Official home of the Lincoln County Authority of Tourism (LCAT)
Official home of the Lincoln County Authority of Tourism (LCAT)
Long ago, the ancient inhabitants of the Great Basin created a system of communication that is now referred to as “rock art.” It once played an essential role in the transmission, reception and storage of information. Although it’s difficult to understand the meaning of most rock art today, it was deeply significant to those who created it.
Learn more about the rock art in Lincoln County through this comprehensive guide.
Pictographs or petroglyphs? You can see both in Lincoln County.
Pictographs of yellow, black, and red can be seen painted on light-colored rock surfaces. A mixture of sumac, yellow ochre, and pinyon gum was used to make a black powder; yellow from rabbit brush, and red from red ochre or the roots of mountain mahogany. Animal fat and plant oils may have been used to bind the powders together. Fingers, yucca fiber brushes, and hollow bird bones filled with pigment were the artist’s tools. This primitive bird bone “spray gun” was often used to spray around a hand placed on the rock.
A Petroglyph is an image or design cut into a rock surface without the use of pigment or coloring. In canyon country, desert-varnished sandstone was most commonly used. In desert areas, this brown or black varnish builds up on rocks after prolonged exposure to the elements. The tool usually used to produce petroglyphs was agate, chert, or jasper. [Read more …]
Big horn, prong horn, snakes, sun, moon, and people. Etchings and paintings on the rocks, meanings long lost, left by Ancient Native Americans throughout what is now Lincoln County. Can you guess the meanings?
Rock art is very fragile and the application of any material, including water and especially oil from your skin, can cause irreparable damage so please don’t touch, walk, or climb on it.
Observe and photograph, but leave what you find for future generations.
Artifacts and rock art on public land are protected; excavating, removing, damaging, or otherwise defacing any archaeological resource is a felony punishable by fines and imprisonment.
Help protect these resources; report vandalism.
Bureau of Land Management’s resource protection hotline 800.722.3998
It is difficult to date rock art even with today’s scientific dating method. Sophisticated methods of C-14 dating have been designed to analyze the tiny particles of organic matter which collect in the grooves of petroglyphs after having been etched onto the rock surface.
Despite the continual refining of these methods, there are still significant problems related to the contamination of the organic matter. In some instances, rock art can be related to artifactual material that is datable and thought to be contemporary with the rock art, but often it is impossible to generate anything other than an estimated timeframe.
Rock art is composed of separate designs called elements. These elements are arranged in groups on the sides of rock faces, and are referred to as panels.
Photo with description Anthropomorphs = Human figures
Photo with description Zoomorphs = Animals; the four-legged kind as well as birds and insects.
Wherever there has been human activity, there is rock art. Speculated reasons for rock art are many. Possibly it contained sacred knowledge and was ceremonial marked game trails designated cultural territories functioned as astronomical markers pertaining to such phenomena as the solstices and equinoxes.
Whatever the meaning, it was deeply significant to those who created it.
