<< Our Photo Pages >> Coso Petroglyphs - Rock Art in United States in The Southwest
Submitted by ivanjohnson on Saturday, 17 December 2016 Page Views: 6580
Rock ArtSite Name: Coso Petroglyphs Alternative Name: Coso Rock Art District, Big and Little Petroglyph CanyonsCountry: United States Region: The Southwest Type: Rock Art
Nearest Town: Ridgecrest Nearest Village: China Lake
Latitude: 35.994456N Longitude: 117.611W
Condition:
5 | Perfect |
4 | Almost Perfect |
3 | Reasonable but with some damage |
2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site |
1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks |
0 | No data. |
-1 | Completely destroyed |
5 | Superb |
4 | Good |
3 | Ordinary |
2 | Not Good |
1 | Awful |
0 | No data. |
5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access |
4 | Short walk on a footpath |
3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk |
2 | A long walk |
1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find |
0 | No data. |
5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates |
4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map |
3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map |
2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village |
1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town |
0 | no data |
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I have visited· I would like to visit
DrewParsons would like to visit
Catrinm visited on 6th Nov 2016 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 5 Access: 5 We went on an organised tour during the Petroglyph festival - the only time non Us citizens can usually have a chance to visit. It was truly worth the 500 mile detour on our road trip - we only explored little petroglyph canyon but the images there were varied and numerous enough to keep us in awe for several hours. It is difficult to capture in pictures because of this .. the images are at all levels and on both sides of the canyon like an art gallery. Even the guide said she sees new images every time she visits depending on the light and the weather. There is nothing like this in the uk especially with human (or even alien) images but I noted that the cup and ring marks and grids were similar to some in those sites have visited in UK/Ireland. I will try to post differently images to ivanjohnson.
The information we got form the archaeologist said the images cannot be dated by not al methods but cast doubt on them being 10000 years old probably most in last 2000 years..the local Native American tribes still consider the site sacred and hold ceremonies there.
The majority of the Coso Range images fall into one of six categories: bighorn sheep, entopic images, anthropomorphic or human-like figures (including animal-human figures known as pattern-bodied anthopomorphs), other animals, weapons & tools, and “medicine bag” images.
Fortunately for the petroglyphs, most of the Coso Range is on the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, where visitation is restricted, vandalism is low, and preservation is most likely, located near the towns of China Lake and Ridgecrest, California.
To see the canyon, one must contact either the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, or join a scheduled tour offered by Maturango Museum in Ridgecrest, California, or attend a Rock Art 101 program.
It is a 40-mile drive on paved road inside the Navy base, except for the last 6 miles of dirt road, to access the trailhead, followed by a very short walk on a paved footpath to get to the canyon where the images reside, and a slightly longer hike southwest along the sandy/rocky canyon bottom to view all of the images. Visits are scheduled only in the spring and fall.
There are several other distinct canyons in the Coso Rock Art District besides the Big and Little Petroglyph Canyons.
Big and Little Petroglyph Canyons were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964. In 2001, they were incorporated into a larger National Historic Landmark District, called Coso Rock Art District.
History
No one knows for sure who decorated Little Petroglyph Canyon with images, some thought to be more than 10,000 years old, or why the basalt walls of a narrow wash in the bone-dry Coso Mountains at the northern edge of the Mojave Desert became a canvas for images of flocks of bighorn sheep, hunters with bows and arrows, and strange anthropomorphic figures with circular radiant heads. The area is one of the richest Amerindian petroglyph / rock-art sites in the western hemisphere.
There is considerable archaeological evidence substantiating trade between the Coso People, possibly of the Northern Utoaztecan affiliation Paiute tribe, and other indigenous peoples of the Americas and native American tribes. For example, distant trade with the Chumash people of coastal southern California is confirmed by archaeological recovery of a kind of obsidian, which has been chemically fingerprinted as belonging to the Coso culture and territory, discovered in coastal California prehistoric sites in San Luis Obispo County, and in prehistoric sites on the Channel Islands off the coast of southern California.
[source: Wikipedia]
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