The area these pictographs are found in is peppered with pictograph sites – some elaborate, others just a few dabs of pigment in a secret spot.
The Serrano have lived in this area for so long that their creation myth ties them to the nearby oasis of Maara’ ( in present-day Twentynine Palms, close to the Joshua Tree National Park headquarters ) as opposed to other creation myths that are often more general, or intertwined with a migration story.
According to the accounts given by some tribe members, Maara’ is in their songs as the place where their Lord – the name given in the ethnographic record for their deity – brought them after their previous home on another world became crowded.
Several elements are nestled inside this wind-hollowed niche that forms the main pictograph panel at this site.
DStretch detail of the one white Curvilinear element found in the upper right of this panel.
The Serrano used to range far and wide, their territory said to stretch from the coast by Los Angeles to the Colorado River.
All this land, their myths said, is not for anybody to own, but belongs to the Lord.
Nowadays the land is criss-crossed with boundary markers and the scars of land use.
Though they were hunter-gatherers, the Serrano weren’t nomadic, so they settled in villages of about 25-100 people. They built dome-shaped houses with willow frames and settled around permanent water sources.
As such it seems likely that the rock art in their territory was created for ceremonial purposes, since they did not live in rock shelters.
The panel is nestled in the wind-worn side of a boulder. There are several narrow passages through the boulders in this area. The boulders rest on a large bedrock outcropping.
This panel is found in a maze of boulders in a rocky outcropping in the middle of a large flat valley, hence the alias I’ve given it.
The pictograph elements are found mostly on one boulder with wind-worn niches, but there is also a second, smaller panel in a nook of an adjacent boulder, as well as some very worn elements under a second overhang some distance away.
The first panel is by far the most impressive.
It consists of a handful of red elements and a single white element. White is not a very common color in this area – red and black are more common.
This element is still quite distinct and appears to be a dense ensemble of cross-hatched lines.
DStretch shows this element, found in the left center of the panel, in more detail.
Most of the elements in this panel are somewhat smudged – probably eroded by wind and rain – and therefore quite hard to make out.
Even though the panel appears well-protected in its maze of boulders it is more or less open to the sky and this has contributed to the deterioration of the panel.
Apart from the single white element which is still nice and crisp, the most distinct element is probably the one in the left center of the panel. It is made up of several thin, well-drawn red lines, with a single dot close to the center of the design. As a whole it doesn’t form any element that I am familiar with.
In this DStretch overview of the panel the general smudged appearance of the elements can be clearly seen. Apart from the white element, upper right, and the two leftmost elements, it is impossible to clearly tell what shapes were originally painted.
DStretch hints at a circular design. The lines are fine and well-drawn, similar to the Rectilinear element above it.
The lower left element as it appears to the naked eye. The pigment is still quite distinct.
Just a little to the northeast of this boulder, along the same passage, there is a second boulder with multiple small, wind-worn hollows. Two of these hollows are decorated with red pigment lines, and there are also traces of pigment on the exposed surface below one alcove.
This motif of lines in an eroded alcove is also found elsewhere in Serrano territory. It may well have had some meaning, ceremonial or otherwise – or it could have been an idiosyncrasy of a single artist. It appears too consistently to be mere chance, though.
Just a little further along the passage is another boulder with small alcoves.
DStretch makes it clear that this boulder hosts some pictographs.
There are no mortars or grinding slicks close by these two boulders. They are found along a small passage between numerous other boulders. The lack of any other features of use or habitation suggests that they were ceremonial. They are also out of the way, not in a place that people would visit as part of their normal lives, which suggest that they weren’t way markers or something of that sort.
A small distance away on the same rock outcropping is a larger, more hospitable overhang.
Looking southerly under the first overhang.
This overhang has enough room to comfortable recline under with your back against the adjacent sloped boulder.
With no direct sunlight on them the nearby surfaces are cool and since this is also a tunnel extending clear through the rock pile, the potential of a cooling breeze is there as well. In all, this is a very pleasant place to linger.
The grinding slick on the floor of the rock shelter.
In the shelter formed by this overhang there are a few more indistinct pictographs as well as a single grinding slick on the surface. I could see this area being used for processing foodstuffs, or possibly for conducting a ritual that required grinding up materials.
The pictographs have the same purplish red tint as other pictographs in the vicinity, but they are mostly very indistinct, to the point where it is hard to tell when the red color is applied pigment or just natural color on the rock face.
One of the pigmented areas.
DStretch makes it look as if most of the red is just natural veins in the rock face, but there are two bisected circles, upper right center, that definitely appears to be pictographs.
Another area with promising-looking pigment.
There may be some additional circular elements here.
This patch of red pigment might also be something …
With DStretch it appears that at least the upper left element is likely a pictograph. It looks like the burst elements commonly found in the region.
These shelters are within sight of at least one other pictograph site in the area that is also elevated above the valley floor. Very likely a larger habitation complex existed in the valley below and these pictographs are the most visible remnants today.
If you visit here remember that pictographs are fragile and easily damaged. Do not trace them or touch them. Leave them behind as you found them for others to see.