2: Ute Rock Art of Western Colorado
Abstract
Chants have no words. They are spiritually uplifting in a motion.-Clifford DuncanThe rock art of the Uncompahgre Plateau in western Colorado includes the Uncompahgre and Gunnison River drainage system on the eastern side, and the Dolores River drainage on the western side. According to Clifford, this territory was his father's ancestral land. The selection of petroglyphs sites included here was chosen for its clear images, distinct style, and age estimations. The rock art included outlines the broad array of petroglyphs found on the Uncompahgre Plateau, with examples from each era, depicting various categories of images.METHODOLOGY AND INTERPRETATIONThe age estimations of the petroglyphs of the Uncompahgre Plateau are based on engraving style, weathering, and direct dating if possible, with relative dates determined from soils and archaeological material associated with the panels. Chronology of styles is based on a large database of sites composed of images found throughout the plateau. Supporting data from current literature and ethnographic analogy is employed. This may allow for inferred interpretations of petroglyph panels that may represent social activities, such as game drives, battle scenes, or tribal ceremonies, such as the Bear Dance. Native consultants have suggested that images in a panel may also represent spiritual entities, such as rain or cloud deities, spirits of the deceased, or even iconographie symbols. The principles of symbol interpretation rely on consistency checks, frequency checks, and symbol affinities gathered from a comprehensive database (Patterson 2011). These multiple techniques follow the principles of cryptanalysis, which provides lines of evidence for the rock-art interpretation and analysis.REVIEW OF CULTURAL CONTEXTA literature search of the archeological context for this field of study in western Colorado has been documented, most notably by Reed and Gebauer (2004). The standard, Colorado Prehistory: A Context for the Northern Colorado River Basin (Reed and Metcalf 1999), is the most comprehensive for understanding the prehistory for this area. A historical context for the rock art appears in Appendix D of Class I Cultural Resource Overview of the Bureau of Land Management's Uncompahgre Field Office, Western Colorado (Patterson 2011). This document is reproduced herein as Table A.l in Appendix A.Petroglyphs (engraved) and pictographs (painted) on rock surfaces are difficult to date and to place within established archeological chronologies. It is also difficult to place them within cultural affinities; those created during the Archaic and Formative Eras are harder to determine than those created during the Protohistoric and Historic Eras (Figures 4 and 5). Based on extensive ethnographic information for this region, cultural diagnostics, such as the horse, cowboy hats, and fringed leggings, clearly identify historic Ute rock art. The Utes were the first Native Americans to adopt the horse culture. Large pedestrian, shieldbearing figures with spikey headdresses seen in petroglyphs may identify Paiutes rather than Utes, simply because Paiutes never adopted the horse culture. Figures 6A and 6B show a warrior carrying a pedestrian shield large enough to protect vital body parts but awkward to carry on horseback. In contrast, human stick figures shown in Figures 6C and 6D have the cultural diagnostics of Utes with equestrain trappings.It may be possible to determine Numic from Ancestral Pueblo cultural affiliations in images created during the Protohistoric Era by considering body style and symbol affiliations from the ethnographic and archeological record of the Ancestral Pueblo of the Southwest. Rock art of the San Juan Basketmakers and Pueblo II found in the San Juan Basin is typified by hairstyle, sometimes by body style, and by depictions of traditional deities or important food sources. In contrast, Numic hunter-gatherer traditions depict flat heads, sometimes with horns, and have a preference for depicting game animals, trails, bear paws, and tree iconography. …
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