Rock Art Research, Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, Southeastern Colorado, 1989

摘要

In 1989, archaeological research in the Pinon Canon Maneuver Site included documentation of four rock art sites, 5LA4404, 5LA5563, 5LA5569, and 5LA5593, through black and white and color photography, scale drawings, and panel data forms. Test excavations were completed at 5LA5255, a rock art site intensively recorded in prior research, and at 5LA5846, a newly discovered petroglyph site where some of the artwork is buried by cultural deposits. Paintings of tipis, guns, and horses at two of the sites are directly attributable to the Cheyenne, Kiowa, or Comanche who inhabited the region in the 1800s. Other sites may have ritual association with the mountain spirits of the Apache. One petroglyph site is dominated by fully pecked quadrupedal figures that exhibit a variety of forms. It has varnish dates of A.D. 900 to 1200, and it is almost certainly the work of the Apishapa peoples who inhabited two adjacent sites. Radiocarbon dates for these village sites are overlapping with the varnish dates for the petroglyphs. Data recovered in the test excavations are useful for correlating soil formation, climatic regimes, and cultural utilization of the region in the past 1000 years.