Illuminating Event-Based Significance at Three Rock Art Sites on Vandenberg AFB, CA

Summary

Although we now have highly technical equipment that allows analyses and observations of rock art in new ways, this should in no way diminish pursuing our personal sense of curiosity, ability to develop hypotheses out of hunches, and test those hypotheses as best we can, to discover layers of significance for a rock art site that no piece of equipment would ever be capable of detecting. One such area of inquiry is consideration of ephemeral, event-based ways rock art interplays with the surroundings – the way rock art may have been created against a backdrop of specific environmental conditions – in some cases conditions that are unique and clear, in other cases seemingly undistinguished. Discoveries may come slowly while a hypothesis is tested under various conditions. There are some obvious starting points – solstice and equinox, for example – but even then the opportunity for discovery comes but once a year. Three rock art sites on Vandenberg AFB, California, have pictographs and petroglyphs that were created in interplay with either sunrise or sunset during Winter solstice. This paper discusses the interplay at each site and the methods used to document these events.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21863