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August 5, 2019 by Kurt Buzard Leave a Comment

Death Valley Road Trip

Coso Mountain Range

Coso Mountain Range

I stumbled on a really great blog on places in and around Death Valley by a guy named Steve Hall, aptly named “Death Valley Adventures”. His blog is particularly great because there are few maps and/or information on most of the area surrounding Death Valley. It encouraged me to do a little exploring on my own. I decided to drive home from Los Angeles to Las Vegas on the Fourth of July through the Searles Valley, Panamint Valley, Death Valley to Furnace Creek Inn and then on home. These valleys are between the Argus, Slate, and Panamint Ranges which are oriented north-south, or toward the north-northwest. The El Paso Mountains, Spangler Hills, Straw Peak in the Slate Range, and Quail Mountains are oriented east-west, and the Owlshead Mountains are arranged in a semi-circular pattern south of the valleys. Aside from the geology, there are some interesting places to see along this little drive and of course some of our beautiful desert flora. Admittedly it extended the trip home by a few hours but the scenery was worth the lost time.

Keep on reading!

Filed Under: California, Las Vegas Tagged With: Argus Range, Ballarat, Blue Palo Verdes, Coso Range, Cottonwood Mountain Range, Creosote Bush, Death Valley, Desert Broom, Desert Holly, Desert Plume, Fish Head Rocks, Gambel’s Quail, Little Petroglyph Canyon, Mesquite Sand Dunes, Panamint Springs, Panamint Springs Resort, Panamint Valley, Poison Canyon, Redberry Desert-Thorn, Salt Wells Canyon, Searles Valley, Slate Mountain Range, Timbisha Shoshone, Townsend Pass, Trona, Water Jacket

December 29, 2018 by Kurt Buzard Leave a Comment

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 Leave a Comment

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

December 11, 2018 by Kurt Buzard Leave a Comment

Little Petroglyph Canyon Overview, China Lake, California

Coso Range at Little Petroglyph Canyon. China Lake, California

Coso Range at Little Petroglyph Canyon. China Lake, California

Since both the Little and Big Petroglyph Canyons are within the bounds of the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, thus limited for photography, I am including photographs of the surrounding area before delving into the petroglyphs. The southern part of the Coso range lies in the restricted Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake and the northern part of the range is designated as the Coso Range Wilderness. To visit Little Petroglyph Canyon, you need to go through the Maturango Museum which is located in Ridgecrest, California. To arrange a guided tour of the Coso Rock Art District located on China Lake Naval Weapons Station, you will need to call the museum to secure a reservation, pay a small fee and go through a written security questionnaire. No photography is allowed on the fairly long trip from the front gate until you reach the parking lot for the canyon. Since I believe you cannot properly appreciate the petroglyphs without the context of the surrounding area and cultures, I have decided to do a post on the canyon itself and the surrounding area.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Archaeology, California, Native Americas Cultures Tagged With: Argus Range, China Lake, Coso Range, Joshua Tree, Little Petroglyph Canyon, Maturango Museum, Mormon Tea, Native Americans, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Nevada Ephedra, Petroglyphs, Renegade Canyon, Ridgecrest, Rock Art, Rubber Rabbitbush, Tarantula Hawk Wasp

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