'Winged Monster' Rock Art Finally Deciphered

I woke up to this news at Real Clear Science today. This is pretty cool.

'Winged Monster' Rock Art Finally Deciphered

Black Dragon Canyon is one of my favorite rock art sites. It's named after a winged figure that early rock art aficionados thought they saw and then outlined with chalk.

"I myself visited the site in person a few years ago," said Phil Senter, an associate professor of biology at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, who was not associated with the study. "There's no pterodactyl there at all. It's a collection of other images."

This has been known for quite a while, but the images they were able to tease out of DStretch (see earlier post here) are stunning.

from the article

Rock Art Tour of the Swell

DStretch enhanced photo from Buckhorn Draw August 2014

I took a quick rock art tour of the San Rafael Swell last Saturday with a couple of friends.  We didn't hit any new sites, but revisited Rochester Creek, Moore Cutoff, Short Canyon, Black Dragon Canyon and Buckhorn Draw.

Lone Warrior Pictograph

The Lone Warrior

The Lone Warrior pictograph is well-named in that this is the only easily visible piece of rock art at this site.  The style of the figure is unusual and is not easily classifiable as BSC, Fremont, Ute or Ancestral Puebloan.

Moore Cutoff Petroglyphs

The petrographs along the Moore Cutoff Road are quite easy to find and interesting.  There are a variety of styles to be found here cut into various boulders that have rolled down from the cliffs.  There is also a fossilized set of dinosaur tracks on one of the boulders.

The Moore Cutoff Road connects I-70 with Utah Highway 10.  The junction with I-15 is at the turnoff for the Eagle Canyon scenic viewpoint around mile marker 114.  The junctions with Utah Highway 10 are between mile markers 16 and 17 and between mile markers 21 and 22.  The cutoff road was paved a few years back so the site is accessible with any vehicle.

The map below show the turnout for the site.

The best way to explore is to first visit the few obvious glyph-covered boulders just to the northwest of the parking lot.  After that, start exploring and see what other hidden gems you can find.  There are many smaller ones here to find if you just look around.

View Larger Map

Temple Mountain Rock Art Panel

There are several pictograph panels near Temple Mountain on the edge of the San Rafael Swell.  The best known of these is a BCS/Fremont panel within a few hundred feet of the Temple Mountain Road where it cuts through the San Rafael Reef, just before it transitions from a paved to graded road.  This is a popular camping spot, so be prepared to intrude a little if you want to see the pictographs.  If you are camping here, be prepared to be intruded upon.

View Larger Map

The panel is on the cliff face in the center top of this aerial view.

BCS Petroglyph

Most Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) rock art examples are pictographs that have been painted on the rock using a red/orange/pink or white pigment.  The Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon, the Buckhorn Draw and Head of Sinbad pictographs are classic examples.

However, I did run into a small example of a BCS petroglyph in Short Canyon.  Petroglyphs were chipped or pecking into the stone using a harder stone as a chisel.  The example below was very faint and only eight or ten inches small.  But is certainly looks BCS to me.

That should be "Great Gallery."

© 2013  Kerk L. Phillips

Using DStretch

Rock art is sometimes very faint and difficult to see.  Digital manipulation of a photograph can make the shapes easier to see and recognize.  While Photoshop and other software have the tools to do this, it often requires a pretty detailed knowledge of both the software package and digital imaging in general to get the effects you need.

This is where DStretch comes in.  It's a freely available plugin for ImageJ, an image editor that is also free.  Dstretch has numerous canned filters that emphasize different aspects of an image.  One or more of these is bound to make your vague image much more easy to see.  And they areapplied with the click of a button.  There is even an option to automatically rotate through the filters.  This saves a lot of time and effort, especially if you are dealing with many images.

Buckhorn Draw

The Buckhorn Draw panel is a well-known example of Barrier Canyon style rock art located in the San Rafael Swell in Emery County.  It is accessible from a well-graded road and is a popular stopping spot for travelers driving through the Swell for sightseeing or recreation.

While the style is primarily Barrior Canyon, there are also many Fremont figures and some of the main figures are clearly Barrier Canyon figures that were overpainted by Fremont artists.  The panel is located in Buckhorn Draw (hence the name) which is a natural route through the Swell.  It has been a widely-used route for millennia and was part of the Old Spanish Trail.  As a result there are many relatively modern markings alongside the native American rock art.  The site was refurbished in the late 1990's as part of Utah's state centennial celebration and the more recent additions are now largely obscured, but still visible.

 Barrier Canyon figures in dark red, overpainted by Fremont figures in yellow.

Short Canyon

Original report - May 17, 2009

The lower of two large rock art panels in Short Canyon

I went on a campout this weekend with the scouts. We had the 12-13 year-old group (the scouts) and the 14-15 year-old group (the varsity scouts) with a total of 16 people.

We drove down Friday night to the Moore cutoff road and stopped at Dry Wash to see the petroglyphs and dinosaur tracks.

Head of Sinbad

Original Report - May 12, 2009

One of the other sites we hit on Saturday was a Barrier Canyon Style panel near the Head of Sinbad right in the middle of the Swell. The interstate passes within a mile or so of the panel, but historically this part of the Swell has not had a lot of traffic. It differs in this regard from the panels in Buckhorn Draw and Black Dragon Canyon which are both located along rather obvious travel routes. As a result, unlike these panels, the small one at the Head of Sinbad is in close to pristine condition. You can even see the brushstrokcs on some of the figures.

Black Dragon Canyon

Original Report - May 11, 2009

The Black Dragon?

 

I took a tour with my two youngest children this past Saturday. The Prehistory Museum at the College of Eastern Utah in Price does a regular series of expeditions through the San Rafael Swell, which they call "Saturday on the Swell". This last Saturday's was headed by Dr. Renee Barlow and focused on Native American rock art in the Swell. We visited 4 sites with the group and one of the most fascinating was the one in Black Dragon Canyon.

Rochester Creek

Original Report - December 10, 2008

The rock art panel at Rochester Creek is easily accessible and worth a trip. It is located east of Emery, Utah on a rock face overlooking the confluence of Muddy Creek and Rochester Creek. Take highway 10 and turn onto the road to Moore between mile markers 16 & 17. A half mile from the highway is a graded road headed south, it is an other 4 miles from here to the trailhead parking lot. From the parking lot the trail to the panel is a half mile or so.