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![]() Also recognized are bullroarers, dancers, and rectangular "medicine bags" or purse-like figures. The representational figures consist of bighorn sheep, deer, mountain lions, dogs, chuckwalla, turtles, snakes, quail (rare), and animal-human conflations. The more abstract symbols consist of grids, nested and bifurcated circles, shields, patterns of dots, and parallel and radiating lines. These outcrops have developed a dark brown patina - or desert 'varnish' - that when pecked or scratched reveals the lighter heart rock beneath. The art is located both throughout the higher elevation uplands and the broad volcanic lowland drainages to the south, and is typically found on large outcrops of basalt that form extensive escarpments. The Coso petroglyphs consist of rock carvings depicting animals, abstract symbols and anthropomorphic figures. He brings to light the importance of the powerful bighorn sheep, and the animal ceremonialism that existed in this now arid region for the many generations of the Coso people. Garfinkel examines the salient theories associated with this particular rock art a rock art that represents the highest concentration of its kind in North America. Why was this area, now known as the Coso Range, adorned with such a concentration of strikingly beautiful and highly consistent rock engravings, predominantly those of bighorn sheep? In this section, Dr. ![]() ![]() A conservative estimate suggests an excess of 100,000. In a 90 square-mile area of eastern California, 35,000 petroglyphs have been formally recorded. ![]()
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