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December 29, 2018 by Kurt Buzard

Art and Science of Petroglyphs

Ancient Petroglyph of Bighorn Sheep. Little Petroglyph Canyon, China Lake California

Ancient Petroglyph of Bighorn Sheep. Little Petroglyph Canyon, China Lake California

The process of creating useful and visually pleasing petroglyphs is one of the more difficult art forms, related more to creating a stone statue than painting. Unlike cave paintings that are added to the rock, petroglyphs involve removing material, in particular the desert varnish or patina that covers rocks in the desert. Today this would be difficult and take time, even with our modern steel tools, back then they only had stone tools making the process long and laborious. To cut a hard stone you would need a harder stone, preferably with some kind of point to focus the energy. Aside from the technical difficulties, there is the matter of artistic depiction of various animals, experiences and ideas. To communicate even relatively simple things, given the relatively crude stone canvas, the essence of the item being depicted must be communicated unambiguously, to translate to even strangers speaking a different language. While this discussion is directed primarily at Little Petroglyph Canyon, the principles are applicable to most petroglyphs.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Archaeology, California, Native Americas Cultures Tagged With: California, Celtic Knot, China Lake, Conchoidal Fracture, Coso Volcanic Field, Cup and Ring Symbol, Desert Patina, Desert Varnish, Dual Centered Spiral, geology, Holocene, Little Petroglyph Canyon, Microstratigraphies, Petroglyph, Petroglyphs, Rhyolite, Ridgecrest, Rock Art, Rock Varnish, Schist, Spiral, Terminal Pleistocene, Trinity Spirals, Triple Spirals, Triquetra, Triskele, Triskelion, Water Petroglyph

December 16, 2018 by Kurt Buzard

Coso Native People History

Bow and Arrow with Archer and Victim. Little Petroglyph Canyon, Coso Range next to China Lake, California

Bow and Arrow with Archer and Victim. Little Petroglyph Canyon, Coso Range next to China Lake, California

If you visit Little Petroglyph Canyon, you will inevitably ask who created these petroglyphs. The short answer is, nobody knows who made them or in fact, how old they are. The Coso people were inhabiting the Coso area when the Europeans first arrived but there were only about 150–250 Coso people in the area and they claimed to know nothing about the petroglyphs. Over the past 100 years significant effort by anthropologists and archeologists have worked on clues from the past to explain the entrance of humans into the Americas and what they did once they were there. Since it was a long time ago, many things have been washed away by time. However, looking at stone tools, pollen counts from pack rat middens, linguistics and retained native customs we have a hotly debated but reasonable idea of how things changed over time for the Coso people and humans all over the Americas. This post is an overview of this work and while it will not tell you the who and when the petroglyphs were made, it will give you context to decide for yourself. I think you will be surprised at the ultimate influence this tiny, out of the way place, had on the entire southwest.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Archaeology, California, Native Americas Cultures Tagged With: Acorns, Atatl, Baskets, Bedrock Mortar, Bering Strait, Beringia, Bow and Arrow, Brown Ware, Chuckah Basket, Climate Change, Clovis Projectile Points, Comanche, Coso Hot Springs, Coso Indians, Coso People, Coso Volcanic Field, Cupules, Death Valley, Eastern California, Folsom People, Great Basin, Grinding Stone, History, Hokan Language, Ice Age, Indigenous People, Kahn, Little Lake Projectile Points, Little Petroglyph Canyon, Mohave Projectile Points, Native Americans, Northern Paiute, Numic Indians, Numic Languages, Numic People, Obsidian, Paiute, Paleo Indians, Petroglyph, Pine Nuts, Pine Pitch Sealed Basket, Pinto Projectile Points, Shoshone, Sierra Nevada, Silver Lake Projectile Points, Southern Paiute, Stone Age Crescents, Ute, Uto-Aztecan Language, Wikiup, Yosemite Ahwahneechee

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Civilization

Every society has a specific set of ideas and customs, and a certain set of manufactures and arts that make it unique. Because ancient civilizations continue to influence us today, and because I love history, I have devoted many posts to prehistory and ancient civilizations.

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