While on a ramble in an area where we’ve made some nice finds in the past, we happened across this little site.
Based on how bright the petroglyphs are, I’d say they are not all that old. There are plenty of examples of much more weathered petroglyphs in this area. These are fairly close to extensive habitation sites, so maybe they were among the last panels made before those sites were abandoned.
This is a rather unusual panel – a lot of detail crammed into a single panel on a single boulder, nothing else really close by despite several good candidate boulders. We had to climb a little ways up a ridge to see it properly.
Let’s look!
And that is it! A very interesting little site. Hope you enjoyed visiting it with us.
Looks very new. Could it be a recent one? No visible Desert Varnish
I’m inclined to agree! Very new-looking. There’s some dated historical graffiti from the 1910’s that is about the same brightness in the general area too, which helps with comparisons. I’d say a few hundred years at most, probably between 150-200 years old.
What did you think about the other petroglyphs consisting of wavy, meandering lines near the inscription? If I remember correctly, wasn’t the year 1918?
If those are the squiggles I’m thinking of ( I’m posting about them next! ) then they’re a bit more tan than these, which would suggest additional varnishing and greater age. That said, I’ve found I should be careful with assigning age to petroglyphs based simply on such an observation. Even on the same panel, you can have different levels of varnish. It can depend on how sheltered an element is, or which way the rock face is tilted if the same boulder has a wrap-around design. Back to the historical inscription, it was definitely late 1910’s. 1918 sounds right, might have been 1917 too. If that inscription is a little more tan-colored than these, then that would suggest they could be even newer than 100 years. I think most of these panels face northerly or easterly, in other words, generally away from the prevailing winds from the west. So they should revarnish at about the same rate, one would think. Trying to date petroglyphs is by no means an exact science, right!