Indian Rock Art

In general, there are two types of  Indian rock art in the American Southwest; pictographs and petroglyphs.

Pictographs are painted images, and have been created by various different application techniques, using a wide variety of pigments.

Petroglyphs are images, of any sort, cut, scratched, drilled, rubbed or pecked into a rock surface.

Rock art cannot be dated accurately by any technique presently known.

Carbon 14 dating, the most common type of dating, requires a small but definite amount of organic material, then measures the approximate length of time between the test and when the organic material died, whether plant or animal.  

Unfortunately the amounts of pigment found in pictograph paints is too small to produce reliable data, and damages and/or destroys the pictograph.  

Petroglyphs, on the other hand, are nothing but grooves, lines or holes in the rock.  The only thing datable to test is the desert varnish that builds up in some glyphs, but at highly variable rates, depending on seasonal weather.

Moab Rock Art

The Moab, Utah area has manyimpressive and easily accessible rock art sites.  Some of my favorite include The Moab Mastodon, those along Scenic Byway 279, and in Seven Mile Canyon. 

There are also several good sites located within the boundaries of Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and Newspaper Rock State Park.

Other Rock Art Sites of the Southwest

Of course, there are many other sites to view ancient Indian Rock Art in the southwestern United States; Moab is just my favorite.