Ancient American Art

In which Moominmama seeks out ancient art and tries to puzzle out its meaning...

Moominmama first discovered what's called Barrier Canyon-style pictographs during a hike into Sego Canyon early this year. Sego Canyon is in Utah but not far from Grand Junction where she was staying and where a friend mentioned the panel. The photo below is from Sego Canyon.

Moominmama finds the images hypnotic and struggles to see into the minds of their creators. Since Sego Canyon, she has sought out other examples of the Barrier Canyon-style pictographs. And this fall, made a plan to get to the panels that gave this artwork its name.

Horseshoe Canyon is located in the most remote section of Canyonlands National Park and in the cooler seasons of spring and fall, a ranger-led hike sets out on most Saturdays. 

See, Horseshoe Canyon used to be known as Barrier Canyon - and that's how this era of pictograph got its name. Yesterday, Moominmama did that hike. 

There is very little known about this Archaic-period people and their art except that they were hunter-gatherers. Unlike the more recent Ancestral Puebloans, there are no remnants of homes or settlements, though items like stone flakes, likely from shaping points for weapons, have been found. And a few images of Barrier-Canyon-style art appear to include the archaic hunting weapon, the atlatl.

Efforts to date the images have come up with widely diverging calculations, because there's little to no organic material left to carbon date. The paint mix involves hematite with potential binders that now adhere to the rock much as desert varnish adheres to the cliffs around here. It is incredible durable.

Early estimates dated the pictographs from 1,000 to 4,000 years old. Then someone found a small animal hair, like from a paintbrush, trapped in the paint. That tested to almost 9,000 years old!

As a point of comparison, consider that the Egyptian pyramids were built in 2500-2600 BCE compared with this artwork which may have been created in 6700 BCE. Yet humans have been making art long before then -- the Lascaux cave paintings may be 20,000 years old or 15,000 BCE.

One of the first things that grabbed me about some of these images is the way they align with, and perhaps inspired, our ideas about aliens. It's not uncommon for "heads" to have antennae, or to have a 1960s robot look about them.

While there are many large dark (robed?) figures without legs or feet, other figures have short legs and feet at the bottom. Yet another figure appears to have wings dropping down from his shoulders (photo at the bottom of blogpost) and still others look like stick-figure people. 

If you look closely at the large, topmost picture, in the lower middle section are what look like two people facing each other, perhaps holding an upright spear between them, with a group of small animals to the left.

One of the things the ranger pointed out was the difference in sizes that may have been done to suggest some figures are farther in the distance. If that's true, this would be one of our earliest example of perspective in art!

While most of the artwork is in this deep red color, the Great Gallery actually features a few other colors and some incredible details. 

These wide figures have stripes and designs inside their outlines, including, in the central figure here a line of small green stripes with white dots on either side. To its left, the other figure has what looks like two animals facing each other, with lines and zigzags beneath. 

There are several panels of Barrier Canyon-style art in Horseshoe Canyon and most of these photos were taken from the famous "Great Gallery" but Moominmama also learned about a panel in the San Rafael Swell not far away, in Buckhorn Wash and visited there.

Photos here are a mix from Sego, Buckhorn and Horseshoe canyons. The photo below is one of the panels in Horseshoe Canyon, included to give you a sense of the scale and contours of the art gallery. Created along waterways and canyon intersections, these galleries were meant to be seen, and perhaps were also locations of religious ceremonies. We know so little, but what a fascinating puzzle.