I don’t know much about the Yellowstone petroglyphs, which I haven’t seen (I didn’t know before yesterday that they supposedly existed at Sheepeater Cliff). They may be so old that the Sheepeaters of recent centuries don’t know about their origins, or they might have been made by other groups. In the Southwest, there are a number of sites where old pictographs have been damaged by present-day inhabitants fearing their possible significance.

By the way, petroglyphs are incised in the rock, whereas pictographs are painted on. I’m not sure if the distinction was important for the makers; often both appear together.

I like the idea that someone on a vision quest at the cliff would conjure up images from their own mind, as prompted by rock features. I hadn’t heard about such a theory regarding cave art. It seems plausible, but hardly necessary.

Birgit,

That’s a very interesting observation about the eyes. I mainly found it peculiar how they are almost disconnected from the face. I also see echo eyes in a couple places elsewhere in the painting.

I haven’t made out the left-looking faces you see in my first photograph. I guess I would make a poor vision quester.

Thanks for your cliffs notes.

I’m confused about the Sheepeaters: did they encounter their “petroglyphs” as something that somebody painted, or as happenstance then rendered by the Sheepeater mind into a form of significance? As you know, some scholars have theorized that the neolithic cave painters of Europe were guided in their imagery by the various irregularities in the cave walls and ceilings that reminded them of their primary visual fixations in the form of prey items. There is in each of us a propensity to see faces in things, serving some survival purpose and possibly a contributing factor in the development of a spiritualistic outlook. Like in the morning, upon awakening, I am likely to see entities appearing among the garments on the clothes rack and the drapes. Sorry, no pink elephants among them.

We college students discovered an issue in abstraction: you have to ambiguate. Nothing, we learned, could kill a good abstract painting like the presence of Aunt Bertha among the blobs and swirls. You just couldn’t get away with activating those centers in the viewer’s brain.

On first glance, I took this painting to be a person upside down, with the neck being the head. It took a while to correct this impression and accept the face.

In your first photo, I see 3 faces, the large one looking to the right and two smaller ones, one on top of the other, looking to the left. Your second photo is unambiguous to my eye. In your third photo, the rider on a horse could be an American Indian with a yellow headdress.

Thus, it appears that the painting, once I accepted that it shows a head, is no longer ambiguous. In contrast, with two of your photos, my mind plays games, flipping from one interpretation into another.

Thanks for the link to the Slow Muse.