Petroglyphs
by Robert Bales
Title
Petroglyphs
Artist
Robert Bales
Medium
Photograph - Photo
Description
Some very interesting petroglyphs found in the Canyonlands National Park.
Petroglyphs (also called rock engravings) are pictogram and logogram images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, and abrading. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images. Petroglyphs are found world-wide, and are often associated with prehistoric peoples. The word comes from the Greek words petro-, theme of the word "petra" meaning "stone", and glyphein meaning "to carve", and was originally coined in French as p�troglyph'
Newspaper Rock State Historic Monument is in eastern Utah, western United States, located to the east of Canyonlands National Park on Hwy 211. It is 28 miles northwest of Monticello and 53 miles south of Moab. The Monument features a flat rock with one of the largest known collections of petroglyphs.[1]
Formerly a state park, Newspaper Rock is now designated a State Historical Monument, and is situated along the relatively well-traveled access road into the Needles district of Canyonlands National Park, 12 miles (19 km) from US 191 and 30 miles (48 km) from the park boundary. The 200-square-foot (19 m2) rock is a part of the vertical Wingate sandstone cliffs that enclose the upper end of Indian Creek Canyon, and is covered by hundreds of ancient Indian petroglyphs (rock carvings)�one of the largest, best preserved and easily accessed groups in the Southwest. The petroglyphs have a mixture of human, animal, material and abstract forms, and to date no-one has been able to fully interpret their meaning.
The first carvings at the Newspaper Rock site were made around 2,000 years ago, left by people from the Archaic, Anasazi, Fremont, Navajo, Anglo, and Pueblo cultures. These petroglyphs, pecked into these rocks allow a glimpse of the life and world of the people who farmed the Puerco River Valley 650 to 2,000 years ago.
Uploaded
December 26th, 2011
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