Desert Messenger

March 2, 2016 www.DesertMessenger.com 11 SEE ROCKS PAGE 26 Electrical • Plumbing • Furnaces Refrigerators • Vintage Towables Water Heaters • LPG/propane RV Appliance Repair • BLM Certified • Licensed • Insured 928-916-3500 MARK'S RV Mobile Recreational Vehicle Service 20 Years in Quartzsite! NEW LOCATION at 625 N. Central Blvd. (Hwy. 95) Mark & Susie Taylor-Beauchamp Call for appointment! CALL TO ORDER 928-927-6715 Stop By 510 South Riggles Ave. INSIDE AL'S RV PARK TEXT ORDERS TO 719-649-1250 Order 7 days a Week Closed on Sunday East Side Breadery Home Baked Breads TO ORDER See us at the FARMER'S MARKET Wednesdays • 10am - 2pm Dec 2nd 2015 - March 2016 ON THE PORCH! ON THE PORCH! Craft Fair 1st Sat. of every month! Daily Activities! QIA 928-927-6325 235 E. Ironwood St., Quartzsite BINGO FRIDAY NIGHT Opens at 5pm. Early Birds 6:30pm. Main7pm Concessions Available PUBLISHER'S NOTICE: All real estate advertised herein is sub- ject to the Federal Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to advertise "any preference, limitation, or discrimination because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national ori- gin, or intention to make any such pref- erence, limitation, or discrimination." What do Tanzania, Bolivia, South Africa, France, Spain, Algeria, Portugal, Australia, China, India, Aruba, and the United States all have in common? Rocks, of course! More specifi cally, talking rocks. Rocks that tell us stories about an- cient peoples. Prehistoric rock art has been found all over the world and some of the biggest and best preserved sites contain thousands of images. Some of the oldest images have been dated to 35,000 years. The heaviest concentration of rock art sites here in the US is found in the Southwest, but rock art sites exist from the southernmost edge of the country all the way to Writ- ing Rock and Medicine Rock on the northern border of North Dakota. Rock art sites have been found from the west coast all the way to Florida and Alabama. One of the most fa- mous east coast sites is Track Rock in Georgia, though petroglyph sites can be found throughout the eastern half of the US in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Massachusetts, just to name a few. In the Midwest, rock art is found in Michigan, Il- linois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Minnesota. By Jenn Jedidiah Free for RocksInMyHead™ If we listen, the rocks will speak Rock art is a broad term describ- ing prehistoric images left on stone outcroppings, in caves, on cliff faces, and on boulders. Rock art sites are often found in association with other artifacts like pottery shards and points, or other indications of settlement such as grind- ing holes or trash middens. In most cases, rock art is found in culturally signifi - cant areas such as hunting grounds and water sources, but sometimes can also be located at or near sacred places, ceremonial sites, battlegrounds or burial grounds. Rock art sites can also be found at important stops along trade routes, like a meeting point, camp, mountain pass, or river crossing. There are three types of rock art. Petroglyphs are images that are pecked or carved into the rock. The majority of rock art images found in the United States are petroglyphs. Painted images are defi ned as pic- tographs. Most of the rock art sites in Africa are pictographs, and the most famous pictograph site in the world is Lascaux in France. Signifi - cant pictographs are found in Utah near Moab, and recently some were ADVENTURES WITH ROCKS ™ discovered in a cave in Tennessee. The third type of rock art is called geoglyphs. Geoglyphs are gigantic images that are made by scraping or gouging several inches into the earth, removing the darker top layer and revealing a lighter sublayer. Of the over 600 geoglyphs that have been discovered in the desert south- west and Mexico, the majority of them are found along the Colorado River in Arizona and California. Geoglyphs, also known as intaglios, depict enormous geometric designs, human forms, and animal fi gures, the largest of which measured 176 feet in length. Dating rock art sites can be challeng- ing. Identifying regional, cultural, and chronological differences in the images allows archeologists to rela- tively date rock art. Other artifacts and cultural remains found in as- sociation with rock art sites can offer additional clues to the age of the images. In some cases, styles and techniques used to create the im- ages can be associated with a specifi c culture and dated accordingly. One example of this is the Grimes Point site near Fallon, NV, where the ar- chaic Great Basin Pecked style is dis- tinctive from the other glyphs at the site. The Great Basin Pecked style shows coarsely created abstract and geometric forms like dots and lines associated with the Fremont culture of 10,000 years ago. Images from a later period found at that same site exhibit more detailed depictions of animals, humans and other aspects of secular or spiritual life. Often, however, there are several superim- posed layers of images representing long periods of time and usage by multiple groups of people, making relative dating more diffi cult. Ad- ditionally, weathering of the images, or even vandalism, can sometimes make dating Rock Art sites nearly impossible.

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