00:01.00 Alan Hear the story. Oh there Only This is only rock card. You can say whatever you want and it has any kind of meaning under the sun. That's that's not true. That's really a cop cop out and and and really I'd say Naive expression in terms of thinking about the subject subject of rock guard. 00:03.85 archpodnet Um, yeah, yeah, okay. 00:14.78 archpodnet Okay, all right here we go all right welcome back to the rock art podcast episode 86 and we are well we're talking about all kinds of things go back and listen episode 85 if you haven't done so already. 00:20.30 Alan Okay. 00:34.30 archpodnet Because that really kind of sets the stage for what we're talking about in 86 here so Allen you know setting the stage again and embellishing a little bit in the None segment. Let's talk a little bit more about meaning I mean that's really what archeology is all about what does it all mean right? and it's really difficult with rock art. So let's get into that with this particular site. 00:53.52 Alan Well people Well people have said you know it's only rock art and it can mean anything you want it to mean and certainly as an archaeologist anthropologist I Certainly don't know what was in the mind of the Artisan himself in terms of. 00:53.91 archpodnet Subject matter. 01:08.30 archpodnet Ah. 01:11.31 Alan When these particular figures were sketched but that being so there is a body of knowledge because anthropologists have gone throughout the world and explored and asked the native people including the native doctors and. And also priests and religious people and others and learned about the nature of certain symbols and what they mean and why they would be fashioned the way they are in the particular context they are. And what they mean in even a broader sense. Okay, so you know sometimes people have said Well they're only graffiti and they're just you know doing this for fun. Well, That's really not the case I think when we've talked to native Native people. They've told us that these are religious images. 02:00.70 archpodnet Right. 02:08.65 Alan Sacred these are images of their ancestors and these are stories written on stone. It's a means of communication and sometimes the stories are rather transparent and one can. 02:17.95 archpodnet Ah. 02:27.40 Alan Deconstruct them in a way both by using the knowledge of native people and by examining it in a broader fashion as Well. So One of the things that troubled me from the get-go about these images was. As I begin to Probe deeper and deeper into the iconography the images, the figures of decorated animal humans and that are paired with or adorned with these dart points these projectile points these weapons of War. Found that a large number of them were actually females and they had ah various anatomical details or signatures or attributes that were definitely communicating that these figures were females I said well if they're females. Why the heck. Would they be shown with weapons of what we consider war or killing or men's weapons for hunting because hunting was usually a thing that was done by men and women didn't Hunt. You know large game and they certainly didn't associate with the manufacture of these kinds of dart points typically done by Men. So I said but what the heck is going on here. Well as I began to Probe deeper and deeper into the cosmology I found out that anthropologists. 03:41.36 archpodnet Right. 03:57.87 Alan Have found that throughout the world. There are images that twin females and weaponry and those kinds of images are images that express. 04:04.60 archpodnet Um. 04:15.63 Alan What's called a master or mistress of the animal's figure or some sort of earth mother for better use of the term goddess So we're looking at at deities and these deities are expressing expressing um a. 04:26.17 archpodnet Um, right. 04:35.10 Alan Ah, whole package of messages simultaneously as symbols you know are prone to do the reason we see projectile points dart points is because in part ah the habits of using. Dart points and killing animals to native people often have a lot to do with sort of as we say bringing in the bacon or it's almost akin to as women birth babies or acquire the plant foods. 05:11.34 archpodnet Ah. 05:13.52 Alan Men acquire the animal foods and so this has to do with almost a series of increase fertility revitalization resurrection transmogrification all of those different elements. All packaged together and we see that depicted in a way showing showing death and life and the twinning of those kinds of images together. It's ah it's a fascinating. 05:33.93 archpodnet Right. 05:51.70 Alan Concoction or conflation of different images that I'd say in the past we may not have understood them as as appropriately as we do now. But I think after 30 or 40 years of my exploring this subject. At least have some educated guesses. How's that. 06:13.60 archpodnet Yeah, and I guess what I would ask is you know when we're talking about studying this this rock imagery where else do we see similar imagery right? Where else? do we see this is it is there some stuff that you're seeing that is literally only ever seen. In rock art in Rock Imagery and and nowhere else and and that and that if the answer is yes that might actually be because nothing else preserves like rock art. It might have been on something else but we just simply don't have evidence of it. But maybe some of the more recent stuff the ethnographicgainst evidence you know, do we see this kind of. I know I'm really curious as where else we could see this kind of stuff in order to help further our interpretation. 06:54.34 Alan We see it especially amongst the hopi and amongst the ah American Southwest for the membbrace culture. We see it on their bowls ceremonial bowls that are remarkable. 06:58.96 archpodnet Ah. 07:07.22 archpodnet Um, oh yeah. 07:12.94 Alan Within the hopi culture. We see it expressed in many many ways both by ceremony and also by shrines and so we see these shrines and surprisingly they have the same. 07:23.53 archpodnet Ah. 07:31.50 Alan Kinds of imagery and artifacts that we see within the rock art. Um, the hopi are are somewhat unique in the American Southwest because they have preserved the ancient portions of their. You know, cultural mores and religious metaphors and they've they've done this and we've happened to have documented it in a way because we've had anthropologists studying them for well over a hundred years and also what's interesting is they. 07:52.55 archpodnet Ah. 08:09.42 Alan Represent an ancient stratum an isolate of None aztec in culture and of course we believe the koso were uto aztec in speakers and there appears to be a deep time stratum. 08:13.69 archpodnet Okay. 08:26.46 Alan That has great consistency and endurance long-standing nature of certain symbols and certain packages of symbols representing certain concepts that appear in the Uto Aztec and cultural world. How's that. 08:42.43 archpodnet Okay, yeah, that's. 08:45.43 Alan So for so for the for the for the aztec for the maya for the we choll for the hopi for the coso for all the great pace and numbic speakers. We can see again and again and again these same. 08:51.68 archpodnet Um. 09:04.17 Alan Hallmark symbols. We call them the semiotics symbols or indexical animals remember that one? Yeah, so so all of this appears again again and again and again the indexical animal for many of the. 09:10.45 archpodnet Um, yeah. 09:18.98 archpodnet Um, yeah. 09:23.10 Alan Desert West animals was the bighorn sheep even the even the hopie wore the wore the horns of the bighorn sheep and they had bighorn sheep elements to their cosmology and it was rather interesting in terms of. 09:25.37 archpodnet Um, Brett. 09:41.50 Alan Some of the tremendous similarities between the imagery amongst the hopie as that of the koso if we look at an historic example. We have the indigenous people with the tachees and the Western Mojave Nummi speakers. Ah who are called the koayasu. 09:42.41 archpodnet Ah. 09:58.27 archpodnet Um. 10:00.80 Alan And those Southern payute people had a um particular figure a a deity or cosmological hero who is emblazoned on a pillar of stone made of limestone and that image. Is a master of animals and that's an entrance into the underworld and it's associated with a very lengthy and detailed narrative sacred narrative that talks about the transmogrification. The revitalization of animals. 10:31.13 archpodnet Um, yeah. 10:39.64 Alan That occurs as a seasonal round. How's it does any any any that makeup. Yeah yeah, so we're talking about cycles of life. We're talking about fertility. We're talking about. Ah. 10:41.74 archpodnet Okay, yeah, well that actually makes sense. Yeah. 10:58.77 Alan The stratum of life the strata and I think I've talked about this before that if you look at some of this rock guard as almost a celestial map or a cosmological map of the universe. It tells you certain things I'm looking at a panel right now. 11:16.90 archpodnet Yeah. 11:18.35 Alan That appears to appears to go from the underworld and we see some very large bighorn sheep and the horns the sort of the visual shortcut for a bighorn sheep in its horns turns into a bird and the birds fly up into the celestial. Kingdom and right off to the left is a figure adorned with projectile points for projectile points all across the head of this figure and then to the right is a bighorned sheep horned individual sort of orchestrating this hole. Thing that's going on with sort of the underworld moving to the terrestrial world on up into the the celestial sphere of the sky world. So and that all appears appears on a panel in the Kosos um, same thing happens on another panel in the Kosos where you see a. 12:03.41 archpodnet Um, ah. 12:15.36 Alan Kind of a rotund individual with a projectile point on his or her head and you see all of these symbols for Fertility. You'll see these fertility symbols vulva form symbols or symbols of. Sometimes we'll show bigh horn sheep with their with their tails erect and also sometimes there's a spirit arrow sort of entering their reproductive equipment. Anyways, that's a whole other one too you see him in this. You see it in the Southwest American southwest. 12:44.53 archpodnet Um, yeah, okay. 12:53.85 Alan Petrified national forest in Arizona there's a remarkable panel where it's got a female with sort of in mid birthing posture and all kinds of fertility symbols patterned all over this rock. There's a. 13:07.79 archpodnet Ah. 13:11.97 Alan Couple of animals with upturned tails and also a spirit arrow. There's a coco pelli with a flute. Um, there's ah you know some of them that look like phalaces up there and there's also bows and arrows. It's all on a single panel. Very Ah, it's very easy. Easy to Understand. It's a graphic portrayal of sort of life and a prayer a prayer for increase and openness to what we would call reproductive fertility or vitality. 13:35.40 archpodnet Um, yeah. 13:48.58 archpodnet Yeah, okay I mean yeah, kind of but it's kind of intended not to make sense to me right? like that's ah like I think I feel like it really makes sense to the people who yeah. 13:50.63 Alan Has that is it any that makes sense. 14:02.35 Alan It's It's a hard thing to rap Rap Rap who did it who fashioned it because because they lived they lived and breathed and understood the nature of this to sort of put our minds in in the same plane as someone who lived. 14:07.79 archpodnet Yeah. 14:19.46 Alan None of years ago. It's not so simple we have ah we have a totally totally different, totally different, totally different world view. We have different priorities to these people. Their top priority was surviving. Um. 14:20.94 archpodnet Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um. 14:37.60 archpodnet Ah. 14:38.50 Alan Thriving finding some way to guarantee guarantee their ah longstanding nature vitality in a particular area that was I would say somewhat challenging. Yeah, there wasn't wasn't much yeah wasn't much water wasn't much rain. 14:48.66 archpodnet Yeah, yeah I mean I would say so as well. 14:57.47 archpodnet Ah. 14:57.67 Alan Less than three inches of rain there in the cosos and it wasn't a it wasn't a simple life but in some ways it must have been not as arduous or as challenging as we could make it out because they spent a lot of time making pictures. 15:08.16 archpodnet Um, yeah, indeed. 15:14.36 Alan With with a couple hundred with a couple 0 pictures that we just know about ourselves so you can imagine how many more pictures there still is out there. They've only had only had about 30% of the country surveyed so far. 15:21.71 archpodnet Um, yeah. 15:28.38 archpodnet Wow, that's I mean that's that alone is an astounding fact because we make all these predictions based on and interpretations I should say based on I mean to be honest, not a lot of evidence. But when I was really studying paleoanthropology back in college. You know it's like oh we've got this whole species over here on the ah you know evolutionary tree and it turns out that entire species is defined defined by a fragment of a Jawbone right? like it's not It's not quite that bad here. But but it is so yeah, it's like every time we find something it changes. Everything. 15:53.99 Alan Right? right? exactly. 16:00.85 Alan Yes, yes, right right? up? Yeah, any any go ahead. 16:04.65 archpodnet You know? but anyway all right? Well I think ah, there's yeah I think we could continue talking about this forever Probably I would really like to get maybe some of your co-authors on as we get closer to the book release. 16:20.98 Alan Okay. 16:21.51 archpodnet And then you know, specifically talk about their opinions and things on this for now. Let's go ahead and take a break and when we come back, we are going to head back to Skinwalker Ranch we'll be back in a minute.