Barrier Canyon Style 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. 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 "helper" animals such as birds, snakes, dogs, insects, and others.

Faded Barrier Canyon Style panel with slender figures in headdresses below rows of red dots — 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 four snakes, and beside the dominant figure are small spirit helpers.

Barrier Canyon Style figures with a horned figure and lines of ascending bighorn sheep — The figure on the right has horns and a snake coming out of its mouth, as well as a snake near the right hand. Notable are the four groups of ascending sheep. It's normal to see sheep portrayed like this in Fremont art but not on Barrier Canyon Style panels.

Barrier Canyon Style figure with red and white striped body beside a wavy snake — The artist scraped the rock to smooth it before painting. Interesting is the nice interior decoration with the red lines and white dots, and the white legs with darker feet.

Faded Barrier Canyon Style figure with a bird-like figure on its left, above a creek bank — 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.

Long panel of dark-red Barrier Canyon Style figures with wavy-lined and striped bodies, small animals and a bighorn sheep — Known as the Flying Carpet or Leaning Wall panel. The bighorn sheep and a few other forms are possibly Fremont.

Dark Barrier Canyon Style figures with long bodies and outstretched arms beside a white figure with long vertical lines — A section of the Dragonfly Panel. I like the impish figure pulling the tail of one of the dragonflies.

Red Barrier Canyon Style figures with long hanging vertical lines on a pale sandstone wall — The human-like figure on the left has interesting lines around the head. The form to the left of it is a mystery.

Large dark-red Barrier Canyon Style figure with a dotted headdress and white body lines beside a red animal — The Hog Springs figure sits alone in a large alcove. Form on the right is considered a dog.

Archaic petroglyph of large figures surrounded by smaller figures, dots and a dog — Larger anthropomorphic forms are surrounded by attendant figures, a Barrier Canyon Style theme. Notable are the dots connecting the dog on the upper left to the central figures. On the right, dots reach out to the wandering anthropomorph.

Small petroglyph of a figure surrounded by birds and snakes — I consider this small petroglyph panel in Arches National Park to be Archaic but others are not sure. A common theme in the Barrier Canyon Style is a dominant anthropomorphic form surrounded by birds and snakes. This image faces north and seems to flow east to west.

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