The Coso Petroglyph Chronology David S. Whitley and Ronald I. Dorn Abstract Central to the published discussions about Coso rock art is chronology, a common archaeological The following clarifies the current status of the authors’ under- topic, and the relationship of the art to the remain- standing of the Coso petroglyph chronology, starting with a review of the initial chronological schemes and concluding with der of the archaeological record. As many readers a review of the chronometrics and rock art. will know, we have contributed to this body of literature in a series of papers that, among other Introduction things, represent the first application of chrono- metric techniques to rock art worldwide (Dorn and The Coso Range contains one of the most remark- Whitley 1983, 1984; Whitley 1994, 2000; Whitley able archaeological records in the far west. Not only and Dorn 1987, 1988; Whitley, Simon, and Dorn is there an impressive concentration of early sites 1999a, 1999b; Dorn 1994, 1998a, 2001; Cerveny around the margins of Pleistocene Lake China, but et al. 2006). The research that is the basis for these the Sugarloaf obsidian quarry is one of the larg- papers includes a suite of 60 chronometric ages on est volcanic glass sources in the Great Basin. The petroglyphs from the Mojave Desert, including the importance of these and other Coso archaeological Cosos, making this the best dated regional corpus of resources is remarkable, yet Coso archaeology is rock art in the world. world renowned for one main reason—the massive number of petroglyphs that stretch from Little Lake, In addition to these papers, the Coso rock art chro- on the western edge of the Cosos, to the Panamint nology has figured in a number of recent papers by Valley on the east. Arguably this is the largest con- other authors (e.g., Gilreath 2007, Hildebrandt and centration of rock art in North America. It is world McGuire 2002, McGuire and Hildebrandt 2005, renowned partly because of the aesthetic beauty of Garfinkel/Gold 2006). This fact speaks to the grow- many of the engravings, in part because of the large ing importance of the Coso petroglyphs to diverse quantity of art, but also because much has been archaeological issues, and it is an encouraging written about this art during the last four decades. circumstance for rock art research. Less positively, This includes especially Heizer and Baumhoff’s there are misunderstandings about the Heizer and (1962) monograph on eastern California and Baumhoff (1962) and Grant (1968) chronologies, Nevada rock art (which used a Coso panel for its which extend to the current status of rock art chro- frontispiece), and Grant’s (1968) more focused nometrics, and include misunderstandings of our study on the Cosos alone. research conclusions. Pacific Coast Archaeological Society Quarterly, Volume 43, Numbers 1 and 2 136 Whitley and Dorn The Heizer and Baumhoff Chronology Boas’ (1905) much earlier study of Northwest Coast needle-cases. This is to say that the few formal attri- Heizer and Baumhoff’s (1962) rock art monograph butes of rock art identified by Heizer and Baumhoff was influential on many levels, not the least of as diagnostic of cultural–historical styles, such which was their proposed stylistic rock art chronol- as motif and technique of manufacture, are alone ogy, which has been widely accepted for a cul- insufficient to define “styles” in Schapiro’s cul- tural–historical scheme in North American rock art tural–historical sense. Indeed, Schapiro’s definition research (e.g., von Werlhof 1965; Grant 1967:105, precisely foreshadows the variability which Heizer 1968; Heizer and Clewlow 1973:23; Nissen 1974; and Baumhoff ignored. Heizer and Baumhoff’s Wellman 1979:58). Heizer and Baumhoff (1962) application of the style concept contradicts then the identified and assigned tentative ages to five source they cited as their rationale for it. “styles,” one of which had three “variants:” (1) Great Basin Pecked, with the variants of: Unfortunately, this fundamental point was not only (a) Representational, assigned an age from misunderstood by Heizer and Baumhoff, but also AD 1 to 1500; by a series of subsequent researchers, all of whom (b) Curvilinear Abstract, 1500 BC to AD have repeated Heizer and Baumhoff’s quotation 1500; and from the first page of Schapiro’s lengthy article, (c) Rectilinear Abstract, AD 1 to 1500; apparently without ever independently examining (2) Great Basin Painted, AD 1000 to Historic; the actual substance of his argument. The result is (3) Great Basin Scratched, AD 750 to Historic; straightforward; Heizer and Baumhoff’s theoreti- (4) Puebloan Painted, 250 BC to AD 750; and cal justification for their stylistic chronology, along (5) Pit and Groove, 6000 BC to 3000 BC. with that of numerous later rock art researchers, contradicts Schapiro’s (1953) intended definition Their dating was admittedly inferential and specula- of the concept. From the outset, then, Heizer and tive and there were, from the start, significant theo- Baumhoff’s empirical use of the concept of style for retical and empirical problems with their chronol- rock art was inadequate. ogy. The first concerns the nature and definition of their central concept, “style,” and thus the internal Perhaps predictably, given this initial conceptual logic of their chronological construct. confusion, their chronological sequence has not withstood empirical scrutiny. Grant (1968), writing They based their argument about styles on an article about the Coso Range petroglyphs just a few years by Meyer Schapiro (1953). Quoting an introduc- later, for example, stated that, based on the rela- tory paragraph from his synthesis on this topic, this tive revarnishing of motifs, there was no evidence stated that style was expressed in formal motives supporting an evolution of styles from curvilinear to [i.e., motifs] and patterns. But later in his article, rectilinear and representational. He observed that Schapiro also was careful to emphasize that style no such change of style can be seen. The is expressed in all of the arts of a particular culture, drawings in this country cover a very long embodying therefore a range of variation in tech- time span and for the whole period the art niques, media, formal characteristics, contexts and tradition remained remarkably stable.… themes (see Whitley 1982)—a fact that Heizer and The style and subject matter of these Baumhoff had overlooked. Schapiro emphasized petroglyphs vary but slightly from early to a point which had been recognized at least since late (Grant 1968:16–17). PCAS Quarterly, 43 (1&2) The Coso Petroglyph Chronology 137 Grant’s failure to find evidence of Heizer and More recently, Kaldenberg (personal communica- Baumhoff’s stylistic chronology has been dupli- tion 2007) has collected ethnographic informa- cated in other areas. Dickey (1994:13), for example, tion indicating that scratched motifs are still made failed to find support for this sequence in an analy- in eastern California, in contemporary times, in sis of superimposed motifs at Paiute Creek, eastern non-ritual contexts. Whether all or some earlier California. Woody’s (1996) analysis of superimpo- scratched motifs were created ritually, or not, sitions and “generations” of motifs (identified by remains to be determined. More important at this relative revarnishing) at the Massacre Bench Site stage is that Bettinger and Baumhoff’s (1982) argu- in western Nevada, likewise, failed to support the ments about the Scratched style chronology and Heizer and Baumhoff (1962) chronology. ritual defacement have been called into question. The relationship of the Pecked to the Scratched The Grant Chronology styles in the Heizer and Baumhoff (1962) chronolo- gy was further extended by Bettinger and Baumhoff As the above quotation indicates, Grant’s (1968) (1982), in an attempt to correlate it with the Numic Coso chronology questions Heizer and Baumhoff’s Spread Hypothesis—the theory that Numic speak- stylistic approach. Grant’s chronology instead ing Paiute and Shoshone peoples migrated out of rested on a series of propositions and inferences, eastern California circa AD 1200–1300, replacing some reasonable, some not. so-called “pre-Numic” peoples in Nevada and else- where. They argued that Scratched motifs post-date First, he posited a different view of style and AD 1300 and represent Numic ritual defacement of rock art chronology than expressed by Heizer and earlier (Pecked) pre-Numic rock art, based on their Baumhoff. Based presumably on general knowl- assertion that Scratched motifs are always superim- edge of art history, perhaps due to his training as a posed over Pecked designs. commercial artist, Grant tacitly acknowledged that artistic abilities do not evolve over time from ab- Ritter (1994) conducted a careful superimpositional stract to representational (as Heizer and Baumhoff study at two western Nevada sites, partly to test [1962], following Steward [1929], assumed). His the Bettinger and Baumhoff (1982) model. Ritter chronology, therefore, made no distinctions be- demonstrated that the ages of Pecked and Scratched tween “geometric” versus “representational” as style motifs overlap; sometimes Pecked motifs were temporally diagnostic, but instead incorporated placed on top of Scratched designs, and sometimes so-called “naturalistic,” “stylized,” and “abstract” Scratched art was on top of the Pecked petroglyphs. motifs in each of his three posited time periods: Ritter’s empirical evidence challenges Bettinger and Early (~1000–200 BC); Baumhoff’s (1982) hypothesized Numic/pre-Numic Transitional (200 BC–AD 300); and distinction concerning Pecked versus Scratched Late (AD 300–1000). motifs. We have made the same observations about Scratched and Pecked motifs in the Cosos and in This is to say that Grant provided a stylistic chro- the Mojave Desert more generally, confirming that nology that was in fact closer to Schapiro’s (1953) Ritter’s conclusions appear valid for more than just definition of cultural-historical style than that the sites that he studied.