The Hunter's Revenge: Magical Use of a Petroglyph

Summary

A petroglyph panel at 48SW85 in southwestern Wyoming presents a convincing case for the use of rock art imagery in hunting magic rituals. Based on differential weathering and revarnishing of the petroglyphs, different stylistic signatures of artists carving various animals and humans, and key superimpositions, the panel can be confidently identified as the product of at least half a dozen artists reusing the site for more than a century, and possibly much longer. The panel's basic structure shows a communal big game hunt whose components show a corral (that incorporates the panel's natural surface features), several animals, and several humans in different roles as participants.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Methodology and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art

Keywords

Spatial Coverage