We’ve been taking some long walks on the Tablelands recently. In this case, the bright morning sun slipped in and out behind some thin clouds overhead. Each round in the shade provided some welcome relief. While the last vestiges of spring kept the Tablelands just cool enough for exploring summer was coming, and with it the exploration window for the lowlands was closing fast.
I’m amazed that these Tablelands ever sustained human settlement for extended periods – most of the year it is hot, dry, barren and sandy, with spiky, scraggly vegetation. Doesn’t sound very inviting! Yet, there were some pretty large settlements up here. If you lifted your head up from staring at the ground looking for lithic scatter to look around, you’d see that not far away rivers and trees provide shade, and the slopes of the surrounding mountain ranges have stands of piñon pine providing seeds. Not so inhospitable after all. It is just that we’re not used to seeing the available food sources around us anymore — if it isn’t on a little tray and wrapped in plastic, it doesn’t register as food these days.
With these thoughts in mind, I slogged up a low hill / sloped outcropping, and something caught my attention.
Speaking of food … outdoors kitchen! Grinding slicks on some large slabs. Okay, there has to be more here. Time to start exploring the nearby ridge.Ah ha! It took a while, but the scouting efforts paid off. A single squiggle line pecked on a rock face.But wait! There’s more! Up above, on a fragmented outcropping, several rock faces have petroglyphs. Okay, time to scramble!Some of the elements are rather scattershot and rough. There is a fair bit of exposure on the spine of the ridge right here, so I’m not surprised that someone started on this and then decided that this wasn’t such a nice spot to be clinging to the rock while pecking out petroglyphs after all.Here a very faint half-moon petroglyph ( unfinished circle or shield? ) is decorated with a thin topping of lichen. I’ve seen this at several other sites: moss and lichen have an affinity for growing in petroglyphs. I suppose roughing up the smooth desert varnish allow the spores better purchase on the rock. Looking down towards the most intricate panel in this little grouping. I’m not reaching it from up here though!Most of the panels, as seem from below. Squiggle lines seem to be the dominant motif here.When you’ve been out for hours in the blazing sun you sometimes take pictures like this one, where you don’t realize your camera decided broad daylight and desert varnish glaring in the sun is a perfect time to take a picture with the flash.There are several elements like this scattered on the rocks – well-made, but very incomplete-looking.Another small but well-made element. The elements are bright, so they may only be a couple hundred years old. There’s some historical graffiti dating from the early 1900’s nearby that has about the same amount of revarnishing, so that helps give a rough timeframe … give or take a couple hundred years? Hard to say!Finally, a well-made squiggle line in a hard to reach spot. I had to zoom in quite a bit to take this pic. I wasn’t going to try and climb up there!
That’s it! It was really nice to find this site – even though there isn’t a feeling of great age and history around it like there sometimes is with these sites, it was still a good find. At this point we were just about done for the day — time to slog back to the vehicle and hit the road to refreshment!
We did have one more little detour up our sleeves, though …
