This is one of the earliest pictograph sites I found, right at the beginning of my interest in hunting for these sites. Back then I carried a dinky compact camera in my pocket and very little knowledge of site photography in my head.
Despite their poor quality ( so poor that I’d never actually post them here! ) I enjoy looking at the photos I took of this site back then because they remind me vividly of what it felt like to discover this site for the first time – the excitement of peering up at it in the gathering dusk and realizing that the overhang contained paintings, the hurried scurrying about trying to find a route up, and finally peering into the shelter with a big smile before snapping a few hurried shots and hightailing it out of there before dark traps me in the backcountry. ( Back then I seemingly had a talent for discovering sites at the last possible moment, turning a sweaty day of frustration into a highlight at the last moment. )
The pictures I’m showing with this entry was taken during a more recent visit when I had better equipment and returned to a lot of my first discoveries specifically to take new pictures.
Looking upslope towards the shelter. The single bedrock mortar is in the foreground.
This site is fairly small, on the shoulder of an enormous bedrock outcropping, and consists of a wind-eroded overhang with pictographs and grinding slicks and a single bedrock mortar situated quite some distance away from the shelter. This is a configuration I haven’t seen before: when bedrock mortars coexist with rock shelters they are usually pretty close to the shelters. This single mortar seems randomly placed, partway down the sloping bedrock outcropping. Very curious.
The bedrock outcropping itself has several depressions that form natural tanks – these would have filled with water during the rainy season and are often a feature of habitation sites.
The site was likely used by the Serrano. They were hunter-gatherers who lived in established villages, but rock shelters may have formed part of their villages and rituals, too. Signs of their presence is scattered throughout the general region.
An overview of the shelter.
The pictographs are all located against the back wall of the shallow shelter. Like many of the elements in the general area these pictographs are surprisingly large compared to the designs made by other cultures in other regions.
The view into the shelter from a vantage point that is low and slightly to the left of the shelter. This shows all the pictograph elements in context.
The pigment colors used are red and black. The nature of the red and the black elements are very different: The most obvious red elements have spindly lines, whereas the black elements are large and bold.
For the main design at least, it was drawn in outline first and then filled with pigment. Leaving aside the red elements for the moment, let’s focus on the black pigment.
At first glance the most obvious element is a large design in black pigment. With the naked eye it looks like a Roman numeral III, complete with serifs, but with a fourth, shorter stripe on the right that angles away. The rightmost spaces between the black lines appear to have been filled with red pigment at some point.
The most obvious black element.
DStretch gives an idea of what the pictograph used to look like. The line of vertical “bars” stretch off in the left beyond what is easily visible with the naked eye. Each bar was traced in outline first and then painted in. The spaces between the bars were filled with red pigment.
There are also some faint traces of red pigment above the elements on the left – some dots and one circular pattern.
Moving on to the red elements, the obviously visible ones are on the right side of the panel as well.
The red pictograph elements.
DStretch is useful here as well.
This small group of still visible figures is made up by a spindly and possibly zoomorphic figure, an enclosed sunburst motif and an abstract figure that is either one element or else two drawn very closely together.
The abstract element on the right is similar to elements found at other sites in the vicinity, for instance Alister’s Cave as well as the “All Hands on Deck” site.
In addition to these still readily visible elements, there are also some eroded elements to the left of these that can still be recalled by DStretch.
Some faint red dots to the left of the brighter red elements. And … maybe also some black pigment in there! Perhaps anthropomorphs. Let’s take a closer look with DStretch.
Ah yes. Definitely something more going on here! There is a circle enclosing a simple plus sign at the top center of the picture, and below that we have some red and black elements. These are an extension of the black elements we looked at earlier, which is just visible at the right of the picture: here we have a row of black figures with red pigment between them and red dots above them that seems to be a continuation of the main element.
So, it only is once DStretch is applied that the full scope of this pictograph is revealed! The designs still visible today form only part of what was originally created. The fainter black pigment that looked vaguely anthropomorphic is actually part of the same element as the visible portion. It appears to stretch across the back wall – a framework of black pigment with the spaces in between the vertical “bars” filled with red pigment.
Here is an overview of everything:
First, the panel in natural colors. Now that we know what to look for, some parts of it that appeared natural at first glance are clearly not.
In addition to the elements we already looked at, there also seems to be a “ribbon”-type design in black pigment below and to the right of the panel.
The floor of the shelter. The rust-colored spot in the center is a grinding slick. There are a few more in the shelter as well.
This is a very pleasant little site to visit. There is a good view from this high perch and any cooling breeze is easily enjoyed.
This site was apparently used in everyday activities, as evidenced by the grinding slicks right inside the shelter.
Many tribes did not set aside their ritual spaces from their daily living spaces, but instead had both inside their villages. This site could have been such a place as well, although the elements may just be decorative too – we don’t really know.
If you visit this site, be respectful. You can observe the pictographs easily from a few feet away. Do not enter the shelter and touch them! Your touch is very destructive to these fragile pigments and even breathing on them from a short distance away releases moisture that could loosen the pigment’s hold on the rock. The safest is to respect them and keep your distance, coming only close enough to see.