This Shoshone site, in South Western Nevada, contains quite a number of large rocks with petroglyphs. Most of the Petroglyphs were chalked over heavily for photographing by a team in the 1960's which leaves the petroglyphs looking as though they were just carved/etched. These petroglyphs are in a very dry region in Nevada and the patina takes hundreds of years to darken the petroglyphs. This gives us or Archeologists an idea of how old each of these etchings are by how dark they appear. When chalk is used, and although chalk is somewhat soft, it scrapes the patina off of the petroglyph. Also when the photographers leave a site they do not remove the chalk and this leaves an agent (chalk) to pull moisture directly to the petroglyph and cause erosion faster than it would normaly occur. This site seems to be quite graffic and somewhat violant. This first petroglyphed rock contains among the many etchings a map. We were able to locate some of the surrounding sites on this map. One of the surrounding sites on this map was accidently discovered by a group of Reno University Students on a mountain climbing frolic in 1943. The site it pointed to has since been devistated.
As you look at this rock I will tell you what some of the carvings represent. The upper right of the rock has a row representing braves/men. The center left represents travel or journey. The petroglyph at bottom center, the bar with the lines going down from it and turning into squiggly lines, represents blood. Without the squiggly lines attached it would represent rain not blood. At this site it could represents blood flowed like rain or water probably in some sort of battle if it is the same age as the braves/men depicted by the capital I figires on the upper right of the rock. Because some of these petroglyphs were chalked and some were not, it is impossible to understand in what sequence they occur in time.
This rock seemed to be the only one at this site that had not been chalked. The square with the cross lines inside it at the lower right that looks like a window is "modern graffiti". Most of the petroglyphs on this rock denote fertility as do some of the other petroglyphs in this area.
This rock was very heavily chaked for photographing in the 1960's, as you can see below. The chalk did bring out the petroglyph of the body figure, that the unchalked photo taken in 1996 did not. Unfortunately the chalking also makes it impossible to ascertain the time difference of each petroglyph or group of petroglyphs.
If you compare the two photos of this rock you will notice the upper right of the rock is breaking and eroding away in just 30 short years.
