PETROGLYPHS: PREHISTORIC ROCK ART
By Victoria Chick
There is hardly a country in the world where petroglyphs do not exist. The United States is rich in petroglyph art. Many petroglyphs are within National Park or National Monument boundaries or within National Forests, where they are protected.
Petroglyphs are also called rock engravings because they are chipped into a rock surface. There is often a color difference between the chipped image and the natural surface of the rock. The natural surface of the rock has not been painted but is usually a darker color caused by exposure to light and air producing an oxidation with a microbial component sometimes called “desert varnish” because this phenomenon is most clearly observed in desert territory. The chipped-away area is lighter, and the contrast makes this type of petroglyph easy to see.
Petroglyphs come in all sizes, from under an inch to over six feet tall.
Petroglyphs are most often found in sheltered locations such as undercut cliffs, or on boulder sides away from prevailing weather. Sometimes petroglyphs can be found on flat, horizontal surfaces where bedrock is exposed but weathering makes these more difficult to appreciate. Some of the world’s petroglyphs were engraved as far back as Paleolithic times.
Rock engraving continued through the Neolithic period, but those in the United States have a more recent dating range from about 14,000 years ago with many more in the archaic period from 8000 to 2000 BC and continuing into a period that would be around 1600 A.D. Some are possibly even more recent.
Because petroglyphs are prehistoric, the reasons behind making them, along with their specific, individual meanings are couched in guesswork based on remnants of still-active, Native American tribal lore.
One of the interesting aspects of petroglyphs, in general, is the similarity of images and designs throughout the U.S and even throughout the world. Numerous theories have been expounded to explain why this has occurred; none are provable-but some are believable.
One theory is physical. A well-known concept is that people came across the Bering Straits on a land or ice bridge, where they gradually and generationally migrated across North and Central America taking with them a common pictorial language. Some think the North American migration continued into South America and joined other migrations from Africa or Polynesia via Asia.
Another theory is psychological and is expressed in the universal archetypes of the unconscious postulated by Carl Jung. Whatever the reasons, certain images do appear repeatedly. Examples are simple, stylized human figures sometimes wearing a piece of clothing or holding an object that might indicate a societal rank or role.
There are animal figures that are often described as totemic or symbolic such as horned sheep, turtles, or thunderbirds, fantasy figures such as Kokopelli, and human-headed snakes that seem drawn from imagination.
Then there are designs such as handprints, spirals, maze-type configurations, and other engravings such as zig-zag lines that may be representational of lightning or a serpent, and parallel lines that may indicate crop growing rows or falling rain. And lastly, there are simplified, abstracted shapes of insects and animals that are native to particular regions.
The arrangement of petroglyphs on a surface may be singular or composed of hundreds of individual engravings. It is impossible to say with certainty, but when clustered together, it appears they are not narratively related to each other. In fact, sometimes one figure is partially chipped over another, giving rise to the idea that in some places
and times, it was not the petroglyph itself that was as important as the process of making it.
In other situations, petroglyphs seem to be a communicating symbol with direct religious significance. What we see as art may only have been part of a group ritual that included music, dancing, and costume, or possibly even part of a private meditation.
Petroglyphs in the United States tend to be clustered in Pacific coast states and the Southwest desert states; but they are also found in numbers in states whose rivers feed into the Mississippi, along the Great Lakes, and into the Southern states. Their lively shapes are aesthetically pleasing, and their unknown aspects intrigue us.
Victoria Chick is a contemporary figurative artist and early 19th/20th century print collector based in Silver City, New Mexico. She received a B.A. in Art from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and was awarded an M.F.A. in Painting from Kent State University in Ohio. Visit: https://victoriachick.com/
Victoria appears on Big Blend Radio every 3rd Saturday. Follow the podcast: https://worldofart-victoriachick.podbean.com/
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