The Barnesville Petroglyph
petroglyph site in the eastern part of the
U.S. state
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...
of
Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
. Located approximately southwest of the village of
Barnesville in
Belmont County, the petroglyphs have been known both by
archaeologists and the general public since the 1850s or earlier. Although the site was significantly damaged during the twentieth century, it is still a significant
archaeological site
An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology a ...
, and has been named a
historic site
A historic site or heritage site is an official location where pieces of political, military, cultural, or social history have been preserved due to their cultural heritage value. Historic sites are usually protected by law, and many have been rec ...
.
Creation
The Barnesville Petroglyph carvings were created centuries ago by
Native American people. The precise
cultural affiliation of its creators is uncertain. Some have attributed the site to the
Adena Adena may refer to:
Artists
* ADENA, Romanian singer-songwriter
*Adeena Karasick (born 1965), Canadian poet, performance artist, and essayist
* Adena Halpern (born 1968), American author
*Adena Jacobs (born 1982), Australian theatre director
Place ...
, who inhabited the region approximately between 500 BC and AD 300.
[Owen, Lorrie K., ed. ''Dictionary of Ohio Historic Places''. Vol. 1. ]St. Clair Shores
St. Clair Shores is a suburban city bordering Lake St. Clair in Macomb County of the U.S. state of Michigan. It forms a part of the Metro Detroit area, and is located about northeast of downtown Detroit. Its population was 59,715 at the 2010 ...
: Somerset, 1999, 59. However, Barnesville shares many similarities with other petroglyph sites in western
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
, northern
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the B ...
, and other parts of eastern Ohio; as a result, petroglyph specialist
James L. Swauger
James L. Swauger (November 1, 1913 – December 18, 2005) was an American archaeologist known for his work on the petroglyphs of the Ohio River valley of the United States. A native of West Newton in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania,Murphy, ...
concluded that it was the work of the people that also created such sites as the
Indian God Rock
Indian God Rock is a large boulder in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Located near the unincorporated community of Brandon, it lies along the Allegheny River in Venango County's Rockland Township. It is significant f ...
, the
Sugar Grove Petroglyphs, and the
Hamilton Farm Petroglyphs. Many features of these and similar petroglyph sites in the region indicated to Swauger that they were created by
Ojibwe
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
-influenced people of the
Monongahela culture
The Monongahela culture were an Iroquoian Native American cultural manifestation of Late Woodland peoples from AD 1050 to 1635 in present-day western Pennsylvania, western Maryland, eastern Ohio, and West Virginia. The culture was named by Mar ...
, whose earliest presence in the Upper Ohio Valley is believed to have been approximately AD 1200.
Geology
The petroglyphs are carved into a single large boulder of
Dunkard-series
sandstone
Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks.
Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...
that sits in woodland atop a hill with an elevation of approximately . Measuring approximately from east to west and from northwest to southeast, the boulder slopes from end to end: the northwestern corner is nearly above the soil, but the southeastern corner gradually meets ground level. Dozens of boulders of Dunkard sandstone, both small and large, are littered around the hilltop;
but only two presently bear any sort of human carvings.
[Murphy, James L. ]
The 'Lost' Barnesville Track Rock
, ''Ohio Archaeologist'' 59.2 (2009): 29-34.
Petroglyphs
When the site was first recorded archaeologically, carvings were scattered among several different boulders on the hilltop. At least one such stone has been removed: during the early twentieth century, a group of men masquerading as staff from a museum obtained the second-largest boulder, and it has been lost to science as a result. Smaller rocks were also recorded with petroglyphs, but a 1971 professional survey failed to find anything except on the largest boulder. At that time, it was believed that the other stones may have been stolen, become undistinguishable due to
weathering
Weathering is the deterioration of rocks, soils and minerals as well as wood and artificial materials through contact with water, atmospheric gases, and biological organisms. Weathering occurs ''in situ'' (on site, with little or no movement) ...
, or simply have become lost among the many similar boulders.
Four years later, the second boulder was re-discovered; the previous survey missed it because it had been buried or otherwise obscured.
The large boulder of premier interest bears 113 different designs,
which have been divided into 6 different classifications: 47 mammal imprints (the
tracks of bears and deer, plus indeterminate paw prints and the outlines of
animal pelts), 26
bird tracks, 21 human body parts (5 faces and 16 feet), 12
geometric figures, 4 snakes, and 3 pits.
While the precise identification of the animals whose prints are carved at the stone are uncertain, these designations were applied because they were seen to be the animals most likely to be encountered by the Native Americans who produced the petroglyph.
Similar to carvings at
another site that are known as "nut-cracker holes,"
the pits are small indentations that are most likely to have been made individually, although it is possible that they are the sole surviving elements of otherwise eroded designs.
It is very difficult to identify the types of animals whose prints are represented by the smaller tracks: a specialist in mammals from the
Carnegie Museum of Natural History
The Carnegie Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as CMNH) is a natural history museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was founded by Pittsburgh-based industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1896.
Housing some 22 million ...
was unable to determine whether many of them were meant to be the prints of dogs or of cats.
Most unusual of the designs are the pelts and the human faces: only one other petroglyph site in the
Upper Ohio Valley
Upper may refer to:
* Shoe upper or ''vamp'', the part of a shoe on the top of the foot
* Stimulant, drugs which induce temporary improvements in either mental or physical function or both
* ''Upper'', the original film title for the 2013 found fo ...
has designs that appear to be stretched-out animal skins, and the noses featured on some of the human faces are almost unknown at other petroglyphs in the region.
Those carvings designated as "geometric" are mostly abstract designs;
common on Native American petroglyph sites in the region, such "doodles" are thought to be likely evidence that many different sites were created by people of the same culture.
Carvings at Barnesville are noticeably different from those at Belmont County's other significant petroglyph site: known as Barton Rock, this site consists of petroglyphs on a large boulder in the middle of
Wheeling Creek, approximately below the
unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...
of
Barton. First described in 2002,
[Murphy, James L., et al. ]
An Unrecorded Petroglyph Site in Belmont County, Ohio
" ''Ohio Archaeologist'' 56. 4 (2006): 4-17. Barton Rock consists primarily of images of turtles and birds. Such a concentration is similar to the many riverine petroglyph sites in the Ohio Valley that Swauger described, while Barnesville's large number of tracks is similar to many other upland sites in the region.
Recognition
The earliest published record of the Barnesville Petroglyph was created in 1857 or 1858 by Thomas Kite, and a similar description was produced soon afterward by James W. Ward. Drawing on these works,
Charles Wittlesey and J.H. Salisbury produced a more systematic description in 1869 and 1871: published in 1872, they describe the carvings present on the boulder that was once thought to have been removed from the site as well as documenting the carvings that have always been known. A yet fuller description was included in James L. Swauger's landmark ''Rock Art of the Upper Ohio Valley'', which was published in 1972.
Because of the dominance of footprints among the rest of the types of carvings, the petroglyph has become popularly known as the "Track Rocks" among local residents;
nicknames of this sort are common for better-known petroglyphs, as exemplified by the "Picture Rocks" appellation of Pennsylvania's
Sugar Grove Petroglyphs.
Besides the carvings themselves, the petroglyph's immediate vicinity is archaeologically important because of the presence of many smaller
archaeological artifacts
An artifact, or artefact (see American and British English spelling differences), is a general term for an item made or given shape by humans, such as a tool or a work of art, especially an object of archaeological interest. In archaeology, the ...
. Various types of
projectile point
In North American archaeological terminology, a projectile point is an object that was hafted to a weapon that was capable of being thrown or projected, such as a javelin, dart, or arrow. They are thus different from weapons presumed to have ...
s have been found nearby; most were produced by the Adena or various
Late Archaic
Late may refer to:
* LATE, an acronym which could stand for:
** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia
** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law
** Local average treatment effect, ...
peoples. Moreover, the nearby Shannon Cave is believed to have archaeological value, and it has been proposed that some of the petroglyph carvings are meant to point toward the cave.
[DaRe, Brian. ]
Toward a More Comprehensive Understanding of Archaic Settlement Patterns for Eastern Ohio
." Ohio Archaeological Council, 2002. Accessed 2011-02-11. As a prominent
archaeological site
An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology a ...
, the Barnesville Petroglyph was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...
in 1974. It is one of four National Register-listed archaeological sites in the county, along with the
Brokaw,
Opatrny Village, and
Tower
A tower is a tall structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting structures.
Towers are specifi ...
Sites, which are all the locations of Monongahela villages. Only two other Ohio petroglyphs are included on the Register; known as the
Leo Petroglyph State Memorial
Leo or Léo may refer to:
Acronyms
* Law enforcement officer
* Law enforcement organisation
* '' Louisville Eccentric Observer'', a free weekly newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky
* Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity
Arts a ...
and
Inscription Rock, they are located respectively in
Jackson County in the far southern portion of the state and on
Kelleys Island
Kelleys Island is both a village in Erie County, Ohio, and the island which it fully occupies in Lake Erie. The British originally called it Sandusky Island. Later the United States took it over and officially designated it as Island Number 6 ...
in
Lake Erie
Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also h ...
, north of the state's mainland.
References
{{National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places in Belmont County, Ohio
Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio
Geography of Belmont County, Ohio
Monongahela culture
Petroglyphs in Ohio
Sandstone in the United States