Thursday, December 01, 2011

Some Idaho Rock Art

I am currently in Boise, ID for an agency meeting and field trip for a project I have up here. We were in Owyhee County for a field trip yesterday and saw these rock art panels near Givens Hot Springs. The picture above is of a location called Map Rock. When this was recorded the interpretation was that the large curving line you see on the front of the rock represented the Snake River and the other petroglyphs were features along the river. I believe that's fairly speculative.

Please remember you can click on these images to enlarge them for easier viewing.

The majority of what's going on at Map Rock is geometric in nature, but this detail from the left side (referencing the earlier picture) shows what appear to be deer.



This detail from near the top of the rock shows a bighorn.

About a quarter mile away from Map Rock there is another group of five panels. I'll show a couple here. Most of this work is geometric - though I did see one anthropomorph.

The anthropomorph is in the upper right hand portion of this panel. One wag in our field party said that square sitting on a line, just above a circle (at the very bottom of the panel) obviously is a Frosty the Snowman representation. 'Tis the season.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice depiction and discussion of the Map Rock petroglyphs. A minor correction - the rock is located in Canyon County, not Owyhee County. But there are plenty of glyphs on either side of the Snake River.