Dr. Todd Cameron on those Arizona mesa tops. One doesn’t need to leap a very wide conceptual gap to recognize protokatsinas or even Maasawu himself in some of the imposing BCS figures left by the canyonlands ancestors. Perhaps those ancestors are representatives of an even more distantly prehistoric Second World. *** Once we free our attention from captivation by the Unexpected Panel’s katsina-like, humanoid figures we recognize the wealth of detail in the panel’s elaborate composition. Several smaller figures incorporate both animal and human characteristics, abstract winged circles, an arc evocative of a rainbow and, inevitably, symbols too alien to our own cultural foundations to guess the artist’s intentions. Occasionally the most evident component of a suite of elements— subordinate to a BCS panel’s dominating anthropomorphic figures—is the presence of a raincloud. My rock art-obsessed companions and I refer to an obscure panel near Moab, otherwise identified by its give-away location name, as the Stormbringer Panel. Our re-naming recognizes both the need for protective secrecy and the presence of unmistakable rainclouds trailing curtains of virga directly over two major anthropomorphs. Although this seemingly ancient panel—with numerous Basketmaker animal petroglyphs superimposed much later—is heavily faded from ages of exposure, the simplified raincloud and rain-curtain would be difficult to interpret as anything else. Still gazing up at the Unexpected Panel, we recognize nothing as obvious as a raincloud, but the arcing
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Glossary Petroglyph: art chipped into the rock surface rather than painted onto it Pictograph: painted rock art Barrier Canyon style (BCS): rock art of southeastern Utah’s earliest, Desert Archaic inhabitants; the name is a conflation of the Barrier Creek and Horseshoe Canyon which it intermittently drains: there is no actual Barrier Canyon. Anthropomorph: a rock art figure with some human characteristics Hopi: a clan-based pueblo society in northern Arizona 1and one of the oldest surviving southwestern Native American cultures.
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