Rock Art Recording Field School

I got back from my Rock Art recording trip last night. I came home early because of some drama with my ex. I half expected something like this to happen, she always finds a way to screw up anything I might do for myself.
Here's where I set up camp. People were surprised that I was able to maneuver my Chevy to the camp site. Everyone else has trucks, jeeps, 4x4's, etc. One couple brought out their RV. You know, maybe this is my age talking, but RV's look better to me all the time, especially when it comes to little camping trips like this. Waterproof, built it toilet and shower, actual bedding, all the comforts of home. When I went to Burning Man a few years back, I noticed that some folks brought RV's and I have to admit I was jealous.
Of course, I believe that I'm being a hard core camper when I pitch a tent and crawl into a sleeping bag. I feel like I'm priveledged if I pump up an air mattress to sleep on.
But you know what? Screw all this 'roughing it' crap! I think my next camping trip will be a nice room on the 25th floor of a Vegas hotel overlooking the Strip.
And since I'm in a 'screw it' state of mind right now, here's an interesting story. One night during the trip, we were all sitting around being self important, speaking highly of ourselves and our mission, when one person asked "What's the point?" It seems that the Forest Ranger was out to see us, and someone played devil's advocate and questioned the significance of archaeology. At first, some people became defensive as they were convinced that we were performing an important service. But as the question sank in, I had to ask myself...on a grand scale, who gives a shit? Not too many people obviously. No one is making a living studying petroglyphs. I'm sure there are some honest-to-God archaeologists on staff somewhere who include petroglyphs in their studies, but they no doubt have bigger priorities and ever shrinking budgets. The Forest Ranger I mentioned earlier? He's the ONLY ranger for a 3 million acre chunk of land. Someone could go out there and destroy glyphs and ruins at will, and he'd be ill equipped to do much about it. If there was any major damage done, it sure wouldn't make the front page of the newspaper.
Maybe I'm just glyphed-out from the trip, maybe I need a little time off, or at least a nap. But as I went through all the steps of recording rock art, I had this very uneasy feeling that after all this was done, the reports would end up in a box in a room somewhere, and promptly forgotten.

Ok, enough whining. There were hundreds of glyphs. Some where redundant, others were very unique. Here's an example of something I haven't seen before. There's a deer-type creature, and it's painted red. Colored petroglyphs aren't exactly unique, and there are examples of them all over the world. In fact, most were probably colored at one point, but faded due to time and erosion. This is a big deal for me because it's the first colored glyph that I've seen in person. There was a red lizard too, but I like this one because it's in the area that I was working.

Ehrenberg Revisited, White Tanks Petroglyphs

In the previous post, I showed a pic of a cemetary monument in Ehrenberg that had a boulder with glyphs on it. I was pretty content with myself for having noticed, and was ready to play the advocate and scold the guilty parties for their criminal act.
Well, I made some phone calls and talked to one of the locals. That monument is decades old, and if I want to talk to anyone who was involved in the construction, I was going to need a shovel because I'd have to dig them up first. The local I spoke to said that he'd be surprised to see glyphs on the monument because at the time of construction, Indian/Settler relations weren't so hot, so it would be unlikely that the deceased would be honored with decorations made by local Indians.
That being said, I think I'll let this one slide. I'm sure I'll find some other windmill to charge later on.

So I signed up for a class with the AAS. It's called Rock Art Recording. It involves actual classroom instruction on Monday nights, and a week camping out in the field recording glyphs in the Tonto National Forest. A week camping, wow. And that's not even a vacation. My kids are gonna be pissed when they hear I spent a week in the woods and didn't bring them along.

It seems to me that the folks that are taking this class must have a lot of time on their hands. One night a week for 3 and a half hours? No problem. A week out in the woods? Uhhh...that's gonna sting just a little bit. But these little side trips? That's too much. It seems that in addition to class, we're supposed to have these little field trips. Last Sunday we met at White Tanks Park. We were supposed to be there at 8am. I get off work at 7:30am if I'm lucky, then had to haul my butt from work to White Tanks to get there just in time for the petroglyph hike. Of course I had just worked 3 nights in a row, so I was tired and still wearing scrubs.
Showing up in scrubs presented another problem. When asked earlier what I did for a living, I was vague in my response. I'm proud of my job, my title, and the work I do, but sometimes I don't want to walk into a group of people I just met and announce that I'm a RN. I'm sure anyone in my profession understands my point. It's almost inevetable that once people find out what you do, someone drops their pants, shows you a part of their body that rarely sees the light of day, points to something, then ask "Is that a pimple or a boil?" If something goes wrong, I'll jump in and do what I can to help, but I kinda wanted to put this off for a bit.
Well, it wasn't but a few minutes before everyone knew what I did for a living. At the next meeting (which I was late to), the instructor informed the group that I would be their "Red Cross person" in the event of some kind of emergency during the camping trip. Yes, I was asked first, and yes, I agreed. But what was I going to do, refuse?

On to the White Tank glyphs. My daughter and I went on that exact same hike and saw the same glyphs back in March. I should've just went home and got some sleep. There were a couple of ladies who were very knowledgeable about the site and had devoted years to recording glyphs in the area. Some of my fellow students asked a lot of questions. Questions are good, but I find sometimes that if you let a person finish what they're saying, they end up answering your question for you.
One man insisted that this is a glyph of a palm tree. Never mind that palm trees aren't native to Arizona, never mind that it looks more like a corn stalk, and never mind that it's well established that the tribes in this area grew squash, beans, oh and CORN!

Here, check this out. Water and corn. I shouldn't act like I'm so sure about this, because I feel most of this stuff defies interpretation. But one thing that I'm pretty sure of is that these aren't palm trees!