Honanki Heritage Site: Rock Art

A cairn found in Cohab Canyon, Capitol Reef National Park.

Frank and Anne's Canyon Country Hiking and Camping Notebook.

Honanki Heritage Site

Campsite

This page contains a discussion of the rock art found within the Honanki Heritage Site. All photographs are from our our personal collection. If you'd like to see more rock art from this location, or if you'd like to see higher resolution or larger images, send us an e-mail message and we'll see what we can do.

Rock Art

The rock art associated with the Honanki ruins is unique in several ways. First, it's not common to find pictographs or petroglyphs closely associated with the dwellings of those who created them. In our experience most rock art tends to be some distance from the dwelling location, often in quite remote areas. Perhaps the closer association is a Sinagua cultural characteristic.

Also, at this site, there were a good number of white images, and most images are spread out along the length of the site, rather than clustered together. Another thing that we noticed is the large size of many of the images. Not familiar with the archaeological work at the site, and noting the position of the images, I wonder if all or most of the images weren't originally contained on the inside of the dwellings, as we may use modern paintings and photos to decorate our homes. As time has deteriorated the ruins the once hidden images have become exposed. I'm not sure. Just speculation.

See American Antiquities Act of 1906.
See Archaeological Site Etiquette.
See Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979.
Archaeological Resources Protection Act Hotline: 800-227-7286.

Kokopelli at the Honanki Heritage Site, Arizona.

This is one of the few actual Kokopelli images that we've seen on location. We often see the stylized versions of this character, but seldom do we actually see the image painted or pecked on a natural surface.

This sample is quite prominent and fairly large, near one end of the ruins site. Our first instinct was that it is actually graffiti, but after looking at it for a while I think that it matches the style of the rest of the images pretty well, and I now think that it is genuine.

There are several white circles painted on the cliff faces above the ruins. Most are plain, but this one seems to have a serrated edge and contains smaller circles within. The smaller image to the right also is repeated throughout the ruins.

Another of the large white circles, if I remember correctly this one was about two feet across, and high up above the ruins. This one is especially interesting because of its association with the red anthropomorph. It also looks as if there may have been other images or shapes superimposed over the white circle, especially in the lower portions.

| Top |

More Rock Art

Some of the following images are a bit blurry. This is due to less than ideal camera equipment and the fact that the Forest Service does not allows tourists to get up close to these images. This is due to a fear of vandalism, so it is understandable. In any case, I was forced to use an inadequate zoom lens under poor lighting conditions. At least the images are visible, if not perfectly crisp and clear. Even a poor image is better than no image.

All of these photos have been resized and manipulated in Photoshop to give the best representation of the image. Some color distortion is inevitable. If you would like to see higher quality versions of these shots, or if you would like to use these images for any purpose, please contact us and we would be glad to help if we can.

| Top |

This page was last updated Sunday, May 31, 2009

The Last Page of the Internet