One of the largest and best preserved collections of Barrier Canyon Style rock art, the Great Gallery has been called the “Louvre of the Southwest”. The main panel is 200 feet (61m) long and 15 feet (4.6m) high and the figures life-size (the largest motif is 7 feet or 2.1m tall).
One of the most intriguing figures is the Holy Ghost (the largest figure in what is called the Holy Ghost panel), thought to have been created via a splatter technique (where the artists put paint in their mouths and blow it onto the rock to give the figure a unique textured effect).
The Holy Ghost composition has the appearance of visual depth. At a distance, it is easy to see the composition, framed by a shallow arch, as a group of dark figures standing, or hovering, around (behind, in front, and to the sides) a tall light figure (Holy Ghost) which is, literally and figuratively, “head and shoulders” above them. In addition, the head of the Holy Ghost is represented in a three-quarter view—the only three-dimensional representation of an anthropomorphic head in Utah and, probably, the United States.
The BCS Project
The Great Gallery contains more than 60 figures, many of which are anthropomorphic spirit figures:
The spirit figure is often seen without arms and/or legs (an image used in other cultures to represent a spirit). The head of the spirit figure can have large, over-sized eyes (with or without pupils); occasionally antennae, ears or horns, and a line or pair of lines arched over the head. The torso frequently incorporates water/life-giving symbols (vertical parallel lines, lines of dots, wavy lines, zig zag lines, and snake images).
The BCS Project
One of the Great Gallery anthropomorphs has animals in the area of the chest, while another has smaller, mummy-like figures incorporated into panels on the torso. Other solidly painted figures have linear patterns of white dots. Tiny birds and quadrupeds are grouped at the heads, shoulders, or sides of a number of these anthropomorphs.
One scene at the Great Gallery site portrays “two fully human figures in apparent combat above a group of mountain sheep. This appears to be part of a larger group involving abstract shamans and sheep.”
The triangle of delicately painted mountain sheep forms an unusual group. The sheep are portrayed in different running positions and below, more crudely painted, is a dog that appears to be chasing them. To the right are two men apparently holding spears and engaged in combat. The expressive use of line to denote action in the figures of the sheep and the two men contrasts with the surrounding immobile mummylike forms, although they were all clearly done by the same hand.
Indian Rock Art of the Southwest in Archaeology of Horseshoe Canyon
As well as the dog noted above, there are several more canines: the Great Gallery possesses the greatest number of canine motifs to be found at a single rock art site. The figure below illustrates the “classic side view dog with an up-curve tail, of approximately naturalistic size – it is in this particular instance somewhat uncharacteristic in that generally the dog will be oriented toward the anthropomorph it attends rather than away from it” (The Curve-Tailed Canine in Archaeology of Horseshoe Canyon).
The multiple panels of the Great Gallery site are located near the base of a shallow but very tall and wide overhang in the cliff-line.
What is Barrier Canyon Style (BCS)
The Barrier Canyon Style is considered to be Utah’s premier prehistoric form, with over 250 sites currently recorded on the Colorado Plateau. The style is noted for its:
- multiple large rock art sites (galleries of 90 to 300 feet in length) exemplified by the Great Gallery and the Harvest Panel in Canyonlands National Park
- consistent attention given to aspects of visual form and virtuoso painting techniques
- life-size to heroic scale anthropomorphic figures such as the Holy Ghost
- unusually large number of variations, variety of form-types, particularly spirit figures, within the image-inventory of the style
- compositions apparently representing friendly associations of animal, bird, snake and plant images with anthropomorphic spirit figures.
Barrier Canyon Style motifs appear in three forms:
- Spirit figure: often seen without arms and/or legs; the head of the spirit figure can have large, over-sized eyes (with or without pupils); occasionally antennae, ears or horns, and a line or pair of lines arched over the head. The torso frequently incorporates water/life-giving symbols (vertical parallel lines, lines of dots, wavy lines, zig zag lines, and snake images). They range from more than 9 feet (3m) in height to 3 inches (7.5cm) and comprise 85-90% of anthropomorphic Barrier Canyon style images.
- Citizen figure: quite small (less than six inches / 15cm in height), they always have arms and legs and are in active postures. They may have an elongated torso and short arms and legs.
- Composite figure: few in number, they don’t represent anything from the material world and are combinations of body-parts from dissimilar species. Anthropomorphic torsos may have sheep heads with snake tongues, wings, birds-feet or plant roots for feet; snake bodies may have sheep heads with bird’s legs and feet.
How old is the Great Gallery?
The Barrier Canyon Style was estimated by Southwest archaeologist Polly Schaafsma in 1990 to fall within the early Archaic period – 6925 BC and 4725 BC. A few years later in 1994, Utah archaeologists Alan Schroedl and Nancy Coulam used radiocarbon analysis to adjust the timeframe as being from 7400 BC and 5100 BC. The National Park Service website states that BCS art “is believed to date to the Late Archaic period, from 2000 BC to AD 500”.
Similarly, there is no consenses on the age of the Great Gallery art: it was originally speculated that the life-sized human-like figures were painted by different individuals between 4000 and 2000 BC. Analysis based on two rockfall events date put the Holy Ghost panel as being painted between 400 AD and 1100 AD, and the most recent luminescence dating techniques performed in 2014 suggest that the Great Gallery was likely made between 1,000 to 2,000 years ago.
Getting to the Great Gallery
The most significant rock art site along the Horseshoe Canyon hike in Utah, the Great Gallery is located on the west side of the canyon about 4.1 miles (6.6km) from the trailhead.
- High Gallery – 38°27’40.8″N 110°11’49.8″W
- Horseshoe Gallery – 38°27’44.1″N 110°11’58.2″W
- Alcove Gallery – 38°27’20.8″N 110°12’21.4″W
- Great Gallery – 38°26’47.3″N 110°12’47.7″W
More information
- National Park Service (NPS) – Archaeology of Horseshoe Canyon [PDF]
- The BCS Project – The Barrier Canyon Rock Art Style
- Phys Org – Utah’s Great Gallery rock art younger than expected, say scientists
- Melissa Jackson – Bracketing the Age of the Great Gallery Rock Art Panel in Horseshoe Canyon [PDF]
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