 | Take a look at the images on this panel; what do they mean? Is that a man carrying a basket at the center, or was the artist trying to depict something else? The outlined cross has been indentified as representing the planet Venus when seen at other locations, but is that the case here? Is that a red and white butterfly left of center, or something else entirely? With the original inhabitants long gone, we can either look to the Hopi or Pima Indians for explanations (both of whom claim the southern Sinagua as one of their ancestors), or we can just guess ... |
 | The figures in these panels were originally painted in white or yellow; soot from fires has preferentially stuck to the pigment, coloring the figures black. |
 |
The three bears from the "Bear Alcove", drawn in charcoal and a similar style to the representations of figures on horseback. Consequently,
they were probably drawn by the Yavapai. Grizzly bears were found in Arizona through the early part of the 20th Century. |
| Coyote and deer (or elk). |
 | Two sets of abstract rock art designs; the paint material and style suggest that they date from the Archaic period. Columns of dots coming down from a horizontal pattern, as seen in the left panel, are common across many ancient cultures in the Southwest, and may represent rain falling from clouds - something of great importance in a dry climate. It has been suggested that a series of diamonds, visible in the picture on the right, is a representation of the pattern on the back of a rattlesnake. |
 | These animals resemble either coatimundi or ringtail cats (both relatives of the raccoon; the ringtail is common in this area, but the coatimundi is currently found in Arizona only in the southeast corner)However, the tails are drawn much longer than in real life, with peculiar "florishes - what does this mean? Or is it a stylized mountain lion, often represented in rock art with large tail
curling over its back? |
 | The scratches near the bottom of these geometric shapes were deliberately made. In other places, it has been suggested that scratches of this kind predate even the Archaic figures. Here, though, they cut through some of the painted figures, which means that they are younger. Absolute dates for the pictographs at Palatki are very difficult and expensive to determine in the best case, and quite often impossible. However, by examining which figures in which styles are drawn under or over other styles, one can develop relative dates for the pictographs (i.e. is one style older or younger than another). |
 | Here's an example of "relative dating": parts of the drawing of the elk on the left overlap the drawing of the "person" in the center, so we can deduce that the elk was drawn after the person. If you generalized, you might say that in general pictures drawn with charcoal similar to the elk were drawn later than pictures similar to the person. |
 | The human figure in the lower left has a hairstyle similar to the traditional "squash blossom" style worn by Hopi women. The animal at center right has the long curved tail typical of a mountain lion. |
 | Was this figure always "headless"? Maybe not - there are some faint indications that at least at one time in the past, there was a head to go with his body. If the paint used to make his head was different and less durable than that used for his body, then his head may have worn way over hundreds or thousands of years, leaving his body behind. |
