Petroglyphs
Went to Joshua Tree Park this weekend and happened upon some petroglyphs (1870, from Fr. pétroglyphe, from Gk. petra “rock” + glyphe “carving.”) on the Barker Dam trail.
The sign at the park stated that the petroglyphs: “have been traced over with paint. This type of vandalism prevents others from seeing the petroglyphs in their original form. Please help us by reporting any vandalism you observe.”
Research
Internet sources and park rangers attribute the ‘vandalism’ to the making of a Disney film, but the details vary from source to source. I also came across a documentary page about ‘rock art’ by Richard Roberts, Professor of Communication Studies at Northern Arizona University. He asks some questions well worth considering:
• Why, once someone has marked a rock, do others appear compelled to add their mark?• How can additions to rock art sites be understood as part of an ongoing dialogue, not only with other peoples past, present and future, but with the places themselves?
• How do we assign value to one mark on rock versus another? with what consequences?
• What makes one mark interesting, attractive or otherwise valued while another is judged to be not only without worth but in effect a form of vandalism?
And he goes on to comment on the petroglyphs I happened upon:
Since this panel, the same one shown above from Joshua Tree National Park, was painted and otherwise enhanced for commercial purposes, is their presence on the panel less of a concern? Regardless of how and why they were produced, since these images are approaching 50 years old should they be protected as historic resources? The integrity of the indigenous rock art site—itself possibly marked by more than one culture over an extended period of time—has been violated, reducing its archaeological value. But this site is nonetheless a material record of the interaction between multiple cultures: at a minimum, the culture(s) who produced the indigenous rock art and the culture who painted them over for the purposes of producing a film for television. Is that record of cultural interaction, and of the attitudes of one culture towards the material traces of another, a resource of lower value than a “pristine” (indigenous only) site?
How long until something become art, history, and/or of value? Perhaps it’s a scarcity vs abundance issue and how we interpret those concepts. I will leave you with the picture I took of the petroglyphs . . . I digitally enhanced the glyphs so you can see them more clearly ;)
Methods:
Using Photoshop CS5, Airbrush Soft Round 100% flow: Used the eye dropper tool to pick up the average color in a given area (symbol composed of parts) and made it up to 10% lighter in order to enhance its visibility.One things that was of note was the data loss in capturing the image of the petroglyphs – i.e. pixelation. Some areas looked as if they contained markings, but I could not be sure. Makes me wonder how sure the painters/artists were of what were intentional or unintentional markings in those more ambiguous areas of the rock.
References:
“Joshua Tree National Park (U.S. National Park Service).” U.S. National Park Service – Experience Your America. Ed. US Department of Interior. Web. 10 Feb. 2011.Roberts, Richard A. “Rock Art | Documentary Works.” DocumentaryWorks. Web. 07 Feb. 2011. http://documentaryworks.org/stories/rockart.htm.
Wikipedia contributors, “Petroglyph,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Petroglyph&oldid=411658937 (accessed February 8, 2011).
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