Prior to the arrival of Mexican settlers, the Utes occupied significant portions of what are today eastern Utah, western Colorado, and parts of New Mexico and Wyoming. īeginning 1300 AD and lasting until 1880 AD, the Ute people inhabited the region of Sego Canyon and carved their own style on the cliff faces. Their petroglyphs also depicted unusual figures and were characterised by sharp edges, square or rectangular heads and triangular bodies.įremont petroglyphs in Sego Canyon. They made pottery, built houses and food storage facilities, and raised corn. They were part-time farmers who lived in scattered semi-sedentary farmsteads and small villages, never entirely giving up traditional hunting and gathering for more risky full-time farming. The Fremont culture was adjacent to, roughly contemporaneous with, but distinctly different from the Anasazi culture. They were a pre-Columbian archaeological culture which received its name from the Fremont River in Utah where the first sites were discovered. One of the most famous images, known as the Barrier Canyon Holy Man, appears to depict some type of spirit figure, which is larger and more important than the figures that surround him.Īnother peculiar set of images are the ‘Buckhorn Wash Angels’ or ‘rain angels’, which depict a number of figures who appear to have wings or rays of power radiating from them, although exact meaning is open to interpretationīeginning around 600 AD and lasting until 1250 AD, the Fremont culture thrived in the region and added their own distinctive style to the rock faces. The ghost-like images are some of the most unusual forms of rock art seen in the area. They are sometimes seen with antennae, earrings, and with snakes in their hands. The identifying features are vacant looking or missing eyes, the frequent absence of arms and legs, and the presence of vertical body markings. īarrier Canyon Style rock art is characterised by large human-like (anthropomorphic) forms, some as tall as nine feet. Barrier Canyon Style rock art panels are mostly pictographs (painted) but there are also several petroglyphs (pecked) in the style.īarrier Canyon Style pictographs. Within the Archaic period and beginning around 4,000 years ago, we see the Barrier Canyon Style rock art, a distinctive style of art which appears mostly in Utah, with the largest concentration of sites in and around the San Rafael Swell and Canyonlands National Park, but the full range extends into much of the state and western Colorado. They did not build permanent habitation structures, but lived in caves and in small brush shelters built in the open. They were nomads, who hunted large and small game animals, and collected and processed wild plants. Some of the most spectacular examples of rock art in the Southwest are attributed to Archaic people. The oldest art belongs to the Archaic period and dates to between 6,000 BC and 2,000 BC. The rock art of Sego Canyon can be characterised according to a number of distinctive styles, and time periods. But subsequent Anasazi, Fremont, and Ute tribes also left their mark upon the area, painting and chipping their religious visions, clan symbols, and records of events into the cliff walls. Some claim that the mysterious figures are evidence of alien visitation in our ancient past, while scholars maintain that the strange beings represent shamanistic visions produced in trance-like states.Įvidence of human habitation in Sego Canyon dates back to the Archaic Period (6,000 – 100 BC). They are characterised by more than 80 imposing and haunting life-sized figures with hollowed eyes or missing eyes and the frequent absence of arms and legs. The sandstone cliffs of Sego Canyon are a spectacular outdoor art gallery of petroglyphs painted and carved by Native Americans peoples over a period of around 8,000 years.
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