The Great Gallery, Maze District

The Great Gallery, and all of the other pictograph panels in Horseshoe Canyon, are some of the most famous panels of rock art in the US. Certainly in the southwest. They're also bloody inaccessible and involve well over 50 miles of tough gravel road. My poor baby never would have made it out there, so I feel very lucky that work gave me the chance to see these in person. This is Barrier Canyon style rock art, ranging from 2-4,000 years BP. The sunlight was really direct when I visited, which is rotten for taking photos, but hey, if you wanted splashy, go get some postcards.

Large panel view, to get a feel for it. These long figures usually give me the creeps.

This guy looks like he's wearing a bandolier.

This broken panel was brought to you by a mining company in the 1920's, who brilliantly thought they'd be able to use dynamite to remove the panel and...take it home with them? The rest of the panel is in rubble below, but the happy ending is, the destroyed protions have provided lots of material for experimental dating techniques that require stuff like grinding up the rock art ;-)

They tell me that this figure predates all the other flute players and that he's probably holding an atl-atl. I tell them they're thinking with their dicks again. Clearly this guy is rockin' out!

I have a pet theory that the Barrier Canyon style anthropomorphs mimic the shapes of water stains on canyon walls, and that they're guardian figures for each individual canyon. Hey, it's about as informed as any other rock art interpretation.

This ghost figure is extra-super creepy. They also remind me of wrapped up corpses.