Rock Art

A Dark Pathway
A Dark Pathway book review
Founding board member emeritus Dr Jan Simek has a new book about cave art in the Southeastern United States. Dr David Whitley gives us a detailed review. A Dark Pathway: Precontact Native American Mud Glyphs from 1st Unnamed Cave, Tennessee, by Jan F. Simek. 2022. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. xviii+195 pp., 85 b&w and 19 color figures, 14 tables, bibliography, index. ISBN 9781621907176, hardcover. By David S. Whitley Rock Art Research Institute University of the Witwatersrand “Mud glyph” and “1st Unnamed Cave” are not particularly inspiring terms that, at first glance, might promote reading this book. Yet these very earthy, workman-like words in the sub-title exactly belie the careful, compelling and in fact exciting study detailed in this volume. Anyone interested in the Native American symbolic and spiritual world will benefit from and enjoy this book; it should be required reading for those concerned with the indigenous southeastern US...
Rock Eagle Effigy Mound
Updates to our public rock art sites
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Looking for a weekend rock art get away? We've made some updates to our public rock art sites interactive map. All the sites on the list are actively managed for public visitation. Changes include a new site Rock Hawk, direction maps to Rock Eagle and Serpent Mound, better access to embedded VR models in Chauvet, Mt Irish and The Great Gallery of Horseshoe Canyon.
Snake Tailed Cat Petroglyph
Persistence of Place
Some places become important to humans and remain so across thousands of years and multiple cultures.
San Juan County Petroglyphs
Southern Utah Petroglyph Boulders
We have loaded a VR model of petroglyph boulders in Utah optimized for the Oculus headset.
Maori cave painting
Cave Art Images from New Zealand
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New Zealand is one of the last major land masses to be explored and permanently settled by human beings. Max Wisshak has added his photographs of those explorers artwork to the Ancient Art Archvie.
Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, France
Modern Ancient Art
Modern art concepts like cubism have their origins in the oldest artworks on the planet. Our brains are hard wired for abstraction.
Stephen Alvarez works in an unnamed cave
Native American Cave Art Over 1000-Years-Old Revealed by 3D Scans
Giant Cave Art images discovered using 3D modeling. This expands our knowledge of the Woodland Culture world view.
Maya writing in Naj Tunich Cave
Naj Tunich Cave Maya pictographs
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The Maya pictographs in Naj Tunich Cave rocked the world of Maya archaeology when they were discovered.
A Southeastern Cave Entrance
Indigenous Cave Explorers of the Southeastern US
Indisputable evidence proves Indigenous Americans ventured as far as 3 miles into southeastern caves 5,000 years before the invention of electric light. Native Americans were excellent cave explorers.