A recently rediscovered rock-art panel at the San Island Campground near Bluff, Utah, is now within the new Bears Ears National Monument.
The ancient petroglyphs along the San Juan River were obscured by thick tamarisk and Russian olives until a clearing project in 2011 revealed the 100-yard-long panel.
Rock-art researcher Janet Lever-Wood was part of the first group to study the panel in detail. She shared her findings during a recent presentation in Cortez sponsored by the Hisatsinom Chapter of the Colorado Archaeology Society.
“For 6,000 years, people passed through here and left a record of their visits on the walls,” Lever-Wood said. “When the vegetation was removed, we realized this was rock art nobody had seen for a very long time.”
The panel also includes the faded and debated “woolly mammoth” petroglyph. That petroglyph, if it depicts a mammoth, could date to at least 11,000 years ago to the Ice Age, about the time that the species became extinct in North America.
On the main panel, researchers have identified images of Native American creation stories, records of rights of passage, ancient tools, and inventories of plants and animals. There are bird forms, disembodied heads, human figures wearing rectangular robes, and perhaps ancient astronomical observations.
“Here signs were left by visiting clans, a ritual center where worlds interconnect,” Lever-Wood said. “The space maintains that resonance, and we use all of our senses to synthesize this experience.”
To handle increased visitation, the Bureau of Land Management installed a trail and pole fence along the panel. In 2016, an information kiosk was installed at the campground explaining the ancient rock-art site.
Now within the Bears Ears National Monument, it will likely see more visitation and bring more attention to education and ethical visitation of archaeological sites, Lever-Wood said.
Researchers surveyed the newly revealed Sand Island panel using high-tech processes.
Dave Manley, a professional photographer and rock-art enthusiast, took digital images of each of the 64 petroglyphs.
For images high on the cliff, he mounts the camera on a 40-foot extendible fiberglass pole. Wireless technology transmits the image to a laptop or iPad on the ground, then the shutter is triggered.
“With the pole, you get straight on images that are more accurate,” he said. “When photographed from below the image gets distorted. In some cases, the higher images cannot be seen from below.”
The pole system also allows the camera to be positioned unobstructed between the trees and the cliff face.
Manley’s scanned and labeled images of the Bluff Campground rock-art panel are archived at the Edge of the Cedars Museum, and are available for research. He has also published a book on rock art photography titled “Ancient Galleries of Cedar Mesa.”
