Rock On

It might have been done with a finger dipped into mineral-infused animal fat. It might be a circle, a square or a sunburst.

And it might be a thousand years old.

American Indian rock art in the Arkansas River Valley will be the focus of the September edition of the Crawford County Chronicles series Sunday at the Drennen-Scott Historic Site in Van Buren.

George Sabo III, director of the Arkansas Archeological Survey, says he will concentrate on a small number of noteworthy sites in Crawford and Sebastian counties and "putting those into a larger perspective of what we know about rock art along that stretch of the Arkansas River Valley." However, he won't be revealing specific site locations, noting that this could alert looters. The rock art in the pictures he will be showing has not been directly dated, but based on similar imagery, he believes this rock art falls into the late prehistoric period between 1000 and 1600 A.D.

American Indian rock art generally comes in two forms, Sabo says. One is called pictographs, which are painted images on a natural rock surface. The paints are natural mineral pigments ground into a powder and immersed in a binder of some sort, such as rendered animal fat or water, he says. The liquid medium allows for finger painting or sometimes using a brush made from the end of a frayed stick.

The other form is called petroglyphs, which are images that are engraved or carved into the rock, he adds.

The imagery generally shown in rock art in this part of the country can be categorized in three groups: geometric images, naturalistic images and abstract images. Geometric images include squares, circles or triangles, and naturalistic ones are "something we can identify," such as animals, plants or celestial objects, Sabo says. Abstract images are more complicated images than geometric. They might have represented something that would have been viable in the community that produced the art, but centuries later, the images depicted are a mystery, he adds.

Sabo has been studying prehistoric rock art for about 35 years. He has been interested in American Indian art and ritual throughout his entire career.

"I hope that (audience members) will learn something about the artistic achievements that ancient Indians accomplished, which are very noteworthy. And many of the art forms that Indians produced are quite stunning."

-- Ashley Batchelor

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