My first encounter with Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) rock art came in the mid 1990s while on a visit to the Moab, Utah area. I had head about an incredible panel of rock art near the town of Thompson Springs, Utah and decided to visit. I didn't really know what to expect, but I sure didn't expect a sandstone wall filled with large, ghostly, bug-eyed figures, snakes, and other mystical (or mythical) beings.
The figures are very large, some even approaching human-size. Some figures look like space aliens, some like humans with snakes for arms, others like red ghosts floating on the sandstone walls.
The site it literally only a few miles north of Thompson Springs (just off I-70 in east-central Utah), in a canyon that winds it way up into the Book Cliffs. The site it well-signed from town so it should be easy to find without a map or GPS.
"Barrier Canyon Style" refers to a form of rock art (mostly paintings, aka pictographs) that are most abundant in Utah and western Colorado. Age of the BCS art is tough to determine although many archaeologists consider these to have been painted by "Archaic" people well over 2,000 years ago. Regardless of its age, the images are compelling.
Were the ancient artists documenting their hero myths or creation stories? Were these paintings the work of tribal visionaries? Were the ancient artists illustrating ghost stories they'd tell their kids while everyone was gathered around a campfire? Or were they simply the work of people ingesting a little too much peyote?
My personal, unsubstantiated belief is that these BCS sites were backdrops or illustrations for some kind of storytelling. The sites that survive are, more often than not, situated in alcoves in the rock that act as natural sound amplifiers. I can attest to their amazing acoustics - just like standing at the apex of an old band shell and speaking to the crowd. They would be great locations to host storytelling sessions.
The abundance of sites in alcoves doesn't prove much though - it may be that alcove sites survived preferentially because they were more protected from the elements. But I prefer to envision a band of travelers settling down in a sandstone canyon and gathering around a fire built in front of the tribe's rock paintings. A storyteller gets up in front of the group - she's wrapped in furs to ward off the night's chill - and tells the children how the land was born, how the canyons were carved, and how the animals were made, using the art behind her to illustrate her tales. Then she teaches the children the names of the Spirits pictured on the walls - the canyon guardians, the bringers of rain, the thunder spirit, the protector of hunters, and maybe even the trickster spirits.
OK, so maybe I have a vivid imagination but these BCS sites, especially here at Sego, really bring that out in me. Maybe it's the bug-eyed guy up there on the wall with the snake arms who's causing me to daydream too much...
Please, if you do visit any of these sites, remember to take only pictures and leave only footprints. These artworks are precious and irreplaceable; they're voices from the past and they are sacred sites for many First Nations people here in the US.
