Rock
Art
As you visit parks and
monuments in the Southwest, especially places like Canyon de
Chelly, you will probably see examples of a unique form of
expression called "rock art." Rock art can be any
picture painted, drawn, or carved onto a rock surface. Some of
these pictures are thousands of years old, but others are part of
ongoing cultural expression at Canyon de Chelly
today.
Much of the rock art found
in Canyon de Chelly was done by the Anasazi, a prehistoric pueblo
people who lived in the canyon from about a.d. 1 to 1300. Though we can
only speculate as to the meaning of these drawings, their variety
and detail suggest that the Anasazi had a rich, flourishing
culture in the canyons.
The Navajo people came to
Canyon de Chelly after the Anasazi abandonment and they
brought with them their own colorful and distinct style of rock
art. Navajo people continue to use rock art to record both the
secular and ceremonial aspects of their lives, although such
use is more limited now than in the past.
Rock art prompts us to
imagine the daily lives, as well as the deeper philosophies
of the prehistoric Anasazi and the historic Navajo, allowing us a
peek into a world very different from our own. Come and explore
the rock art of Canyon de Chelly.
PICTOGRAPHS and
PETROGLYPHS
Canyon de Chelly rock art,
like most rock art throughout the world, is of two basic types:
pictographs and petroglyphs. Pictographs were painted or
drawn onto the rock surface. Petroglyphs were created by
scratching, pecking, or abrading the rock surface with another
rock.
Pictographs are the most
abundant form of rock art found at Canyon de Chelly, in contrast
to most other areas, where petroglyphs predominate. The colors
are almost exclusively derived from mineral pigments found in
clay and stones. The variety of colored clays available in this
region gave the artists great diversity. White and red are the
two most common colors, but yellow, black, orange, and turquoise
are also found.
These mineral pigments were
ground to a fine powder and mixed with a "binder,"
which actually held the paint to the surface. The Anasazi used a
variety of binders, including animal
fats, vegetable oils, blood, urine, egg
whites, and water.
The paint was sometimes
applied rather crudely using the fingers. Often, however, brushes
made of fine animal hair or yucca fiber were used, resulting in
pictures of fine quality.
To make petroglyphs
required the use of a hammerstone as a pecking tool, or two
stones, one used as a hammer, the other as a chisel. The artist
often made petroglyphs on "canyon varnish," the dark
patina found on many canyon walls. By pecking away this thin dark
coating, the lighter natural color of the rock is revealed,
creating a picture in relief. Other times, the pictures were
deeply incised on bare rock.
Sometimes these techniques,
pictograph and petroglyph, were combined. You may
occasionally see incised petroglyphs that have been painted
like pictographs.
