Irresponsible actions at a site demonstrating great Rock Art which was relatively undamaged. More Awareness and Education programs are needed.
Mar. 25, 2010
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Paintball play damages petroglyphs, rocks near Laughlin
SPECIAL TO THE REVIEW-JOURNAL
Petroglyphs in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area that American Indians consider sacred have been damaged by youthful paintballers.
National Park Service spokesman Andrew Munoz said portions of four petroglyphs and rocks were colored with green and red paintball splatter last Friday at Grapevine Canyon, about two miles northeast of Laughlin.
Munoz said the site and the petroglyphs are culturally and spiritually important to the tribes of the Lower Colorado River. "It's like their Garden of Eden," he said.
"This area in particular is incredibly sensitive and sacred," said Rosie Pepito, chief of cultural resource management for the recreation area. "It's unimaginable to think of someone having a paintball fight in the Sistine Chapel, however, from the perspective of the local tribal members, that's what happened here."
Munoz said there has been some success in removing the color from the rocks , but that the oil-based paint has left its mark.
A citizen who spotted the paintball play in progress made a 911 call Friday that prompted a response by park rangers who encountered the shooters who had made it to the trailhead after leaving the site of the criminal damage. Munoz said the rangers confiscated two paintball weapons.
A 20-year-old Bullhead City man was cited for defacing and disturbing an archeological resource, using and discharging a weapon, littering and vandalism. Munoz said no determination has been made regarding citing or prosecuting a 13-year-old accomplice, also from Bullhead City.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Prosecution of Petroglyph Theft
Friday, February 12, 2010
INCIDENTS
Lake Mead National Recreation Area (AZ,NV)
NPS Assists Forest Service In Petroglyph Theft Case
A man has been indicted by a federal grand jury on felony charges that he unlawfully removed and damaged a large petroglyph from Forest Service lands in the Spring Mountains National Recreational Area near Pahrump, Nevada. Michael Cook, 57, of Pahrump, is charged with one count of violating the Archaeological Resources Protection Act. If convicted, Cook faces up to two years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He is charged under the felony provisions of the statute because the archeological resource is valued at more than $500. According to the indictment, between March and September 2008, Cook knowingly excavated, removed, damaged, and otherwise altered and defaced a large petroglyph depicting seven sheep from Spring Mountains NRA without a permit or exemption. Nye County Sheriff’s Department officials discovered the rock containing the petroglyph in Cook’s front yard in Pahrump on June 24, 2009, and reported it to the Forest Service. The rock weighed about 200 pounds. Cook was issued a summons and is scheduled for an initial appearance and arraignment on Friday, February 26th. This investigation is being conducted by the Forest Service, with the assistance of the law enforcement team of the Southern Nevada Agency Partnership (SNAP) which includes the Forest Service, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service (Lake Mead National Recreation Area), and the Bureau of Land Management. [Submitted by Andrew S. Muñoz, Public Affairs Officer]
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Nevada's Valley of Fire - Rock Art Resource
Valley of Fire is a very good resource for Native American Rock Art (or Rock Writing) and for photography. We can read about many threats of facility closures in today's economy, but if Nevada follows through on this possibility, we have lost a great resource. If you have interest and if you desire to visit the Park, you might want to do it soon.
The article from the Las Vegas Sun is below:
Would closing state parks to save money do more harm than good?
Cost-cutting move could devastate rural areas, critics say
Joe Elbert / Las Vegas Sun
Nina Kornblum and Alexander Kraft of Germany have their wedding day photographs taken Tuesday at Valley of Fire State Park, an hour north of Las Vegas. The state’s parks could close if a budget-cutting idea of state Sen. Steven Horsford is enacted by the Legislature.
By Stephanie Tavares (contact)
Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010 | 2 a.m.
The Nevada Legislature is thinking of closing state parks as it considers how to patch an estimated $900 million budget gap, a move that would save a few million dollars while killing the economies of rural towns and stunting tourism efforts across the state, opponents of the idea say.
Gov. Jim Gibbons has suggested a 10 percent budget reduction for a number of agencies, including the State Parks Division. But the Interim Finance Committee could take that a step further. At its meeting in Las Vegas on Thursday, the committee is expected to consider following the lead of cash-strapped states such as California and Arizona, that have closed some or all of their state parks.
In Nevada, the proposal is the brainchild of Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, who says he is considering shutting down all state parks to save money. He said teachers and other primary services are more important than recreation.
“It’s part of our quality of life, but the choice is between doing that or thousands of teachers laid off statewide, which is bad for education, bad for schools and bad for the economy,” he says. He estimated that about $8 million over the biennium could be saved. The parks division gets $5.3 million a year from the general fund.
Conservationists, outdoor enthusiasts, parks experts and the governor all consider park closures unnecessary. Gibbons figures the cuts can and should come from elsewhere.
“The governor believes parks play an important role in life in Nevada and they’re huge tourist attractions,” Gibbons’ spokesman Dan Burns says. “His highest priorities are getting more tourists and making jobs, and the governor would not be in favor of closing tourist attractions.”
The Nevada Conservation League and other environmental groups worry that endangered species will be lost, parks will be trashed and that the closures could worsen quality of life for the stressed-out populace.
“You have record unemployment and foreclosure in Nevada and you’re talking about taking away places where folks can go to get away from stress in their daily lives,” National Association of State Park Directors Executive Director Phillip McKnelly says. “You look at all the impacts and you’ll see this is one of the worst possible times to close parks.”
In Nevada, such closures would particularly hurt rural towns near state parks and slow Las Vegas’ budding eco-tourism efforts, parks experts warn. States that have closed state or national parks in the past say it had huge economic consequences for rural communities. Closures also leave cultural and historical sites and artifacts vulnerable to theft and vandalism and strain law enforcement agencies.
Horsford said that parks that are “entirely fee supported” could be excluded from his plan. He said there are two such parks but did not identify them.
The two most popular parks are Valley of Fire State Park, an hour north of Las Vegas near Overton, and Lake Tahoe-Nevada State Park, in Northern Nevada. Both are net earners — but they’re not “entirely fee-supported,” parks experts say.
Those two parks do, however, have significant economic effects on surrounding communities.
Valley of Fire, famous for its Native American petroglyphs and dramatic scenery, is a large tourism draw. About 65 percent of its visitors are from other states or countries. Many stay in the Las Vegas Valley and visit the park on tours. It’s also one of the state’s most popular wedding sites as well as for filming commercials and movies, Nevada State Parks Division Administrator David Morrow says. He estimates private Nevada companies generate about $9 million from activities in Valley of Fire.
Laughlin recently passed a bond measure to improve the campground at its nearby state park, Big Bend. The park is popular with RV-driving snowbirds who often spend part or all of winter living in the park, enjoying the relatively warm weather along with nearby casinos.
The bond financing would have to be repaid, whether the park stays open or not.
“If you close the parks, not only do you take the visitor economy away, you affect private businesses over all of Southern Nevada,” Morrow says.
That’s one of the reasons why experts argue that closing parks would be a money-loser for the state.
Though most parks don’t make a net profit, they have profound effects on the economies of rural communities. A 2003 state-sponsored study found that Nevada’s state parks generate about $62 million in income for the state, both from fees or through visitor spending in nearby towns.
That’s a great return on the $5.3 million the state sends from the general fund each year, Morrow says.
If the governor’s proposed 10 percent budget cut is enacted, Morrow will have seen his budget slashed by about 45 percent in the past four years. Yet the parks remain open and visitation is up. Nevada parks now get more than 3 million total visitors each year, he says.
And visitors pay not just for access to the parks, but also for guided tours, gasoline, rental cars, hotels, meals and souvenirs, says Daniel McLean, the Southern Nevada vice president of the state’s Recreation and Parks Society, also a recreation and sports management professor at UNLV.
“The impact is the same in most park systems across the country,” McLean says. “For every dollar spent on that park, that dollar goes back into the economy multiple times. It can generate 15 to 20 dollars for the local economy. You take that out of rural areas and you’ve got a significant impact.”
Just ask Arizona.
The state has a history of devastating park closures. In 1996, national parks across the country were temporarily shuttered due to economic distress. The state kept Grand Canyon National Park open though, because Arizona concluded that even a temporary closure of that park would devastate the state’s tourism industry.
A 1997 federal study on the economic effect of the closures found it had wiped out small towns.
Still, Arizona’s parks board recently closed eight parks, most of them in disrepair after years of deferred maintenance, agency Executive Director Renee Bahl says. Thirteen more parks will be closed by June, and the nine left will only stay open if the board can raise $3 million this year to pay for them.
That has caused Arizona’s state park fees to skyrocket, increasing from 20 percent to 100 percent.
Meanwhile, rural towns near closed and closing parks are facing economic calamity. With the recession, income from parks visitors was a growth area for rural towns as urban families sought low-cost, short-travel vacations.
A plan to close state parks in California causes so much contention there that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger spiked the proposal and guaranteed the parks department baseline funding indefinitely. His state parks department took a one-time $14 million budget hit this year, plus mandated state employee furloughs. That forced parks to reduce hours and maintenance but they remain open.
States nationwide are scrambling to get their parks off the government dole, McKnelly says. Idaho tried to push its state parks off onto its counties and is now talking about turning them over to a landholding agency. Arizona is trying to get a ballot measure passed to add a $9 charge to each vehicle registration fee to fund parks. Montana and Washington do something similar to that. Oregon and Colorado get funding from the state-sponsored lottery. Arkansas and Missouri have a sales tax that goes to parks, and Florida and North Carolina parks get money from a land transfer tax.
“Every state parks director in the nation is looking at alternative funding,” McLean said. “The challenge here is finding alternative revenue sources that are palatable to politicians and to the public. Everybody is clamoring for additional funding sources right now.”
There’s also the issue of losing the investment poured into these parks over the past 75 years, experts warn. No state has ever closed an entire parks system, Bahl says, and in Arizona, they’re having a hard time figuring out how to preserve historic sites, artifacts and critical habitat in parks with no staff.
Nevada parks are filled with priceless historic artifacts, buildings and petroglyphs and countless endangered species, and the park system’s infrastructure alone is worth about $164 million.
Padlocking the gates and walking away isn’t going to protect all that.
A leak in one roof could eventually destroy an entire building, abandoned trails can cause erosion and water pollution in nearby streams. Most parks, including the Valley of Fire, can’t be fenced in, providing easy access for vandals, thieves, poachers and meth-heads putting everything from buildings to archeological artifacts in danger.
A closure of even one year could cause a park to degrade so much that it would take years and millions more dollars to recover — and that’s just the stuff you can replace, parks experts note.
“We protect and preserve some of the state’s most important cultural, historic and recreational resources,” Morrow says. “There’s no way to replace those things if they’re lost or destroyed. For a very small amount of money, in terms of general fund contributions, the state gets a huge economic return ... For 75 years we’ve preserved and taken care of these places and you’re tossing that out the window if you close them.”
Sun reporter David McGrath Schwartz contributed to this story from Carson City.
Nevada Public Lands Possible Protection
The protection of the Heart of Great Basin and Owyhee Desert may be good for the citizens of the US. But we should be told truthful information about the project in a timely manner, such as they are doing on Tule Springs.
Feb. 16, 2010
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Heller concerned over memo on national monuments
Heller says Interior Department bypassing public
By KEITH ROGERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Rep. Dean Heller says he is worried about an Interior Department memo that calls for carving two national monuments out of parts of central and Northern Nevada to protect American Indian cultural sites and habitat for sensitive wildlife.
"The fact that this administration is already circulating internal memos to bypass Congress and the public process is troubling," Heller, R-Nev., said in a news release Tuesday. "There should never be a rush to develop proposals that will have long lasting impacts on the local communities."
Two undated entries from the memo list Heart of the Great Basin with ranges in Nye County and Owyhee Desert in Nevada and Oregon as areas the Interior Department is considering for designation as national monuments.
The Heart of the Great Basin contains "a globally unique assemblage of cultural, wildlife and historical values. ... Thousands of petroglyphs and stone artifacts provide insight to the area's inhabitants from as long as 12,000 years ago," one entry reads. The area contains creeks, aspen groves and habitat for sage grouse and pika, an alpine rodent.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that populations of American pika were most at risk in Nevada, citing global warming as the primary threat to the species. Nevertheless, the wildlife service decided not to list the pika for Endangered Species Act protection because the rabbitlike animal isn't in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future. Pika populations are found in nine other Western states.
The second entry describes Owyhee Desert as an unprotected region in Oregon and Nevada that is "home to the world's largest herd of California bighorn sheep, elk, deer, cougar, redband trout, sage grouse and raptors."
"The Owyhee Desert is one of the most remote areas in the continental United States, characterized by juniper covered deserts, natural arches, mountains and ancient lava flows. The many branching forks of the Owyhee River form deep, sheer-walled canyons between desert wilderness and entice river runners from around the nation," the memo reads.
Lynn Davis, manager of a conservation group advocating creation of a fossil beds national monument near Tule Springs in the northern Las Vegas Valley, said her organization was "completely unaware of these two areas being considered for any protective status."
In contrast, the Tule Springs area "has been going through a very public, very open process to examine it with community support as a national monument," said Davis, program manager for the Nevada Field Office of the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association.
A call to an Interior Department spokesman regarding the memo was not immediately returned late Tuesday.
Feb. 16, 2010
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Heller concerned over memo on national monuments
Heller says Interior Department bypassing public
By KEITH ROGERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Rep. Dean Heller says he is worried about an Interior Department memo that calls for carving two national monuments out of parts of central and Northern Nevada to protect American Indian cultural sites and habitat for sensitive wildlife.
"The fact that this administration is already circulating internal memos to bypass Congress and the public process is troubling," Heller, R-Nev., said in a news release Tuesday. "There should never be a rush to develop proposals that will have long lasting impacts on the local communities."
Two undated entries from the memo list Heart of the Great Basin with ranges in Nye County and Owyhee Desert in Nevada and Oregon as areas the Interior Department is considering for designation as national monuments.
The Heart of the Great Basin contains "a globally unique assemblage of cultural, wildlife and historical values. ... Thousands of petroglyphs and stone artifacts provide insight to the area's inhabitants from as long as 12,000 years ago," one entry reads. The area contains creeks, aspen groves and habitat for sage grouse and pika, an alpine rodent.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that populations of American pika were most at risk in Nevada, citing global warming as the primary threat to the species. Nevertheless, the wildlife service decided not to list the pika for Endangered Species Act protection because the rabbitlike animal isn't in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future. Pika populations are found in nine other Western states.
The second entry describes Owyhee Desert as an unprotected region in Oregon and Nevada that is "home to the world's largest herd of California bighorn sheep, elk, deer, cougar, redband trout, sage grouse and raptors."
"The Owyhee Desert is one of the most remote areas in the continental United States, characterized by juniper covered deserts, natural arches, mountains and ancient lava flows. The many branching forks of the Owyhee River form deep, sheer-walled canyons between desert wilderness and entice river runners from around the nation," the memo reads.
Lynn Davis, manager of a conservation group advocating creation of a fossil beds national monument near Tule Springs in the northern Las Vegas Valley, said her organization was "completely unaware of these two areas being considered for any protective status."
In contrast, the Tule Springs area "has been going through a very public, very open process to examine it with community support as a national monument," said Davis, program manager for the Nevada Field Office of the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association.
A call to an Interior Department spokesman regarding the memo was not immediately returned late Tuesday.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Reported Rock Art Damage in Libya
A member of the Coalition to Preserve Rock Art regularly visits the major Rock Art sites in Libya (he and his wife live in Germany). We sometimes tend to focus on damage in North America, but these photos might interest you. The damage was reportedly done by a driver / guide who had recently been fired by his company. He was apprehended but the damage is probably not repairable.
I was impressed by the quality of the Rock Art and disturbed by the damage. Note the pictures attached.
If you have any comments please advise at exploringrockart@gmail.com.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Nine-Mile Canyon Deseret News Summary
Note the second part is much more acceptable than the first part.
Many Rock Art advocates in Utah have followed this story, so the summary is for those who have not heard of the situation, primarily those who reside outside Utah.
On January 7, 2010, Deseret News, a Salt Lake City publication, printed the following editorial:
Ancient sketches graffiti or art?
By Lee Benson Deseret News Published: Thursday, Jan. 7, 2010 11:57 p.m. MST
News flash from Nine Mile Canyon: A team of archaeologists and linguists have finally — after years of painstaking study and, coincidentally, on the eve of their multi-million-dollar government grant running out — successfully translated a key pictograph known as the Great Hunt Panel in what has been called America's longest and oldest art gallery.
What was long thought to be drawings of bighorn sheep and human hunters holding bows and arrows actually translates in English to: ANYONE CAUGHT DRAWING ON THESE ROCKS WILL BE FINED.
It turns out, according to this translation, that the Anasazi, Fremont and, later, the Ute Indians that inhabited Nine Mile Canyon long before it was known as Nine Mile Canyon had a problem doodling on their beautiful surroundings. This prompted their chiefs and the environmentalists among them to draw the line, as it were.
Another pictograph nearby translates to: RESPECT WHERE YOU LIVE, AND WHERE YOU LIVE WILL RESPECT YOU!
I'm making all this up, of course, but the announcement this week from the State Capitol of an agreement hammered out after months and years of discussion among numerous public and private agencies, including apparently everyone but the BCS, which protects the rock artwork in Nine Mile Canyon from natural gas developers gave me pause when I saw some photos of the endangered rock artwork.
What's the big deal? I found myself thinking. If any of this gets lost we can put some third graders to work on nearby unmarked rocks.
I am aware that such thinking constitutes blasphemy among lovers of ancient Indian pictographs, so let me quickly apologize to them for not seeing what they are seeing and not appreciating what they are appreciating.
But I am only being honest here. I am one of the worst artists in the world and I could draw sheep on roller skates and men with no necks as well as the ones on those rocks. Maybe better.
If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I am not beholding beauty. C.M. Russell did not do this.
This isn't to suggest the images shouldn't be protected. Age deserves its deference. There is a point when one man's graffiti becomes another man's historic marker.
Although there is also no doubt that timing is everything. Carve your initials or scratch out a drawing tomorrow in the rocks in Nine Mile Canyon, or anywhere on public land for that matter, and you're going to jail.
But 200 years from now, no matter if you carved "Go Lakers!" it will be a national treasure.
Just what would the Fremonts, Anasazis or ancient Utes who did the drawings in Nine Mile Canyon have to say on the subject if they were still among us and had been invited to attend the big announcement at the State Capitol?
I'm saying it's highly possible that they would be trying hard to keep a straight face while poking each other in the ribs.
Anasazi 1 to Fremont 2: "I did that one while I was drunk."
Fremont 3 to Anasazi 4: "I got grounded three moons for that one."
Ute 1 to Ute 2: "That doesn't even look like a bighorn."
Wise old Anasazi (I know, that's redundant) environmentalist (wearing horrified look): "We tried our darndest to leave no trace and they're remembering us for this!?"
Ute 3 to Ute 4: "You mean to tell me that this natural gas you speak of was right below our feet and we could have used it to cook all our meals and heat all our abodes and never have had to gather firewood? AYEEEEE!"
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the art gallery that is Nine Mile Canyon was the ancients' equivalent of the Louvre.
Or maybe it was the reason they left.
This editorial received many complaint letters, some of them can not be repeated here.
However, the Deseret News author issued another group of comments, reprinted below:
To the Ute Indian Tribe Historical Society; the Utah Rock Art Research Association; Forrest Cuch, executive director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs; my friend Tom Lovell; and all others who know way more about American Indians and ancient drawings than I do:
I am sorry for offending you.
Please accept my apology.
In an attempt at levity — and, OK, a poke at extreme environmentalists — in a recent column about the crusade to protect the rock art in Utah's Nine Mile Canyon from energy developers, I suggested that to my untrained eye the drawings look like stick figures a grade-schooler could duplicate.
Then I went on to imagine the possibility that ancient American Indians were perhaps just horsing around all those generations ago when they wrote on the rocks, not unlike modern graffiti artists, and they would be surprised to find them so revered today.
It turns out my eye is as untrained as a rock.
To quote from a letter written to the Deseret News by Stephen L. Robinson, president of the board of directors of the Utah Rock Art Research Association:
"The level of respect for, and understanding of, rock art reflected in this column is very unfortunate. We strongly object to the demeaning, disparaging and disrespectful tone of this article. We are deeply offended. It does considerable harm to the work we do in encouraging people to respect and preserve this irreplaceable evidence of ancient cultures. We do not speak for the Native Americans in our state, but are confident they are offended also."
He's right about that.
This is from a letter written by Larry Cesspooch (Whitebelly) of the Ute Indian Tribe Historical Society:
"Shame on you Lee Benson, for your ignorance. The writings in Nine Mile Canyon are our sacred history. It's people like you who have made respect and appreciation of the rock writings in Nine Mile Canyon a straight-up battle."
He goes on to add: "The writings weren't put there as art, but as messages. That's where things get misunderstood — calling the messages art. The so-called "hunting scene" in Nine Mile Canyon depicts a historic battle, not a hunt. All the animals depict people."
An archaeologist named Garth Norman e-mailed yet more elucidation:
"Technically it is neither graffiti nor art. It is writing. You really ought to get informed on this subject before making outlandish statements that are insulting to both the Indians and scholars. You might want to redeem yourself in your next article. I could send you my interpretation of the hunting panel in Nine Mile you refer to, which is a calendar shadow station that marks the spring equinox ritual for big horn sheep migration hunt."
Who knew?
Well, who didn't know besides me?
From now on, I'm going to try and stick to making fun of things I sort of understand — like Republicans and Democrats and James Cameron movies.
And over-the-top environmentalists, if only because it's so easy to pick on the hypocrisy of people who drive their gas-powered cars on paved highways to protest drilling for gas on unpaved highways.
That was my target with the Nine Mile rock art column. But I missed. I missed badly and, instead, scored a direct hit on a past and a culture standing innocently off to the side.
Sacred history should be respected even by the ignorant, which in this case is me.
Many Rock Art advocates in Utah have followed this story, so the summary is for those who have not heard of the situation, primarily those who reside outside Utah.
On January 7, 2010, Deseret News, a Salt Lake City publication, printed the following editorial:
Ancient sketches graffiti or art?
By Lee Benson Deseret News Published: Thursday, Jan. 7, 2010 11:57 p.m. MST
News flash from Nine Mile Canyon: A team of archaeologists and linguists have finally — after years of painstaking study and, coincidentally, on the eve of their multi-million-dollar government grant running out — successfully translated a key pictograph known as the Great Hunt Panel in what has been called America's longest and oldest art gallery.
What was long thought to be drawings of bighorn sheep and human hunters holding bows and arrows actually translates in English to: ANYONE CAUGHT DRAWING ON THESE ROCKS WILL BE FINED.
It turns out, according to this translation, that the Anasazi, Fremont and, later, the Ute Indians that inhabited Nine Mile Canyon long before it was known as Nine Mile Canyon had a problem doodling on their beautiful surroundings. This prompted their chiefs and the environmentalists among them to draw the line, as it were.
Another pictograph nearby translates to: RESPECT WHERE YOU LIVE, AND WHERE YOU LIVE WILL RESPECT YOU!
I'm making all this up, of course, but the announcement this week from the State Capitol of an agreement hammered out after months and years of discussion among numerous public and private agencies, including apparently everyone but the BCS, which protects the rock artwork in Nine Mile Canyon from natural gas developers gave me pause when I saw some photos of the endangered rock artwork.
What's the big deal? I found myself thinking. If any of this gets lost we can put some third graders to work on nearby unmarked rocks.
I am aware that such thinking constitutes blasphemy among lovers of ancient Indian pictographs, so let me quickly apologize to them for not seeing what they are seeing and not appreciating what they are appreciating.
But I am only being honest here. I am one of the worst artists in the world and I could draw sheep on roller skates and men with no necks as well as the ones on those rocks. Maybe better.
If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I am not beholding beauty. C.M. Russell did not do this.
This isn't to suggest the images shouldn't be protected. Age deserves its deference. There is a point when one man's graffiti becomes another man's historic marker.
Although there is also no doubt that timing is everything. Carve your initials or scratch out a drawing tomorrow in the rocks in Nine Mile Canyon, or anywhere on public land for that matter, and you're going to jail.
But 200 years from now, no matter if you carved "Go Lakers!" it will be a national treasure.
Just what would the Fremonts, Anasazis or ancient Utes who did the drawings in Nine Mile Canyon have to say on the subject if they were still among us and had been invited to attend the big announcement at the State Capitol?
I'm saying it's highly possible that they would be trying hard to keep a straight face while poking each other in the ribs.
Anasazi 1 to Fremont 2: "I did that one while I was drunk."
Fremont 3 to Anasazi 4: "I got grounded three moons for that one."
Ute 1 to Ute 2: "That doesn't even look like a bighorn."
Wise old Anasazi (I know, that's redundant) environmentalist (wearing horrified look): "We tried our darndest to leave no trace and they're remembering us for this!?"
Ute 3 to Ute 4: "You mean to tell me that this natural gas you speak of was right below our feet and we could have used it to cook all our meals and heat all our abodes and never have had to gather firewood? AYEEEEE!"
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the art gallery that is Nine Mile Canyon was the ancients' equivalent of the Louvre.
Or maybe it was the reason they left.
This editorial received many complaint letters, some of them can not be repeated here.
However, the Deseret News author issued another group of comments, reprinted below:
To the Ute Indian Tribe Historical Society; the Utah Rock Art Research Association; Forrest Cuch, executive director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs; my friend Tom Lovell; and all others who know way more about American Indians and ancient drawings than I do:
I am sorry for offending you.
Please accept my apology.
In an attempt at levity — and, OK, a poke at extreme environmentalists — in a recent column about the crusade to protect the rock art in Utah's Nine Mile Canyon from energy developers, I suggested that to my untrained eye the drawings look like stick figures a grade-schooler could duplicate.
Then I went on to imagine the possibility that ancient American Indians were perhaps just horsing around all those generations ago when they wrote on the rocks, not unlike modern graffiti artists, and they would be surprised to find them so revered today.
It turns out my eye is as untrained as a rock.
To quote from a letter written to the Deseret News by Stephen L. Robinson, president of the board of directors of the Utah Rock Art Research Association:
"The level of respect for, and understanding of, rock art reflected in this column is very unfortunate. We strongly object to the demeaning, disparaging and disrespectful tone of this article. We are deeply offended. It does considerable harm to the work we do in encouraging people to respect and preserve this irreplaceable evidence of ancient cultures. We do not speak for the Native Americans in our state, but are confident they are offended also."
He's right about that.
This is from a letter written by Larry Cesspooch (Whitebelly) of the Ute Indian Tribe Historical Society:
"Shame on you Lee Benson, for your ignorance. The writings in Nine Mile Canyon are our sacred history. It's people like you who have made respect and appreciation of the rock writings in Nine Mile Canyon a straight-up battle."
He goes on to add: "The writings weren't put there as art, but as messages. That's where things get misunderstood — calling the messages art. The so-called "hunting scene" in Nine Mile Canyon depicts a historic battle, not a hunt. All the animals depict people."
An archaeologist named Garth Norman e-mailed yet more elucidation:
"Technically it is neither graffiti nor art. It is writing. You really ought to get informed on this subject before making outlandish statements that are insulting to both the Indians and scholars. You might want to redeem yourself in your next article. I could send you my interpretation of the hunting panel in Nine Mile you refer to, which is a calendar shadow station that marks the spring equinox ritual for big horn sheep migration hunt."
Who knew?
Well, who didn't know besides me?
From now on, I'm going to try and stick to making fun of things I sort of understand — like Republicans and Democrats and James Cameron movies.
And over-the-top environmentalists, if only because it's so easy to pick on the hypocrisy of people who drive their gas-powered cars on paved highways to protest drilling for gas on unpaved highways.
That was my target with the Nine Mile rock art column. But I missed. I missed badly and, instead, scored a direct hit on a past and a culture standing innocently off to the side.
Sacred history should be respected even by the ignorant, which in this case is me.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Report on Mud Wash Damage - nothing to report
Interesting -
We have heard from local members expressing concern
We have heard from non-members from Mesquite, Nev., Colorado, and Washington.
BUT WE HAVE NOT HEARD from the BLM. Do they care? Are they really protecting our cultural assets or just giving lip service?
Tell us your experiences with subjects like this and the BLM. Does the response vary from office-to-office or are all offices terrible in trying to accept help? I will try to communicate with Nevada enforcement and see if we can get some help.
We have heard from local members expressing concern
We have heard from non-members from Mesquite, Nev., Colorado, and Washington.
BUT WE HAVE NOT HEARD from the BLM. Do they care? Are they really protecting our cultural assets or just giving lip service?
Tell us your experiences with subjects like this and the BLM. Does the response vary from office-to-office or are all offices terrible in trying to accept help? I will try to communicate with Nevada enforcement and see if we can get some help.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Damage at Mud Wash, Gold Butte, Nevada
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The following was submitted to the Las Vegas BLM office today:
COALITION TO PRESERVE ROCK ART
To: BLM, Las Vegas Office, Nevada November 22, 2008
This brief report is provided for your review.
The Mud Wash Panel located in the Gold Butte area of Southern Nevada is a very nice panel located high on a bluff. It is hard to see how somebody might have gotten close to the petroglyph panel, but they did.
This is a photograph of the panel in 2008:
A picture taken on November 8, 2009 shows a big white marking that was not there previously. The questions that we all ask are:
How did the white marking get there?
Who did it and why?
It is a surprise to see damage to a panel this high but we felt that it should be reported. Your local site steward may have already reported the damage.
We trust that you are as concerned about damage such as this and share the common interest of preservation as the Coalition to Preserve Rock Art does.
We would appreciate your response that:
a: You received this report and either plan to take action or do not plan to do so.
b: The damage has been reported to Nevada BLM Law Enforcement
c: We also want to provide information to our membership on the progress of the investigation, so we would appreciate information from you regarding same.
It is evident that when the BLM and organizations such as the Coalition to Preserve Rock Art work together, we can be more effective, so we appreciate your support and involvement.
If you want any additional information, please contact us at exploringrockart@gmail.com or Jon Gum at 435-627-1086.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Petroglyph National Park
Article includes a couple of comments regarding damage by humans.
Posted on Sun, Feb. 15, 2009
New Mexico's Petroglyph National Monument showcases more than 20,000 remarkable images from the past
Special to the Star-Telegram
Related Content
The petroglyphs have survived hundreds and, in some cases, possibly thousands, of years. But spray-paint 'tagging’ and gunfire have taken a toll. Special to the Star-Telegram/Ed Timms
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ALBUQUERQUE — Suburbia is on one side of the street, traces of an ancient people on the other.
But it’s easy to forget the 21st century within Petroglyph National Monument, which is home to more than 20,000 images pecked into dark boulders by the ancient ancestors of today’s American Indians, Spanish settlers and later visitors.
Trails wind through desert scrub and the remnants of massive lava flows. And seemingly every few feet, there are remarkable images and symbols chiseled into dark basalt boulders.
As the sun rises and sets, the boulders are cast in different hues, from chocolate brown to reddish orange. Light and shadow play tricks with the petroglyphs; walk along the same trail twice and you’re likely to see images that you missed before.
Diane Souder, chief of interpretation and outreach at the monument, recalls telling one visitor about the more than 3,000 petroglyphs in its Rinconada Canyon section.
"He came back and said, 'I only saw 728,’ " she said. "The reality is, the Pueblo people say the images choose when, and to whom, to reveal themselves. Sometimes you walk right by them."
Some of the images are easy to identify: handprints and footprints, birds, deer and snakes. Others appear to morph different animals together, or humans and animals.
There are images that appear to be masks or tribal clan symbols. And the meaning of some images is lost to time.
Although some of the petroglyphs may be much older, archaeologists believe that most were created from the 1300s into the 1600s. The Rio Grande is not far away, and a prolonged drought may have encouraged migration into the region.
Some people may confuse petroglyphs, which are images or designs that are pecked, chiseled or carved into rock surfaces, with pictographs, which are images or designs that are painted onto rock surfaces.
Spanish colonists later added their own symbols, including Christian crosses, livestock brands and images of sheep. With a little imagination, it’s not hard to visualize a bored shepherd passing the time by leaving his mark on the rocks.
It took geology a long time to create a rock surface ideal for petroglyphs, beginning with a series of volcanic eruptions about 150,000 years ago.
Rangers at the monument explain that the lava flowed through old arroyos and around hills, and then hardened. Over time, the hills and walls of the arroyos eroded, and the old lava flows became the dominant topography. And as the soil under the lava flows eroded, large basalt boulders began to break away.
Exposure to the elements darkened the surface of the boulders. That created a blank canvas of sorts for an ancient people, who discovered that pecking it away with a rock revealed the lighter-colored surface underneath. With successive generations, the number and variety of petroglyphs grew into a remarkable outdoor gallery of images that reflected their spirituality and creativity.
Others have added less welcome marks. Some of the petroglyphs are pocked by gunfire. And "taggers" occasionally have spray-painted scrawls on some of the boulders, which at least can be cleaned.
Despite the proximity to suburbia, Petroglyph National Monument remains a desert environment.
The trail in Rinconada Canyon, for example, passes through classic desert scrub: sage, saltbush, cactuses, snakeweed and other desert plants.
A roadrunner or jackrabbit may dart from the brush. A hint of movement behind distant sagebrush may be a furtive coyote. Hawks and vultures ride the air currents overhead. And in warmer, wetter months, millipedes are a common sight.
Rattlesnakes may rarely be seen, but they’re at home amid the boulders, another good reason to honor the park rangers’ admonition to stay on the trails.
There are other sites in relative proximity for North Texans to visit as well: A variety of pictographs have been discovered in Big Bend Ranch State Park, southeast of Presidio; Hueco Tanks State Historic Site, 32 miles northeast of El Paso, features pictographs and petroglyphs of human and animal figures and more than 200 face designs or masks; and more than 21,000 petroglyphs are carved into rocks across 50 acres at Three Rivers Petroglyph Site in southern New Mexico.
If you go
What you see: Petroglyph National Monument features more than 20,000 images and symbols pecked into the basalt boulders of ancient lava flows. Most were created 400 to 700 years ago by Ancestral Puebloans, ancestors of modern Pueblo Indians and other American Indians, but some of the images may be 2,000 to 3,000 years old. The monument is jointly operated by the National Park Service and the city of Albuquerque.
What you see: Petroglyph National Monument features more than 20,000 images and symbols pecked into the basalt boulders of ancient lava flows. Most were created 400 to 700 years ago by Ancestral Puebloans, ancestors of modern Pueblo Indians and other American Indians, but some of the images may be 2,000 to 3,000 years old. The monument is jointly operated by the National Park Service and the city of Albuquerque.
Getting there: Petroglyph National Monument is on the west side of Albuquerque. From Interstate 40, take the Unser Boulevard exit (154) and drive north three miles to Western Trail. Turn west onto Western Trail and follow the road to the visitor center.
Areas to visit:
Rinconada Canyon: More than 3,000 petroglyphs have been pecked into basalt boulders in the canyon. Visitors can view the petroglyphs from a dirt trail that goes to the head of the canyon and back. Southwest of the visitor center.
Boca Negra Canyon: The most frequently visited portion of the monument, it features a variety of petroglyphs along three relatively short trails. Boca Negra overlooks a residential neighborhood. Northeast of the visitor center.
Piedras Marcadas Canyon: An undeveloped trail takes visitors along the base of a basalt escarpment and many petroglyphs. Development has almost surrounded this section of the monument, but it still has the feel of a remote desert. At the northern end of the monument.
Volcanoes Day Use Area: Hikers can see extinct volcanoes close up and get great views of the Rio Grande Valley, Albuquerque and the Sandia Mountains. On the monument’s western edge.
Admission: The fee for parking at Boca Negra Canyon, charged by the city of Albuquerque, is $1 on weekdays and $2 on weekends. National Park Service passes are honored.
Hours: Hours are not restricted on most of the trails within the monument, although gates to the parking areas may be closed. The visitor center and Boca Negra Canyon are open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed on New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. The visitor center typically closes at 2 p.m. the day before Thanksgiving and on Christmas Eve.
For more info: Call park information: 505-899-0205, ext. 331, or visit www.nps.gov/petr.
Sources: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service
Chaco Canyon - Anasazi and Sinagua
And extremely interesting and werll written article from Gambler's World
Aftermath: Sinagua
February 12, 2009 by teofilo
Peñasco Blanco Framing Huerfano Mesa
One piece of data that sometimes gets mentioned in support of more hierarchical models of Chacoan social organization is the diversity of sizes found among Chacoan great houses both inside and outside the canyon. The idea behind this argument is that the great houses fall into a few rough groups based on size, with the number of great houses increasing as the size decreases, which suggests that they were all organized into a coherent, hierarchical system with the largest ones (mostly in the canyon) at the top and the others playing subordinate roles. One conclusion that follows from this interpretation is that the entire Chacoan system was a single highly organized polity with a central leadership at Chaco. Given this type of organization, it is natural to further conclude that that central leadership was composed of a socioeconomic elite with political power over the other people in the system.
While I’m by no means opposed in principle to the idea of a hierarchical Chaco, I’ve never found this particular argument for it very convincing. A hierarchical social system is certainly one possible source for a hierarchical settlement pattern, but it’s by no means the only one; I can think of several other possible ways such a pattern could emerge just off the top of my head. Recent scholarship on Chaco, in fact, has largely turned away from the idea of Chaco as a single, centralized polity, with the idea of a collection of loosely connected separate polities being more popular now and supported by a variety of lines of evidence (some more convincing than others). Even within this trend toward decentralized interpretations there are varying opinions about social hierarchy, which is actually a separate issue that is often conflated with centralization. I’ll have more to say on that in later posts. Here, my main concern is with the idea that settlement hierarchies serve as evidence for social stratification and regional integration.
Casa Chiquita
Chaco is not the only part of the ancient southwest where this argument has been used. Another, the subject of Peter Pilles’s chapter 5 of The Prehistoric Pueblo World, is the Sinagua, who occupied the area that is now north-central Arizona around the modern towns of Flagstaff, Sedona, and Camp Verde. While Pilles stops short of actually endorsing the argument that Sinagua settlement patterns indicate social hierarchy, he does discuss it at the end of the chapter. First, however, he gives a useful overview of Sinagua settlement patterns, focusing on the period that is the main focus of the book as a whole, the “Pueblo III” period from approximately 1150 through 1350.
As Pilles points out at the beginning of the chapter, however, Sinagua archaeology tends to use a different system of chronology from the Pecos system in which “Pueblo III” covers this period. Sinagua archaeology is distinctive in several ways from the traditional approach used in the Anasazi area, both because of clear cultural differences between the Sinagua and the Anasazi and because of the pivotal role played by the Museum of Northern Arizona in early research on the Sinagua. (MNA was, and remains, active in Anasazi research as well, particularly in the Kayenta area, but other institutions have always been prominent in Anasazi studies as well and it never played the dominant role there that it has for the Sinagua.) As a result, Sinagua chronology is based on a system of “phases” which correspond only roughly to the “periods” of the Pecos system.
Vent at Hungo Pavi
To make things even more complicated, there are actually two series of Sinagua phases, one for each of the major regional areas of Sinagua settlement. The northern area, encompassing the Flagstaff, Wupatki, and Anderson Mesa subareas, has one series of phases, while the rather different southern area, basically the Verde Valley and the nearby uplands and tributaries of the Verde River, has another. The northern Elden and Turkey Hill phases correspond roughly to Pueblo III, as does the southern Honanki phase.
In addition, chronology in the Sinagua region is considerably cruder than in the various Anasazi regions. The main reasons for this are a relatively small amount of excavation, resulting in few tree-ring dates, and the inconvenient fact that Sinagua pottery shows little variation over time, meaning that, unlike in the Anasazi case, pottery assemblages are of limited usefulness in making chronological placements of unexcavated sites. The main tool for such placement is, therefore, Anasazi pottery imported into Sinagua sites. Since this is not always present in large enough numbers for reliable sampling, Sinagua sites cannot always be dated at all, and even when they can be the chronological control is pretty crude by Anasazi standards. This leads to some problems, as we will see when we return below to the settlement hierarchy question.
Drainage Path over Slickrock
The name “Sinagua” comes from the Spanish for “without water,” originally applied to the San Francisco Peaks, which the early Spanish explorers found surprisingly dry for such large mountains. This is indeed a dry area, so water sources were always a key factor in settlement patterns. In the northern Sinagua area, the main water sources were isolated springs, while in the south the permanently flowing Verde River was the main source. This resulted in very different patterns of settlement locations in the two areas. In general, northern sites (or clusters of sites) were more isolated from each other, while southern sites were lined up in a row along the river, though the specifics varied over time.
The main reason for that variation also seems to have been water-related. The amount of moisture available varied over time, and in wetter times people expanded into areas that had been too unproductive to farm during dry years, only to retreat back to better-watered areas when the dry years returned. This pattern is visible all over the southwest over the course of the centuries, although from the way Pilles tells it the Sinagua area seems to have been oddly out of sync with other regions. In most of the southwest the wettest time was the Pueblo II period, from roughly 900 through 1150, and this is when most of the Anasazi regions saw their greatest extension (most notably, but by no means only, the Chaco Phenomenon). For the Sinagua, however, this seems to have been a relatively dry period and a time of settlement locations in areas with more reliable water supplies. In the north, this meant the higher elevations near the Peaks, while in the south it meant lowland locations closer to the river. A pattern of small sites surrounding a larger site seems to be present at this time in both areas, and these apparent communities often had either a large communal pithouse or a Hohokam-style ballcourt, either of which would have presumably served to integrate the community. Although there was some masonry construction at this time, the older pithouse form was still predominant, with northern (and southern upland) sites having large pithouses with ramp entry and southern lowland sites having more of a variety of designs, with some similar to Hohokam pithouses. There was clearly a certain amount of Hohokam cultural influence during this period, but Pilles argues against previous interpretations that saw cultural changes as being due mostly to Hohokam immigration.
It is during the following Elden and Honanki phases, after 1150, that the Sinagua reached their greatest geographic extent and cultural florescence. Pilles attributes the substantial growth during this time to favorable climatic change, which is an interesting and potentially important contrast to the deteriorating climate and resulting cultural changes in the Anasazi region at the same time. With the wetter conditions they experienced, the Sinagua expanded into lower elevations in the north and higher elevations in the south. There were a wide variety of site types, ranging from very common small pueblos to larger habitation sites with various layouts. None of these, however, were very large compared to Anasazi sites, especially at this time, though some of them grew considerably larger in subsequent phases after 1300. Almost all of the larger sites before 1300 are in the Flagstaff and Wupatki areas rather than the south.
Fajada Butte from Una Vida
Pilles identifies four types of large sites, although the numbers for some are so small that I’m a little dubious about some of these assignments. In any case, they are:
Massed room block pueblos: by far the most common; basically just large blocks of rooms that generally seem to have grown gradually, with rooms being added on as necessity dictated.
Plaza-oriented pueblos: roomblocks arranged around a central plaza; these are not very common and are found mainly on the fringes of the Sinagua area, near the neighboring Anasazi and Salado regions where these layouts are more common.
Courtyard-oriented pueblos: also rare, but these are distinctively Sinagua and seem to have played some sort of important role regionally; they have courtyards defined by walls, generally two of them with room blocks inside the inner one.
Clustered room block pueblos: basically just multiple room blocks in close proximity; only three of these, two of which are in the Verde Valley.
In addition to the various types of masonry structures, pithouses and cave dwellings known as “cavates” were also common at this time. These are sometimes clustered into apparent communities that would have held populations comparable to those of the larger masonry pueblos.
After reviewing these site types, Pilles concludes that the preferred type of habitation at this time was a small masonry pueblo of 5 to 20 rooms. Smaller and larger sites are present as well, but they seem to have served special purposes which remain somewhat obscure. These are all much smaller than typical Anasazi sites in room count, but it is important to note that Sinagua rooms are typically significantly larger than Anasazi rooms, probably because the Sinagua, unlike the Anasazi, rarely had separate rooms for storage. Large numbers of storage jars are often found in excavated Sinagua habitation rooms. Still, even when this is taken into account, Sinagua sites are generally much smaller than contemporaneous Anasazi sites.
As for the patterns of these sites and their locations at this point, Pilles notes that overall there seems to be a mix of isolated large sites, isolated small sites, and clustered small sites. This is clearer in the north than in the Verde Valley, where sites are strung out along the river and larger sites are sometimes in close proximity to each other. Still, throughout the region there seems to be a mix of dispersed and aggregated settlements.
This is… odd. It’s much more typical to find the same type of settlement distribution across a region, particularly a small one like this. Pilles suggests two main possibilities for explaining this distribution.
Petroglyph Panel Showing What Appears to Be a Mountain Lion
The first is that the dispersed and aggregated communities aren’t really contemporary. As I mentioned above, temporal control for Sinagua sites, especially those known only through survey (which is almost all of them), is considerably weaker than for Anasazi sites, so what we may be looking at here is a process of rapid aggregation, with the dispersed small sites having been occupied for only a short time before the communities aggregated into large pueblos. The time frame under discussion here is somewhere in the range of 100 to 200 years, so a process of aggregation like this would have been very rapid, but when compared with the better-dated Ansazi sites of this period, many of which do indeed show clear evidence of very rapid aggregation apparently in response to increased warfare, it seems pretty plausible. Pilles stops short of endorsing this interpretation, which is understandable given the limited data, but he does present it favorably.
The second possibility, which Pilles also considers at length without ultimately passing judgment on, is that the different site types and distributions indicate a hierarchical regional system. (And here we get back to the issue we started with.) The idea here is that the large aggregated pueblos existed at the same time as the small dispersed pueblos, which were in some sort of subordinate relationship to them. If this was the case, the different sizes of sites could reflect different levels of a hierarchical society. The different site layouts could also reflect this, although since most of them are only present in a very small number of large sites and some seem to reflect outside influence this piece of evidence is considerably weaker than the size differences. Pilles also mentions burial data that has been interpreted as showing a change during the early Elden phase from a “limited stratified society” to a hierarchical chiefdom.
Within a postulated regional hierarchy, the courtyard pueblos seem to be the best candidates for regional centers. Pilles lists a whole series of characteristics that suggest this: locations on prominent hilltops or ridges along probable trade routes, greater numbers of luxury and trade goods, associated public architecture such as large pithouses and ballcourts, and the courtyards themselves. Not all of the courtyard sites have all of these attributes, however, and since there are so few of them the relevance of the list of attributes seems just a little questionable.
Burial data known from the courtyard sites also suggest some form of stratification. The most famous example is the “magician” burial at Ridge Ruin, which had a surprisingly extensive collection of valuable grave goods associated with an older man. To try to understand this rich burial at what seemed like a fairly small and unimpressive site, the excavators consulted some Hopis, who concluded from the evidence that the man had been a high-ranking member of a society, effectively a war chief. Since the Sinagua were one of the many groups that eventually immigrated to Hopi and contributed to the developing society there, the Hopis’ interpretation carries particular weight in this context. Pilles mentions other rich burials as well, and notes that they are generally of older men, which he contrasts with the Anasazi tendency for the richest burials to be of older women. I’m not sure where he got that last part, since the richest Anasazi burials I know of, at Pueblo Bonito, are definitely of older men. Something to look into, certainly.
Kiva A at Pueblo Bonito from Above
Pilles also mentions the presence of community integrative architecture and the persistence of community locations over time as evidence for stratification, which I don’t really see. It’s quite possible for egalitarian societies to stay in one place for centuries and build communal buildings. Pilles doesn’t offer any additional reasons to believe it suggests hierarchy in this particular case.
Of all this evidence offered for hierarchy, I think the burial data is the most convincing, although the general lack of excavation means that it is rather more limited than would be preferable. It’s clear that something interesting was going on in the Sinagua area, which seems to have been something of a frontier zone where influences from various directions met and combined in ways that we now have trouble understanding. I’m not really convinced that social hierarchy was a major aspect of the resulting mix, but I’m not convinced that it wasn’t either. I do, however, find the “rapid aggregation” theory more plausible than the “social hierarchy” theory for explaining the narrow matter of the mixed settlement pattern.
Few (though not quite no) archaeologists seriously argue that there was any significant direct connection between Chaco and the Sinagua, but the parallels are interesting for both the similarities and the differences that they reveal. I don’t have any clear thoughts about the implications of those comparisons, but they certainly merit further study.
Aftermath: Sinagua
February 12, 2009 by teofilo
Peñasco Blanco Framing Huerfano Mesa
One piece of data that sometimes gets mentioned in support of more hierarchical models of Chacoan social organization is the diversity of sizes found among Chacoan great houses both inside and outside the canyon. The idea behind this argument is that the great houses fall into a few rough groups based on size, with the number of great houses increasing as the size decreases, which suggests that they were all organized into a coherent, hierarchical system with the largest ones (mostly in the canyon) at the top and the others playing subordinate roles. One conclusion that follows from this interpretation is that the entire Chacoan system was a single highly organized polity with a central leadership at Chaco. Given this type of organization, it is natural to further conclude that that central leadership was composed of a socioeconomic elite with political power over the other people in the system.
While I’m by no means opposed in principle to the idea of a hierarchical Chaco, I’ve never found this particular argument for it very convincing. A hierarchical social system is certainly one possible source for a hierarchical settlement pattern, but it’s by no means the only one; I can think of several other possible ways such a pattern could emerge just off the top of my head. Recent scholarship on Chaco, in fact, has largely turned away from the idea of Chaco as a single, centralized polity, with the idea of a collection of loosely connected separate polities being more popular now and supported by a variety of lines of evidence (some more convincing than others). Even within this trend toward decentralized interpretations there are varying opinions about social hierarchy, which is actually a separate issue that is often conflated with centralization. I’ll have more to say on that in later posts. Here, my main concern is with the idea that settlement hierarchies serve as evidence for social stratification and regional integration.
Casa Chiquita
Chaco is not the only part of the ancient southwest where this argument has been used. Another, the subject of Peter Pilles’s chapter 5 of The Prehistoric Pueblo World, is the Sinagua, who occupied the area that is now north-central Arizona around the modern towns of Flagstaff, Sedona, and Camp Verde. While Pilles stops short of actually endorsing the argument that Sinagua settlement patterns indicate social hierarchy, he does discuss it at the end of the chapter. First, however, he gives a useful overview of Sinagua settlement patterns, focusing on the period that is the main focus of the book as a whole, the “Pueblo III” period from approximately 1150 through 1350.
As Pilles points out at the beginning of the chapter, however, Sinagua archaeology tends to use a different system of chronology from the Pecos system in which “Pueblo III” covers this period. Sinagua archaeology is distinctive in several ways from the traditional approach used in the Anasazi area, both because of clear cultural differences between the Sinagua and the Anasazi and because of the pivotal role played by the Museum of Northern Arizona in early research on the Sinagua. (MNA was, and remains, active in Anasazi research as well, particularly in the Kayenta area, but other institutions have always been prominent in Anasazi studies as well and it never played the dominant role there that it has for the Sinagua.) As a result, Sinagua chronology is based on a system of “phases” which correspond only roughly to the “periods” of the Pecos system.
Vent at Hungo Pavi
To make things even more complicated, there are actually two series of Sinagua phases, one for each of the major regional areas of Sinagua settlement. The northern area, encompassing the Flagstaff, Wupatki, and Anderson Mesa subareas, has one series of phases, while the rather different southern area, basically the Verde Valley and the nearby uplands and tributaries of the Verde River, has another. The northern Elden and Turkey Hill phases correspond roughly to Pueblo III, as does the southern Honanki phase.
In addition, chronology in the Sinagua region is considerably cruder than in the various Anasazi regions. The main reasons for this are a relatively small amount of excavation, resulting in few tree-ring dates, and the inconvenient fact that Sinagua pottery shows little variation over time, meaning that, unlike in the Anasazi case, pottery assemblages are of limited usefulness in making chronological placements of unexcavated sites. The main tool for such placement is, therefore, Anasazi pottery imported into Sinagua sites. Since this is not always present in large enough numbers for reliable sampling, Sinagua sites cannot always be dated at all, and even when they can be the chronological control is pretty crude by Anasazi standards. This leads to some problems, as we will see when we return below to the settlement hierarchy question.
Drainage Path over Slickrock
The name “Sinagua” comes from the Spanish for “without water,” originally applied to the San Francisco Peaks, which the early Spanish explorers found surprisingly dry for such large mountains. This is indeed a dry area, so water sources were always a key factor in settlement patterns. In the northern Sinagua area, the main water sources were isolated springs, while in the south the permanently flowing Verde River was the main source. This resulted in very different patterns of settlement locations in the two areas. In general, northern sites (or clusters of sites) were more isolated from each other, while southern sites were lined up in a row along the river, though the specifics varied over time.
The main reason for that variation also seems to have been water-related. The amount of moisture available varied over time, and in wetter times people expanded into areas that had been too unproductive to farm during dry years, only to retreat back to better-watered areas when the dry years returned. This pattern is visible all over the southwest over the course of the centuries, although from the way Pilles tells it the Sinagua area seems to have been oddly out of sync with other regions. In most of the southwest the wettest time was the Pueblo II period, from roughly 900 through 1150, and this is when most of the Anasazi regions saw their greatest extension (most notably, but by no means only, the Chaco Phenomenon). For the Sinagua, however, this seems to have been a relatively dry period and a time of settlement locations in areas with more reliable water supplies. In the north, this meant the higher elevations near the Peaks, while in the south it meant lowland locations closer to the river. A pattern of small sites surrounding a larger site seems to be present at this time in both areas, and these apparent communities often had either a large communal pithouse or a Hohokam-style ballcourt, either of which would have presumably served to integrate the community. Although there was some masonry construction at this time, the older pithouse form was still predominant, with northern (and southern upland) sites having large pithouses with ramp entry and southern lowland sites having more of a variety of designs, with some similar to Hohokam pithouses. There was clearly a certain amount of Hohokam cultural influence during this period, but Pilles argues against previous interpretations that saw cultural changes as being due mostly to Hohokam immigration.
It is during the following Elden and Honanki phases, after 1150, that the Sinagua reached their greatest geographic extent and cultural florescence. Pilles attributes the substantial growth during this time to favorable climatic change, which is an interesting and potentially important contrast to the deteriorating climate and resulting cultural changes in the Anasazi region at the same time. With the wetter conditions they experienced, the Sinagua expanded into lower elevations in the north and higher elevations in the south. There were a wide variety of site types, ranging from very common small pueblos to larger habitation sites with various layouts. None of these, however, were very large compared to Anasazi sites, especially at this time, though some of them grew considerably larger in subsequent phases after 1300. Almost all of the larger sites before 1300 are in the Flagstaff and Wupatki areas rather than the south.
Fajada Butte from Una Vida
Pilles identifies four types of large sites, although the numbers for some are so small that I’m a little dubious about some of these assignments. In any case, they are:
Massed room block pueblos: by far the most common; basically just large blocks of rooms that generally seem to have grown gradually, with rooms being added on as necessity dictated.
Plaza-oriented pueblos: roomblocks arranged around a central plaza; these are not very common and are found mainly on the fringes of the Sinagua area, near the neighboring Anasazi and Salado regions where these layouts are more common.
Courtyard-oriented pueblos: also rare, but these are distinctively Sinagua and seem to have played some sort of important role regionally; they have courtyards defined by walls, generally two of them with room blocks inside the inner one.
Clustered room block pueblos: basically just multiple room blocks in close proximity; only three of these, two of which are in the Verde Valley.
In addition to the various types of masonry structures, pithouses and cave dwellings known as “cavates” were also common at this time. These are sometimes clustered into apparent communities that would have held populations comparable to those of the larger masonry pueblos.
After reviewing these site types, Pilles concludes that the preferred type of habitation at this time was a small masonry pueblo of 5 to 20 rooms. Smaller and larger sites are present as well, but they seem to have served special purposes which remain somewhat obscure. These are all much smaller than typical Anasazi sites in room count, but it is important to note that Sinagua rooms are typically significantly larger than Anasazi rooms, probably because the Sinagua, unlike the Anasazi, rarely had separate rooms for storage. Large numbers of storage jars are often found in excavated Sinagua habitation rooms. Still, even when this is taken into account, Sinagua sites are generally much smaller than contemporaneous Anasazi sites.
As for the patterns of these sites and their locations at this point, Pilles notes that overall there seems to be a mix of isolated large sites, isolated small sites, and clustered small sites. This is clearer in the north than in the Verde Valley, where sites are strung out along the river and larger sites are sometimes in close proximity to each other. Still, throughout the region there seems to be a mix of dispersed and aggregated settlements.
This is… odd. It’s much more typical to find the same type of settlement distribution across a region, particularly a small one like this. Pilles suggests two main possibilities for explaining this distribution.
Petroglyph Panel Showing What Appears to Be a Mountain Lion
The first is that the dispersed and aggregated communities aren’t really contemporary. As I mentioned above, temporal control for Sinagua sites, especially those known only through survey (which is almost all of them), is considerably weaker than for Anasazi sites, so what we may be looking at here is a process of rapid aggregation, with the dispersed small sites having been occupied for only a short time before the communities aggregated into large pueblos. The time frame under discussion here is somewhere in the range of 100 to 200 years, so a process of aggregation like this would have been very rapid, but when compared with the better-dated Ansazi sites of this period, many of which do indeed show clear evidence of very rapid aggregation apparently in response to increased warfare, it seems pretty plausible. Pilles stops short of endorsing this interpretation, which is understandable given the limited data, but he does present it favorably.
The second possibility, which Pilles also considers at length without ultimately passing judgment on, is that the different site types and distributions indicate a hierarchical regional system. (And here we get back to the issue we started with.) The idea here is that the large aggregated pueblos existed at the same time as the small dispersed pueblos, which were in some sort of subordinate relationship to them. If this was the case, the different sizes of sites could reflect different levels of a hierarchical society. The different site layouts could also reflect this, although since most of them are only present in a very small number of large sites and some seem to reflect outside influence this piece of evidence is considerably weaker than the size differences. Pilles also mentions burial data that has been interpreted as showing a change during the early Elden phase from a “limited stratified society” to a hierarchical chiefdom.
Within a postulated regional hierarchy, the courtyard pueblos seem to be the best candidates for regional centers. Pilles lists a whole series of characteristics that suggest this: locations on prominent hilltops or ridges along probable trade routes, greater numbers of luxury and trade goods, associated public architecture such as large pithouses and ballcourts, and the courtyards themselves. Not all of the courtyard sites have all of these attributes, however, and since there are so few of them the relevance of the list of attributes seems just a little questionable.
Burial data known from the courtyard sites also suggest some form of stratification. The most famous example is the “magician” burial at Ridge Ruin, which had a surprisingly extensive collection of valuable grave goods associated with an older man. To try to understand this rich burial at what seemed like a fairly small and unimpressive site, the excavators consulted some Hopis, who concluded from the evidence that the man had been a high-ranking member of a society, effectively a war chief. Since the Sinagua were one of the many groups that eventually immigrated to Hopi and contributed to the developing society there, the Hopis’ interpretation carries particular weight in this context. Pilles mentions other rich burials as well, and notes that they are generally of older men, which he contrasts with the Anasazi tendency for the richest burials to be of older women. I’m not sure where he got that last part, since the richest Anasazi burials I know of, at Pueblo Bonito, are definitely of older men. Something to look into, certainly.
Kiva A at Pueblo Bonito from Above
Pilles also mentions the presence of community integrative architecture and the persistence of community locations over time as evidence for stratification, which I don’t really see. It’s quite possible for egalitarian societies to stay in one place for centuries and build communal buildings. Pilles doesn’t offer any additional reasons to believe it suggests hierarchy in this particular case.
Of all this evidence offered for hierarchy, I think the burial data is the most convincing, although the general lack of excavation means that it is rather more limited than would be preferable. It’s clear that something interesting was going on in the Sinagua area, which seems to have been something of a frontier zone where influences from various directions met and combined in ways that we now have trouble understanding. I’m not really convinced that social hierarchy was a major aspect of the resulting mix, but I’m not convinced that it wasn’t either. I do, however, find the “rapid aggregation” theory more plausible than the “social hierarchy” theory for explaining the narrow matter of the mixed settlement pattern.
Few (though not quite no) archaeologists seriously argue that there was any significant direct connection between Chaco and the Sinagua, but the parallels are interesting for both the similarities and the differences that they reveal. I don’t have any clear thoughts about the implications of those comparisons, but they certainly merit further study.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Recording of Petroglyph Park
WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 2008
UCR gets grant to fund high-tech methods of classifying ancient artifacts
3:53 p.m. July 28, 2008
UCR gets grant to fund high-tech methods of classifying ancient artifacts
3:53 p.m. July 28, 2008
RIVERSIDE – Developing high-tech methods of recognizing and classifying ancient Native American artifacts will be the focus of a UC Riverside project financed by a National Science Foundation grant, it was announced Monday.
The NSF awarded the university $805,000 to cover three years of expenses connected with the project, officially titled “Tools to Mine and Index Trajectories of Physical Artifacts,” according to UCR.
UCR anthropology professor Sang Hee-Lee and UCR computer science and engineering professor Eamon Keogh will lead a team of researchers tasked with creating a program capable of quickly recognizing Indian artifacts by shape and quality.
University officials said the goal will be archiving data from one place to the next and seeing how it all compares.
“By taking advantage of recent advances in data-mining and indexing, a massive amount of useful information can potentially be extracted from the anthropological resources that abound in North America,” said Keogh.
Among the first challenges is documenting UCR's own collection of more than one million arrowheads, officials said. The roughly 20,000 petroglyphs in New Mexico's Petroglyph Park will also be recorded, according to UCR.
Keogh said building databases of early Native American images, beads and tools might yield clues about the development and spread of different cultural practices.
He cited the use of “spatiotemporal predicates” to solve unanswered questions, such as whether the curved style of an arrowhead found in Oklahoma indicates that the tool originated with the Caddo Indian Tribe and was later adopted by tribes farther south – 6,000 to 9,000 years ago.
The grant-funded research could also address some contemporary concerns, according to UCR. By archiving graffiti styles, law enforcement could use the UCR program to track the propagation of certain street gang “tags,” officials said.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/riverside/20080728-1553-ucrgrant.html
Nine Mile Canyon Temporarily Saved
This is very good news. As I understand it, the proposed drilling around National Parks and other proposed areas contained little, if any, protection for Archaeological assets.
Hold on
Judge puts brakes on land plans
Tribune Editorial
Updated: 01/23/2009 06:15:08 PM MST
Hold on
Judge puts brakes on land plans
Tribune Editorial
Updated: 01/23/2009 06:15:08 PM MST
To paraphrase an old adage, "Act in haste, repent at your leisure."
The Bureau of Land Management under former President George Bush acted quickly to sell drilling leases on some of Utah's most scenic and culturally precious lands before the administration left office Tuesday. In its haste to make a gift of the leases to extraction companies, the agency even ignored a warning from the Environmental Protection Agency.
But a court appears about to force the BLM to repent of its blatant disregard for its mission to protect Americans' special and irreplaceable lands.
A U.S. District Court judge just days before Bush's departure acted prudently to halt the controversial sale of leases on 77 parcels near Arches and Canyonlands national parks, at Desolation Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, the ancient art "gallery" of Nine Mile Canyon and other wilderness-quality lands. U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina issued a temporary restraining order to block the sale until he rules on a lawsuit brought by conservation groups arguing that drilling in the disputed lands would do permanent environmental damage, fouling the air and scenic vistas and destroying the rock art.
The unusual weekend ruling, coming just days before President Barack Obama took the oath of office, will probably keep these parcels off the auction block for the foreseeable future and could have even more widespread consequences.
In granting the restraining order,
Urbina stated that the BLM had failed to properly consider how drilling could affect air quality on more than 103,000 acres of sensitive public lands.
The EPA had advised the BLM to analyze the potential impacts of oil and gas drilling on the 77 parcels in order to meet federal clean-air laws. But the BLM didn't have time for that. Its mandate from the Bush administration was to open as many acres of the West as possible to drilling before Jan. 20.
But now the BLM regional management plans released last year covering nearly all the public lands the agency manages in Utah are in question. The processes and analyses used to designate the disputed parcels are the same as those used to designate all-terrain-vehicle routes and areas for drilling in all six plans.
If Urbina ultimately rules this BLM lease sale illegal, the management plans may be next. The Obama administration could then redo the plans to better protect Utah's public lands.
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