Customer Reviews

A Field Guide to Rock Art Symbols of the Greater Southwest

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4 star:		(3)
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Work done by others is always fascinating, which is why national parks featuring ancient ruins are so popular; they showcase the incredible and often very beautiful work done in the Southwest before Europeans arrived.

It takes a lot of work and skill to create a petroglyph. I know, I've tried it. A full day's work produces only a small image. First, find a hard river stone with a pointy end; then, spend hours using it to chip away enough desert varnish and surface rock to make a shallow indent on a large boulder or cliff face. When you finish, since rocks don't rot or grow back, the design will last thousands of years.

Rock art wasn't doodles or graffiti, churned out in a trivial moment or so; it is serious statements of faith that Native Americans took days or weeks to produce. The original meanings may never be recovered, which is a great loss; but, the artistry can still be appreciated. Patterson's sketches are clear, concise and free of unrelated static. Since petroglyphs are the originals of modern Native American art, this is also a guide for artists, historians and poets of the Southwest.

It is a bilingual dictionary, everything from "arrow" and "atlatl" to "X-ray styles." In Spanish, it helps to know "Alto" means "Stop;" in the petroglyph language, it helps to know what sign means "Sun." Patterson offers educated insights into 600 common petroglyphs. People today link certain symbols to ideas, such as an "apple" as a gift for a teacher, a still life art object, a kind of pie, or a computer. In all likelihood, every petroglyph had as many or more meanings -- depending on the story teller.

Consider Patterson's description of the sun sign, which is still a popular design for silver jewelry from the Pueblos: ". . . the outer circle represents the ring of light around the Sun, the second represents the sun itself, and the inner circle or dot, his umbilicus, which opens to provide mankind with game and other sustenance." Next, think of modern artists who see the sun and paint a yellow circle, while others paint a yellow circle and create a sun. Now, the petroglyph sun sign takes on new meaning.

Art expresses a sense of adventure. A thousand years ago, petroglyphs were patiently chipped into boulders and cliffs to create a permanent memory of unique and special events. They portray a dramatic history of gods, demons, giants, tricksters and rare events as powerful and devious and clever as any Nordic saga. They also offer maps to the beginning of creation and pathways to a fulfilled life. Petroglyphs are a record of the exploration, knowledge and interpretation of America long before its "discovery" by Europeans. It reminds us that we have much yet to understand; it may not be the "Rosetta stone" of the Southwest, but it is one of the texts.

This is a masterful guide, sensibly devoid of guesswork and idle speculation (that's my field). Every society invents, discovers, experiments and creates to explain its origins and values. Patterson classifies common themes that were important enough to be written on rock. Rock art is one of our cultural treasures. If you want a book of facts about it, this is where to start.

Patterson's created one of the best resources available on ancient rock art. As a means of understanding ancient rock art in North America the book probably occupies an unchallenged place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in these 'artifacts'. Unfortunately, as a field guide the book has some serious organizational snags. The specific types of subject matter are arranged in ways to cause a person in a field setting to create some rock-art of his own with his fingernails. Even though my copy of this book is tattered through long use I continue to have difficulties relocating what I'm searching for in the text. I usually carry a simpler and better organized field guide for quick and dirty work and leave the Patterson book for a time when I'm sitting on a rock somewhere catching my breath after the fact.

All this said, I believe this book is a great one and I'd recommend it for home study. There's not a better one available.

My instinct was to refer to this as a dictionary of rock art symbols, but that's not quite right--The book isn't quite that precise. The book lists a number of categories of rock art symbols, with postage-stamp sized illustrations, and brief passages, mostly cited from other authors, explaining what that author thought might be the importance or meaning of that symbol. There is a very brief list (perhaps three pages) of the most important rock art sites, with EXTREMELY cryptic directions ("Exit at I-40, ask for directions at park visitor center", for example). As a result, this book will help you before a visit by preparing you for what sort of things you might see and what they meant, and it will help you afterwards, in figuring out what you saw, but it won't help you plan the visit or be a guide during the visit.

Worthwhile if you really want to try to understand what you are seeing at these sites, but not one-book coverage of the subject--And probably more than you want to know if a single book on rock art is all you want.

A rock art guide for interested amateurs that attempts to classify petroglyphs and pictographs by their form. Draws heavily on older sources and fails to put the art into the context in which it was created. Useful for site lists.

I needed an excellent source book for primitive petroglyphs for some art work. This book proved to be an excellent resource

What are petroglyphs and pictrographs telling us?

How about a staff with a hook and a large circle toward the bottom...? After describing this "atlatl" or "spear" with charms tied to the shaft, Patterson explains: "In rock art the weights or charm stones are much exaggerated in size, due probably to the magic they supposedly contained--magic to guide the spear to its target." In addition to illustrating variations of the charmed spear, he adds historical information: "The use of the atlatl began before 1,000 B.C., continuing to about 500 A.D. in the southwest, when it was supplanted by the bow and arrow."

Patterson cites the technical literature to provide these interpretations, allowing the curious reader of rock art to dig deeper.

The guide is organized into humanlike, animallike, and abstract symbols, making it easy to find the meanings you're looking for. Essentially, it's a comprehensive dictionary for rock art, complete with background information whenever possible.

Great illustrations. Numerous variants of each symbol. Easy to navigate. Alex Patterson's guide to rock art symbols translates the myriads of images found in the American Southwest into something we can understand.

We used Patterson's field guide to create and interpret an imagined wheel of pictographs in our recent novel: Ophelia's Ghost.

This is an excellent book for those of you who are interested in The American Indian and their history in the American Southwest. A writen history in/on stone. I think this book, along with "A History of the Ancient Southwest," by Leakson; "The Fourth World of the Hopis," by Courlander; "Pumpkin Seed Point," by Waters; "Book of the Hopi," by Waters; "Hopi - Stories of Witchcraft, Shamanism, and Magic," by Malotki/Gary; "Hopi," by Page/Page and "Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest," by Plog are also must reads.

This must-have field guide was designed to provide a key to the symbols observed on indigenous (Native American) rock art found in the Southwest United States. The book brings together 600 commentaries on the different symbols, and includes a valuable pictorial key, organized by tentative meaning or description. 500 illustrations. The geographical range of the book encompasses Northern Mexico, Utah, California and Colorado.

This field guide is a must for Rock Art enthusiasts! You can take this book with you on your hunts or simply photograph your rock art and then take home to research the meanings in this book. It doesn't matter where you are in the Southwest, this book will explain any pictographs or petroglyphs you find. It is filled with photos, drawings and explanations which are simple and precise to decipher.
Whether you are a beginner or a true artifact hunter, this book is for you!

"A Field Guide to Rock Art Symbols" has been selected for listing in "Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments: An Entheogen Chrestomathy."