Nevada Valley of fire state park petroglyphs

[magua]

Long time, no post.

Sometimes I have time, sometimes I am out in the field too much. Well, never too much. I’ve been busy on some fantastic projects.

I got to spend a lovely vacation in Utah, Arizona, and Nevada a couple weeks ago, and I wanted to share some petroglyph pictures that I got from the valley of fire state park in Nevada. Truly remarkable place and I encourage anyone who has interest in the subject to visit. Preferably visit in the evening at dusk.

We visited Atlatl rock, and then ventured our way on foot into the various canyons surrounding the area. Almost every single canyon, face wall, on the varnish of the cooked stone, you can see petroglyphs of various types everywhere.

I can’t possibly attach all the photos I took, but I will post a few very cool ones for people to see.

 

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[CreekSide]

What’s the date of them? I don’t think we have anything like this in Georgia that I’m aware of and surly haven’t seen any on my adventures. Those are very cool to see

 

[magua]

What’s the date of them? I don’t think we have anything like this in Georgia that I’m aware of and surly haven’t seen any on my adventures. Those are very cool to see

The estimates vary. 2500-4000 years old. I believe that there was some carbon dated using excavated artifacts that were found just below the area of work, and they came back to around 300 BC. Items in the desert hold up much better than they do in my area because of the weather. The dry arid climate preserve things better.

Some of those petroglyphs are up pretty high too. I took a picture of one on a high canyon wall and they had to have gotten pretty creative to get up there for those.

 

[magua]

What’s the date of them? I don’t think we have anything like this in Georgia that I’m aware of and surly haven’t seen any on my adventures. Those are very cool to see

By the way, you have track rock gap petroglyph site in Georgia. It’s pretty famous.

 

[CreekSide]

By the way, you have track rock gap petroglyph site in Georgia. It’s pretty famous.

I just looked it up. Never knew maybe I will take a road trip. Not far maybe a couple of hours away. I’m actually trying to attain permission for some property that has those big rocks on them. Maybe I will see something carved if I can achieve the permission. It’s a large track of property but all no til but I’d still like to give it a look.

 

[magua]

I just looked it up. Never knew maybe I will take a road trip. Not far maybe a couple of hours away. I’m actually trying to attain permission for some property that has those big rocks on them. Maybe I will see something carved if I can achieve the permission. It’s a large track of property but all no til but I’d still like to give it a look.

Petroglyphs are strange. You could find the biggest rock formation ever, and you would think it would be the most influential spot to carve, and there will be nothing. Then you might find something on the smallest area.

You usually will find them where they gathered for spring or fall meetings, meals, get together’s, hunting. Those spots are very common, and it was usually only the holy man or shaman that would carve. But you can find them around areas where there is a natural spring source, rivers, streams, or large cave, or rock entries. Here in Pennsylvania…rivers are strong zones.

 

[newnan man]

Those are really nice. Good pics too.

 

[magua]

Those are really nice. Good pics too.

Thank you. I found the southwest to be very much like Iceland when I visited. No matter what type of pictures you take, it always looks good whether you’re a great photographer or not. Plus I-phones make it look easy.

The astounding number of glyphs that can be found and seen from walking in these canyons is staggering. To try and keep markings like this free of vandalism back home (Pennsylvania aka pennsyltucky) is a full time project and keeping their location private is part of the equation.

 

[CoinmasterIV]

Thanks for posting such awesome photos! I was there with my family in February and was blown away by this park. Not surprising you managed to capture many petroglyphs we didn't even see! That place is a wonderland to hike around...almost like you are on another planet...(our daughter snapped this photo of us). If anyone has a chance to visit you will not be disappointed.

 

[Older The Better]

So I see most are carved in a dark area and exposing the lighter fresh stone, it also looks like other natural light patches around them, did they intentionally darken faces to make them pop or is there a lot of weathering flaking off the older weathered stone?

 

[magua]

It’s called desert varnish. It’s a weathering process that happens to stones in the desert. These people can explain it far better than me.

Valley of Fire - Nevada

Within a short drive from Las Vegas, the party city, the Valley of Fire's glowing red sandstone formations easily inspired the state park's name.

scenicusa.net

Also, copied from caltec University mineral description on their website.

What is desert varnish​

Desert varnish is a dark coating on rocks found in arid regions. The coating is composed dominantly of fine-grained clay minerals. Within the clays are black manganese oxide and red iron oxide. A more general term is rock varnish which applies to dark coatings on rocks in general.
Varnish can be a prominent feature in many landscapes. It often coats canyon walls, particularly in the areas where water flows down the the sides of canyons such as this canyon wall near the Whitehouse at Canyon De Chelly National Park, Arizona, USA, coated with varnish.

Desert varnish plays an important role in archeology. Many petroglyphs are created by chipping through a dark coat of desert varnish to expose a lighter colored underlying rock. This petroglyph is in Indian Petroglyph Petroglyph National Monument, New Mexico, USA.

Desert varnish is commonly seen coating rocks in deserts. On the east side of Death Valley, you can observe canyons with rock slides of different ages distinguished by the degree of varnish development. The older slides have a more mature coating of varnish.

Well-developed coatings can form in the splash zone of rivers in arid regions. The example of a manganese oxide coating in the splash zone of the Rio Grande River, New Mexico, USA, contains clays and manganese oxide similar to that found in desert varnish.

 

[Older The Better]

Is see, thanks for the info, hopefully the rock isn’t weathering too fast looks like eventually they will basically crumble off, makes you wonder how many already have

 

[magua]

Many have been lost to crumbling sandstone rocks all over. Just like many sites are lost to industries like mining and lumber, as well as the forming of towns in general. But quite a few have probably crumbled and toppled into the ground.

In Pennsylvania, we're mapping out some of the Petroglyphs and in, at least one area, we believe that we'll probably be the last official group to have the chance to do this recording because the rock has weathered, it's been carved over and over year after year and defaced throughout the 1800s-present day...not as bad in present day as it was in the 1800s but still bad enough. But the rock has weathered and the original NA petroglyphs are so eroded, they're almost not visible except by the various ways that we're recording. We use photogrammetry as well to get the detail. Eventually, the entire publication will come out on the project and people will get a chance to see the various glyphs. Another cool way to see some of these petroglyphs was an afterthought from one day when we worked for hours to clear, clean off a rock and were attempting to get pics. The sun/shade just wasn't cooperating and it was a struggle to get pics. Then, we thought...let's come back tonight and use lights from different angles and see the results. It was staggering the difference. I will post some pics here but they're incredible. You can see the difference in them.

But I am almost positive that Pa has lost a great deal of artifacts and petroglyphs in areas due to coal mining industry. We're currently having difficulty getting access to another due to it being in close proximity to a marcelus shale pad. Another site, the New Geneva site was actually destroyed by dynamite by the landowners because of the annoying sightseeing people. I believe they did this prior to it being named an official heritage site. So yea...these sites crumble and can disappear too.

 

[oldmxrat]

My winter home is quite close to there, it is a wonderful area to visit!

 

[RGINN]

Cool. More literal representation of an atlatl than what I've seen in the 4 corners area.

 

[dognose]

very cool petroglyphs. distinct

 

[magua]

My winter home is quite close to there, it is a wonderful area to visit!

It’s beautiful. It was too hot for me in October…except it was delightful in evening!

very cool petroglyphs. distinct

Cool. More literal representation of an atlatl than what I've seen in the 4 corners area.

Thank you! The atlatl was very distinct