The Tale of Rattlesnake Canyon: Ongoing Documentation of an Endangered Rock Art Site

Summary

The Rattlesnake Canyon mural represents one of the most well-preserved and compositionally intricate rock art murals in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, and perhaps the world. Deposited gravels from a major flood episode in June 2014, however, raised the canyon floor approximately 10 feet, enabling future floods to destroy the fragile panel. This presentation provides an update on emergency documentation efforts currently underway at Rattlesnake Canyon. Documentation and analyses of this mural includes: 3D modeling and other advanced photographic techniques engaging color management, digital field microscopy to examine paint layer stratigraphy, production of graphic databases for the 271 figures comprising the mural, elemental analyses of the pigments using pXRF, and the collection of detailed attribute data for each of the figures. This level of detailed documentation is not only preserving the site for future generations, it is also revealing a highly sophisticated graphic expression produced by foragers approximately 3,000 years ago.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Investigating a Ten-Millennia Record of Hunter-Gatherer Lifeways in the Northeastern Chihuahuan Desert

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15480