Very few people know that a wealth of ancient rock art lies in their backyard, hidden among the Carolinas foothills and mountains. Not as elaborate, well-preserved or easily interpreted as those in France and the Southwest, there are nevertheless more than 100 sites where archaeologists think prehistoric people expressed themselves with the tools at hand – stones for chipping, clay for painting.
At the prehistoric sites, there are human and animal stick figures, tracks of deer and bear, circles within circles, crosses within circles, and geometric designs totally incomprehensible to 21st-century eyes.
Age and authorship are generally unknown, though radiocarbon dating of the faded red and yellow pigment on the Paint Rock pictograph on the North Carolina-Tennessee border indicates it was painted 5,000 years ago.
Until 16 years ago, only a handful of sites, including Paint Rock and Cullowhee’s Judaculla Rock, significant to Cherokee legend, were known to the public. Then, in 1997, archaeologist Tommy Charles of the S.C. Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology gathered interested volunteers and formed the S.C. Rock Art Survey. The finds soon started adding up, until at last count there were 63 petroglyph (stone carving) sites, containing hundreds of images – prehistoric, historic and undetermined. There are four pictograph (painting) sites, all prehistoric.
For public viewing
One public site is Judaculla Rock, in private hands for many years but now, as a Cherokee Cultural Heritage Site, the centerpiece of a small Jackson County-owned park near Cullowhee.
It’s the prominent soapstone boulder where, in Cherokee legend, Master of Game Animals Tsul’Kalu’ (Anglicized as “Judaculla”) gave chase to disobedient hunters. Leaping from his home on Tanasee Bald, he left his seven-fingered handprint. It’s one of many images archaeologists believe were carved at different periods.
Landscaping and a raised boardwalk for hands-off viewing surround the rock, which was recently put on the National Register of Historic Places.
Soon to be a public attraction, a large flat-topped rock was discovered just eight years ago at historic Hagood Mill in Pickens County, S.C.
As is typical of much Southeastern art, the 31 images there, most of them prehistoric, are so eroded that they’re practically invisible in direct sunlight.
A survey volunteer who had seen nothing there in bright sun decided to go back on a rainy day in 2005. “Tom, you’re not going to believe this,” he told archaeologist Charles when he excitedly called him. “That Hagood rock is covered with little people.”
Those 18 “little people” and the other images on a 30- by 40-foot section of the boulder have been enclosed in one room of a new two-room building erected by Pickens County Museum ( http://bit.ly/16SdW1r).
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The handicapped-accessible minimuseum is expected to open [in 2014], with low lighting illuminating the images and a circular walkway surrounding them.
Dating rock art in the moisture-laden Southeast is considerably trickier than in the arid West, where a naturally occurring “varnish” can seal organic matter into petroglyph grooves. Organic matter can be dated by the rate of its decay, but in the Carolinas, much of that gets washed away.
Though Charles has retired and Ashcraft says the N.C. Rock Art Survey is now focusing on conservation, they and the other volunteers continue to explore, and to make new discoveries.
They invite the public to be on the lookout, too, and to notify them if they find something: Charles at [email protected], and Ashcraft at [email protected].
Thanks to coldrum for the link. Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com
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