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Analyzing Rock Art - Ep 124
524 Plays6 months ago
Alan and Chris analyze three rock art panels from the Coso Range in California. You can look at these every day and see something different.
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/rockart/124
Links
- View the Rock Art panels here: https://www.archpodnet.com/rockart/124
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Transcript
Introduction to California Rock Art Foundation
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello out there in archaeology podcast land. This is Dr. Alan Garfinkel. I'm the president and founder of the California Rock Art Foundation. And what we do is we identify, evaluate, manage, and conserve rock art both in Alta, California and in Baja, California.
Collaboration with Native Americans
00:00:21
Speaker
We conduct field trips, we have trainings, exercise, we do research, and in every way possible we try to preserve, protect, and coordinate treasures of Alta and Baja California rock art, of which there are many, and diverse. We also work closely with Native Americans and partner with them to recognize and protect sacred sites.
Call for Support and Donations
00:00:42
Speaker
So for more info about the fabulous California Rock Art Foundation, you can go to carockart.org. Also, I'm open to give me a call, 805-312-2261. We would welcome sponsorship or underwriting, helping us to defray the costs of our podcasts, and also membership in California Rock Art Foundation, and of course, donations since we are a 501c3 nonprofit scientific and educational corporation. God bless everyone out there in podcast land.
00:01:16
Speaker
You're listening to the Rock Art Podcast. Join us every week for fascinating tales of rock art, adventure, and archaeology. Find our contact info in the show notes and send us your suggestions. Hey out there in archaeology podcast land, this is your host,
Analysis of Kosos Petroglyph Panels
00:01:36
Speaker
Dr. Alvin Garfinkel. I'm going to be with Chris Webster, and we're going to look at three different panels from the Kosos and talk about how to deconstruct them and
00:01:45
Speaker
alternative ways to interpret those panels and get some insights and wisdom from ethnology and from the people that have studied rock art for quite a while.
00:02:04
Speaker
Welcome to The Rock Art Podcast, everybody. This is Chris Webster. And if you're listening to me, that means today it's Alan and I. And as we did, I would say a few episodes ago, Alan has brought a few images. So before you even continue on with this podcast, I would say give it a pause and take a look down at your show notes.
00:02:23
Speaker
because there will be links to, well, actually, if you're looking at your show notes, there's probably a link back to the RKLG Podcast Network website where you'll see links or the actual images to three petroglyph panels. And I'll probably just title them one, two, and three. And we'll be sure to talk about them in that order.
00:02:41
Speaker
And we're going to talk about those in these next segments and we're just going to break them down and analyze them and see what we see, just like we did a few episodes ago
Symbolism of Projectile Points
00:02:49
Speaker
ago. So Alan, with this very first image that we're going to talk about, we'll call it, we'll call it panel one with the large striking figure in the center of it and the sort of, I would say, projectile point figures off to the right. Let's talk about that one first. What can you tell me about it? Where did it come from?
00:03:04
Speaker
That particular figure is one I've been looking at for about 50 years. It comes from Sheep Canyon in the Kosos. And what's interesting about that figure is it was one of the ones that renders those projectile points in a much more realistic way than many of the others. In other words, these look just like the dart points that we find archaeologically. Do you agree?
00:03:29
Speaker
I do, I do. Yeah, let's talk about those, those images that are in the rightmost part of that panel. There is one, two, three, four, five different projectile points. And they all seem to be attached to four chefs. And they all seem to be, I think what you call them is eared. Would you agree? Yeah. I think the archaeologists call them eared.
00:03:56
Speaker
And, you know, when I began this study and published it for the first time, I screwed up big time because I thought those were doppelgangers for the rose-spring projectile points and thought they were arrows. But as I began to work further on this subject, I had the audacity to pull in someone who can date these. And so when they came back 2800, 2800, 2900, I said,
00:04:25
Speaker
Those ain't arrow points, those are dart points. And also when I took some other people there who were non-archaeologists, oh, they said, yeah, those are dart points. I don't know how you can mistake them for arrow points. And so given that those are Elko's, and given that those are dart points, that's exactly what we would expect in terms of an association with these animal human figures and those Bitcoin sheeps. Why is that, Chris? Well, is this what they used to hunt them?
00:04:59
Speaker
And when you find those game diversion drive fences, we talked about earlier, right? Yeah. And they find that the heyday for those things where the middle archaic, which is the same time as the preponderance of Elko points, they found one of these sites on the border between
00:05:22
Speaker
Nevada and California in what's called the Anchorite Hills. And they found hundreds, hundreds of Elko and Humboldt projectile points with impact fractures. And by the by, they also found
00:05:42
Speaker
28,000 pieces of antelope bone.
Interpretation of Rock Art Symbols
00:05:48
Speaker
Can you imagine? I think they were hunting. And I think they were hunting the bigger game that you can get in and about that time span. And when someone said that they don't represent hunting, well, that's a good example of at least the temporal correlation and the correlation of the depictions
00:06:11
Speaker
of those points and their recognition as the principal technology that was employed in that kind of business. Now, besides which, off to the left is our game animals, Bitcoin cheap and not really in a Koso style. They were rather simplified and not as patterned
00:06:37
Speaker
but at least one of them has a spear in it, that leftmost one. You can see that, right? Yeah. Yeah. I see that. So now we get to the famous tale of the tales, right? I see them up.
00:06:53
Speaker
They all are up. Why would that be? Why are the the tails are the most insignificant things on these big horn sheep? You don't even see them usually. You're more impressed with their horns or their bodies or their gait or their legs. But they put those tails on those sheep and they're almost always either parallel to the ground or up, up, up. And these are decidedly up. Now, these are these are males, but. And why is that?
00:07:23
Speaker
Well, they, they, they look like they have big horn horns. The females have more modest horns, but I think, I think to them it didn't really matter. I think they were trying to indicate in a generic way, because there's one word for big horn sheep to matter.
00:07:42
Speaker
and they're big game animals, they're also sheep, they're also, you know, deer, they're also antelope, et cetera. And this one word, it's naga. Anyways, when wildlife biologists who I've talked to, so I'm gluing the face, I asked them, did you ever see those tails, you know, those big corn sheep? And they said, they said, no, we never see those tails. The only time you're gonna see those tails is when they're flagging. I go, what the heck is flagging?
00:08:12
Speaker
And they said, well, flagging is when the female is an estrus. And she uses her tail and wags it back and forth to show these open for reproduction. And I said, wow,
Cultural and Cosmic Meanings in Rock Art
00:08:27
Speaker
what an amazing element that is. And the funny thing is, as I talk to my colleague,
00:08:34
Speaker
who's taken pictures of these big horned animals all over the world. And he's told me that the archeologist that he speaks to all know that same thing, that they see those tails represented and they're up and they represent reproductive symbolism or, you know, along those lines. It's like a common understanding. I've never seen that in the literature. I've read, you know, till the cows come home.
00:08:58
Speaker
But it took me years to figure that one out. That was not an easy call. In fact, when Joanne Van Tilburg did her work at Little Lake, she wrote paragraphs upon paragraphs about the presence of these tales, but said, we can't figure out
00:09:16
Speaker
why they are depicted. You're going to get to the central figure, but I'm wondering what the, what is the little guy up on top there above the central figure? Do we know what that is? I think that looks like a cat is one of the deities or a helping spirit for the major deity being represented. I think these are deities. They can also be shamans, of course, but I really get the flavor, especially with this largest figure in the center.
00:09:42
Speaker
that this is either an earth mother or an animal mistress or a lunar goddess, no matter how you look at it. Notice that she has hair worlds, right? So I believe that that's a feminine, also her body is rounded on shoulders and then within the body she has decorations in there and at least towards the bottom they tend to at least begin to replicate
00:10:11
Speaker
some of the imagery appearing on the rattlesnake, meaning those triangles and those stripes and all those other items. And there is one, two, three, four, five, six, six projectile points. And one of those points is merged with a big horn, which overlaps and sits at almost the right place for the genitalia of that big figure.
00:10:38
Speaker
So again, I rest my case 30 days. That little figure at top, though, really seems to be important. And it has avian legs and feet.
00:10:48
Speaker
And it has little horns. What else do you see in this picture? Well, I see a bunch of scratch marks that look like I can't really tell in the drawing because this is a drawing. If those scratch marks happened before or after some of these, like if it was done on top of this drawing or if this drawing was done, these were done on top of the scratch marks, but they're kind of between the projectile points in the big figure and then kind of underneath the big figure too, or below it on the bottom. I don't know what the scratch marks are for.
00:11:15
Speaker
The classic in terms of the way in which they represented, they're always sort of hatchered or linear or networked. And if you look also closely at those scratches, you'll notice they actually are superimposed over.
00:11:30
Speaker
the more ancient figures. You can see it on the torso of the bighorn sheep overlapping that major figure. And those are the ones that people are calling numics scratched. And those supposedly were done by women. And they were doing this perhaps in the vicinity of this image.
00:11:52
Speaker
I don't think it was done to obliterate them. I think that perhaps it was even done to enhance them or to pick up some of the mojo for the spirit energy that might come from a connection to the shamanistic ancestor deities and the imagery itself, which is so powerful on this particular panel. It also looks like the figure in the center has got something in its
00:12:21
Speaker
I don't know if it's its left-hand or it's right on the left-hand side as we're looking at it. Cause I don't know if it's facing away or towards us. Yeah. I don't know what that is. It's like a tuft of cotton or something like that. I don't know what that would be brush or something. Look at that one projectile point that is right below her left hand where she's giving it something to eat. And there's an X inside of it. See the X.
00:12:46
Speaker
I don't know if you can see that, but there's a predominant X and it's an encircled X. So we talk about, we had a whole episode of the encircled X's, the encircled crosses. And what they mean, those are powerful symbols. They identify deities. They talk about the basic elements of the universe.
00:13:10
Speaker
They talk about the cardinal directions, on and on and on. We could talk for hours about those encircled exes, but they're in California, the Great Basin, American Southwest, into Mexico, the high cultures. Even the Maya and the Aztecs had even a symbol, a letter, or a symbol that
00:13:36
Speaker
represented that it also means Venus because of the implications of what they call the morning star and the evening star, the first star you see in the morning and the last star you see at night. So again, that's a resurrection theme, reproductive symbolism, seeing the fertility side. And I think this is also, it's about death, but it's also about life.
00:14:02
Speaker
I think that's part of the story. I think that's why they emblazoned that Bitcoin sheep over her genitals. And it almost looks like that main female figure is feeding the projectile point food. Interesting. Interesting. I never noticed that before, by the way. Yeah. That's a good one.
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. Okay. Well, with that, let's, uh, take a break again, take a look down at your device or whatever you're looking at this on and take a look at the next one. And we'll be back in a minute with segment two. Welcome back to the rock art podcast episode one 24. And we're talking about three different images. And this is going to be panel number two. If you're following along, look down at your show notes. And this is the smaller of the two and yeah, tell us about it. Well.
00:15:00
Speaker
For the longest time, I was confused. I just didn't understand why the cosoartisans would twin projectile points and hunting equipment with a female character. Obviously female, pendant labia, avian legs, avian feet. It's got projectile points at its head. It's got projectile points coming in all parts of its body. What are they telling us? I mean, isn't that kind of an oxymoron kind of
00:15:30
Speaker
you know, a contradiction. If it's a woman, aren't they supposed to be doing the birthing of babies and gathering up the seeds and nuts and berries and, you know, vegetation, cooking, et cetera? Well, yes and no. Yes and no. The way that the UtoS seconds think about this,
00:15:53
Speaker
And I wrote about this in that volume two of the California Rock Guard Foundation's monographic series, assuming that this is an earth mother like figure. The earth mother is in the ground. It's in the land. That's an earth mother. And when they, when they hunted,
00:16:20
Speaker
they called projectile points penises. That's the same word for penis was also for projectile points. And the supernatural, the supernatural, these projectile, these projectile points were embedded or acting as these, you know, sort of androcentric, these, these masculine, you know, members
00:16:47
Speaker
piercing the earth for reproduction. They're called lightning arrows. They're called in whatever because as they pierced the landscape, they then injected their bodily fluids and created life. So again, it was a reproductive symbolism thing.
00:17:09
Speaker
And this is about as straightforward as you get, showing these projectile points embedding themselves into this Earth Mother. And she representing or hanging on to all of this regalia with that. The avian side is because I would say I'd argue that these are not just shamans, these are supernatural beings.
00:17:36
Speaker
that inhabit or ascend to the sky. And the sky world, of course, is the topmost level of the layered universe. And that's where the power is. That's where the greatest amount of power and sacredness and mojo, the energy of the universe, is concentrated in that uppermost realm. And that's all there in that picture. It's plain as day to me.
00:18:06
Speaker
And I never understood that until I really met someone that really studied, understood shamanism, understood indigenous cosmology from a Native American perspective, and really had entered into their world and completely ensconced themselves in the nature of the, you know, sort of the neurotheology, the
00:18:34
Speaker
the religious metaphors of Aztec and cultures. When I think about that, there's very few people that I've met that have that kind of knowledge and intimate understanding. It's limited to people who are shamans or those that truly understand
00:18:54
Speaker
some of these indexical and cognitive elements that are so meaningful but packaged with so much multiple metaphors, meanings, all imbricated, all packed together.
00:19:09
Speaker
in one picture. Does that make any sense? Right. It does. It does. But it is interesting to me too, how the, I don't know, the association or the... The contradiction. Yeah. Well, you know, the association of men with hunting and warfare and women with, you know, birthing and... Because around the world, we're finding out in our other podcasts, The Archaeology Show, we're seeing different articles and more and more coming out that
00:19:33
Speaker
We're blurring the lines between what men and women and responsibilities and things like that are. And it's just interesting to see different perspectives and how that's written down through history.
Gender Roles in Indigenous Cosmology
00:19:42
Speaker
And I'm not saying that a woman didn't do this. A woman could have crafted this. She could be a shaman or she could be some sort of a metis person or a spiritualist, a ritual elder. And there's not that many pictures in the Kosos.
00:19:59
Speaker
that show these projectiles embedded into a female animal human figure. And there's not many people that understand Native American Indian perspectivism. When I saw this, it troubled me forever. I'm going, what the heck is that all about?
00:20:25
Speaker
Why would they show this creature being embedded with all of these projectile points if it's something to revere, something to be recognized, something to... Well, think about Jesus on the cross, I guess, right? It's a sacrifice as well. You know what I saw? I saw, it was weird, because when you said that, I saw the bird, the avian feet, but then I saw it. It looked like a cob of corn to me, like an ear of corn, and then wheat stock sticking out of it.
00:20:56
Speaker
to me. And if you look at one of those projectile points, it looks like it's going directly into her genitals coming out from the genitals, that genital area. I never noticed that either. No, it's interesting.
00:21:14
Speaker
And if you, and if you, and if you look at it closely, I never noticed this. Look at the face on that. There is a face on that creature. I can see eyes, nose, mouth. It's all there. Can you see it? Yeah. Yeah. I can see it. Wow. Come on. It's crazy. I mean, that is, that is crazy. Isn't it?
00:21:40
Speaker
Boy, I've looked at this for how many times? There is a face in there. Wow. That is amazing. Huh. Those Coso artisans got it going on, don't they? They were making tracks and doing it right. And they'd be laughing at us all the way till the cows come home saying, that's not what it means. I had a whole different purpose, Alan.
00:22:09
Speaker
Where'd you get that idea? I wonder if on the bottom left, that little, that little symbol on the bottom left or whatever it is, is part of this or the artist just drew it because it was there. You know what I mean? It looks disconnected. It looks disconnected, doesn't it? Yeah. But I'll bet it means something.
00:22:27
Speaker
Yeah. I bet it does mean something. Probably does. Yeah. And it's probably more significant than the whole other picture. Right? Right? Probably. Yeah. What are you worried about all that? Most important fight is the signature. Indeed. Well, with that, let's move on to number three, panel number three. Take a look at your show notes and follow along. We'll be back in a minute.
Divine and Human Connections
00:22:51
Speaker
Welcome back to the rock our podcast episode one 24 and panel number three, save the biggest one for last. This, there's a lot going on here. What do we got on a lot going on here? Well, one of the things I'm obsessed with is gestures and most of these figures have what's called an adherent posture.
00:23:12
Speaker
Here's one right here on the left with the arms up in the air towards the celestial world. The biggest figure has the arms in the air as well. This one on the extreme right has their arms spread out.
00:23:27
Speaker
And so does this one, kind of one up, one down. The other one has spread out. There seems to be a welcome or a guardianship or, you know, sort of a comforting kind of thing from the opening arms. And the other ones, the adherent posture or the celestial one is showing a connection between the divinity and humanity, the celestial world and the terrestrial world.
00:23:56
Speaker
And so that's what's going on there. The biggest one may be a man, but may also be a woman. The big feet and the big toe that's represented are classic reproductive symbolism symbols. And I did not know this until recently. There's another one, the big hand, the big foot right down below. And it's even mentioned in the Bible where it says that one of our ancestors
00:24:25
Speaker
slept with this woman and she lay near his feet all night.
Fertility Symbols in Rock Art
00:24:30
Speaker
They emphasized that. So it means they had sex. And that's what these mean. They're representing fertility and fecundity and sexuality and all of those, all that package in there. And one of the ways you might know that is if you look in the very center at the bottom, right?
00:24:53
Speaker
That's the man and the woman welcoming their new child. Look at that. I mean, come on. Yeah. I mean, really, I mean, give me a break. Isn't that joy right there? Yeah. That does seem obvious. It doesn't it? Come on. Yeah. I however, can't figure out why the big foot and then what appears to be a big hand to have six toes and six fingers. I can't figure that one out. They don't care.
00:25:23
Speaker
Another thing with that is supposedly if you had people that were anomalous, that had that kind of extra toe or extra finger, they were considered to be much more magical, much more reproductively successful, have a greater fitness and strength and intellectual gifted. That's what the natives believed. I know. Crazy.
00:25:48
Speaker
That's what we referenced in the ethnography about that particular symbol. And I didn't know it either, by the way. And then all the little sheep, all the sheep are moving right to left. There's a symbol of some kind of an autolotl maybe with the circle and the line through it. There's a sheep. No, no, no. That's probably a mountain line at the top with the big long tail.
00:26:14
Speaker
That's a mountain lion. That's to do with power and prestige. There's lots of big horn. And that one to the right has that hook off of it. And that's a magic wand called a poro. And the poro is the shaman's wand.
00:26:38
Speaker
That's the wand of life and death. It's also the one that can pull the sun. When the sun's in the heavens, and we get to winter solstice, it sits in the same spot for days on end. It's the only time of year it does that. It's about December 21st, 22nd, 23rd, all around those times. And if you see where it comes up,
00:27:06
Speaker
looks like it's never going to move again. It just sits there on the horizon and doesn't move very much at all for several days and it starts again and starts moving. So you got to grab it with your portal and help to pull it to make that sucker move and get that energy going again. In the ethnography, they talk about that with the moon as well. When you get to the new moon, right?
00:27:31
Speaker
It's gone. It left for a while, right? And you get it back, and it's growing, right? And it's brand new. It's just a sliver. Well, there's a quote out of the famous book of one of the Christian fathers who wrote about the Indians of Southern California. And the quotation that I used to sort of talk about it says, look up in the sky, you know, boys.
00:28:00
Speaker
It's a new moon. You got to run your moon. And they all run around and start running crazy. And they say, come on, keep running. We've got to charge up the world and get that moon to run in because it's got to grow again and get it back to its fullness and shapeliness as a full moon. And I thought that was really amazing. They even had a song that went with it. They'd sing a song.
00:28:26
Speaker
So that that does work in the cosmic world of looking at the cycles and in turn manifesting a sympathetic or homeopathic magic as you sing or dance or reveal things with words. So it mirrors what you're manifesting in the heavens and on earth. Words are powerful. Words are things. Songs are more powerful than words, though.
00:28:56
Speaker
Okay. And the Indians were more audiophonic than they were literal. I've talked about this before when you talk to an Indian often. They don't say much. They're looking at you going, what's this guy all about? Why does he talk so much? Does he think he knows a lot? I don't think so. He would learn more if he shuts up and listens.
Life Cycles Depicted in Rock Art
00:29:25
Speaker
Then talking, right? Go ahead, go ahead. It's interesting to me too. This whole thing seems to be representing, like we said, cycles, you know what I mean? Yeah, cycles. And when you look at the bighorn sheep on the bottom there, you go from left to right.
00:29:40
Speaker
When you look at their horns, they go from shorter to longer, and when some big horned sheep don't shed their horns. Yes, yes. I never noticed that. Younger to older, right? Yes, exactly. Oh my God, you're fabulous. The ones on the very top have almost no horns. No, no they don't. They've just been birthed. Those are the new ones. They're coming up from the crack in the universe.
00:30:04
Speaker
See the big, huge crack in the universe? Yeah. That's the tether. That's the line of the underworld versus the terrestrial world where you have to manufacture and re-tether and spiritually resound the animals to get them back each spring. That's amazing. That's cool. This is fun. This is fun.
00:30:28
Speaker
I guess I'm going to have to do this again. This is fun. Yeah. I've never, never, I never, I never imagined that we would have so much fun doing this.
00:30:36
Speaker
Yeah.
Community Engagement and Image Analysis
00:30:39
Speaker
I would say anybody listening to this, if you've got a panel that maybe you took a picture of one, maybe you're out somewhere, send it over to us. Contact info is in the show notes and maybe we'll take a look at it and you can get Alan's impressions and see what we think about it. Be sure to tell us where you found it, where it is, and give us some prevenience there.
00:31:00
Speaker
Don't let us know all about it as much as you can, but I think that would be great to get some stuff in from our listeners. Anything else to say about this panel, Alan? Well, gang, I hope you enjoyed this episode. See you in the flip-flop.
00:31:19
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Rock Art Podcast with Dr. Alan Garfinkel and Chris Webster. Find show notes and contact information at www.arcpodnet.com forward slash rock art. Thanks for listening and thanks for sharing this podcast with your family and friends.
00:31:50
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.