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Barrier Canyon Style Archaic Rock Art Panels
Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) is generally painted art found in southeastern Utah. It is from the Archaic period, 8000 BCE to 500 CE, and was created by mobile hunter-gatherer people. Because rock art is hard to date, there are different opinions on the age, but most researchers place it before or overlapping the Ancestral Pueblo Basketmaker period, 1500 BCE to 750 CE. This style is known for ghostly, tapering human-like figures that are often life-size. Around the human-like forms may be smaller animals such as birds, snakes, dogs, insects, and others.
This panel is faded and the paint has smeared, but it is unique for the seven slender, hollow-eyed anthropomorphic forms with elaborate headdresses. The "dots" above the figures are the size of thumb prints. On the left are snakes, and beside the dominant figure are small "helper" animals.
The figure on the right has horns and a snake coming out of its mouth, as well as a snake near the right hand. Unusual are the four groups of ascending sheep, particularly since sheep are not commonly portrayed on Barrier Canyon Style panels.
Noteworthy here is the interior decoration with the red lines and white dots, and the white legs.
This panel has survived somehow despite being on the banks of a small creek. The figure on the left may be a bird and appears to have blue pigment. This is one of the few Barrier Canyon Style panels in Colorado.