We started a journey before dawn one spring morning, driving far into the desert so we could go walk through history. As we rolled up the miles on tarmac, effortlessly covering distances that spans days of travel on foot, I thought about how humans always seek the path of least resistance. For modern people that means sedentary lives and easy driving on blacktop. In the past, it meant finding the places where the land was gentler and yielded more easily to those seeking a living from it.
Our destination for the day was one such place. It offered water, food, and an easy corridor of travel. Our own easy travel ran out a ways short of our target, so we found a spot to park off of the two-track we’ve been bumping along, gathered up our packs, cameras, water and snacks, donned our sun hats, and set out across the desert, walking the way people have always walked in this land.
Let’s look at what we found. This site is a small outlier in a much larger complex.
The first hint that this walk will be worthwhile is a handful of tally mark-like pecks on a varnished boulder.Shortly afterwards, I find a grinding slick at comfortable working height. The scratches on the side of the boulder may have been made by cleaning tools, or maybe sharpening them.This may seem like a mundane shot of a single pecked line, but look closely at that boulder. There are some scratched net-like designs there. These designs crop up in odd places, such as at Tataviam sites, or the Midgewater Madness site hundreds of miles north of here.On another boulder there are some better defined designs, though one seems to be partially wiped out by someone pecking over it at a later date. Let’s look more closely. It does appear to be the case for the lower element. The varnishing on the design is different, more bluish for the top element and the top left of this element, browner for the lower right. That’s quite interesting to me. Maybe this was an attempt to re-peck the element, if it had been varnished over by the dark streaks of varnish visible to the right. Even in a small, seemingly mundane panel like this there are mysteries and a feeling of age.Nearby there is a tiny element, pecked or rubbed on the rock face.Another element is almost completely destroyed by a huge chunk of the boulder exfoliating away.The next elements are low down in the wash, several small groupings on adjacent rock faces. You can see them by looking at the lower, lighter brown areas. Let’s look more closely at each panel.We start off with this panel in the middle of the grouping, consisting of three elements. To the right we have the truly ubiquitous bisected circle / atlatl design. The other two designs are less distinctive.Just around the corner on the same boulder, we have some tally lines and a Rectilinear element that apparently was pecked left-to-right, since it kind of peters out, unfinished, towards the right.Sadly, I did not get a good shot of the elements closest to the viewer in the overview. That happens sometimes!These elements appeared furthest away from the viewer in the overview shot. The circle with upper and lower lines is another fairly common element for the region.Finally, another small pecked element all by itself on a rock face.One last glance at this little grouping of elements. Something to note ( it can be hard to judge scale on these pictures ) is that these designs are not that small, most of them are a foot or more across. Pecking them into these boulders took time and effort.
That’s the end of this little site! We strode on through the desert, following the footpath that seasonal rains wore smooth through the ages. Pretty soon, we happened upon many more petroglyphs, but that is a story for another day.
Take care at these sites. A careless scramble might dislodge a rock that damages a design, and quite apart from all that, these places had meaning for the people who made them. Tread lightly and respectfully.
