category Archives: Sierra Nevada

“Chain Reaction” Pictographs

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During a busy winter season we managed to slip away to the backcountry one weekend day. On my wish list were three sites – two I’ve never been to and one I had been to but haven’t documented very well during prior visits.

As sometimes happens, the sequence of events for the day ended up putting us in an interesting spot … but I won’t talk too much about that here. This site was the 2nd of the three sites we were trying to visit, and the time we spent at it, as well as the time we spent hunting fruitlessly for the first site, put us at the third site at just the wrong time, where we ended up getting snowed out of the backcountry!

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“Indian Slate” Pictographs

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This is a little site in Tübatulabal territory, on the bank of a seasonal creek. The site is a bit unusual in that the pictographs are not painted on granite. Instead, they are on the side of a slate outcropping on the creek’s eastern bank.

There are also some bedrock mortars down by the creek bed – beautiful conical mortars, worn about ten inches deep. One of the mortars is on a smallish boulder that has washed down the creek since it was originally made. We know this because the boulder is now wedged at an angle in the creek bed. There are also a couple of grinding slicks on a nearby boulder.

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“Graupel Grapple” Pictographs

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This pictograph site is on a ledge partway up a canyon wall. I’ve known about it for many years and visited it twice, but each time I came away with pictures that were less than satisfactory, so I haven’t written about it yet. This past winter I decided it was time to do something about that!

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“Squared up Sun” Pictographs

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This is a small pictograph site that we found while exploring a much larger complex in Kawaiisu territory. It consists of only two pictographs in a narrow rock shelter, but it seems to tie in well with the rest of the site. The pictographs at this location all seem to share a common theme.

Let’s have a look!

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“Ghostly Goat” Pictographs

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These pictographs are found on the ceiling of a low rock shelter. This site is in a drainage in the Eastern Sierra, in Kawaiisu territory. The shelter is much too low to be comfortable for sitting in, but the ceiling is blacked, I assume by soot!

The elements are fairly sparse, in red and black. Let’s take a look.

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“Double Suns” Pictographs

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This is a rather nice little panel of pictographs, facing east from its perch on the western side of a low saddle.

The panel is not complete – in several places small flakes of the rock face have exfoliated away, taking the pigment with it. This effect is not very noticeable at first because the style of the panel is unusual, with lots of small, choppy elements interspersed with some well-made Representational elements. At first glance it just seems like the missing parts were intentional. But when you examine the rock face a little more you can tell by the color differences that the panel is exfoliating.

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“Black Hole Sun” Pictographs Part III – Black Hole Sun

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In the previous two segments on this pictograph site, found within a larger habitation complex in the Eastern Sierra foothills in Kawaiisu territory, I talked about how I came across the site, and what elements can be found on the left-hand part of the panel.

Now it is time to look at the last part of the panel, and then look at the panel as a whole.

I’ll note now that this site does have some interaction with the sun at significant times of the year such as the winter solstice, as documented by other visitors. I haven’t had a look at the site at suitable times yet, so I can’t yet comment on it in that regard! I’ve had some unfortunate adventures with two other “solstice” sites to date ( you can read all about the Diamond Solstice site or the Shooting Star site, if you like! ) and those were at dawn on a summer day when the only bad thing was waking up at 4am … there are no Starbucks locations close to any of these sites and I’m not much of a morning person! Then again, I’m not much of a person for resisting interesting things either, so … check back for more occasionally! I may well have shown up on a mid-winter’s day to see what happens then.

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“Black Hole Sun” Pictographs Part II – Catcher On The Wall

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In Part One of this series on the “Black Hole Sun” pictograph panel I talk about how I discovered this pictograph panel in Kawaiisu territory in the eastern Sierra foothills and also showed an overview of the panel itself. Now, I would like to take a look at the left hand side of that panel and the elements that can be seen there.

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“Black Hole Sun” Pictographs Part I – Discovery

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This is a pretty involved pictograph panel within a larger habitation site. Researchers have tied this panel to solstice events, and the imagery certainly seem to support an astronomical observation angle.

That is very interesting by itself, but I also found this panel in a kind of roundabout way, and I thought this was interesting enough in itself that I would kick off a short series of posts about this site by writing about the discovery.

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