Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) describes a distinctive style of rock art which appears mostly in

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

, with the largest concentration of sites in and around the San Rafael Swell and Canyonlands National Park, but the full range extends into much of the state and western

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

. The term was first applied by

Polly Schaafsma Polly Dix Schaafsma is an American archaeologist, best known for her publications on Native American rock art. Schaafsma is a research associate in the Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, New Mexico. She and her husband, a ...

(The Rock Art of Utah, 1971) to describe a handful of similar sites known at the time, including several along Barrier Creek in Horseshoe Canyon (formerly known as Barrier Canyon). Barrier Canyon Style rock art panels are mostly

pictographs A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and g ...

(painted) but there are also several

petroglyphs A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

(pecked) in the style. These panels are believed to have been created during the archaic period (probably late archaic) and are estimated (from direct and indirect carbon 14 dates) to be somewhere in the range of 1500 to 4000 years old, possibly older -- clay

figurine A figurine (a diminutive form of the word ''figure'') or statuette is a small, three-dimensional sculpture that represents a human, deity or animal, or, in practice, a pair or small group of them. Figurines have been made in many media, with clay ...

s of a similar style found in

Cowboy Cave A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the ''vaquero'' ...

(in a

tributary A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drai ...

canyon to Horseshoe Canyon) have been dated to over 7000 years old. Barrier Canyon style, Sego Canyon

Sites

* Horseshoe Canyon * Buckhorn Draw Pictograph Panel * Courthouse Wash Pictographs in

Arches National Park Arches National Park is a national park in eastern Utah, United States. The park is adjacent to the Colorado River, north of Moab, Utah. More than 2,000 natural sandstone arches are located in the park, including the well-known Delicate Arch, ...

* Sego Canyon

References

Traces of a Lost People
By Kurt Repanshek, ''Smithsonian'' magazine, March 2005
Canyonlands National Park - Archeology of Horseshoe Canyon
National Park Service

an

photos of Barrier Canyon Style rock art by Doak Heyser. {{Commonscat, Barrier Canyon style Rock art in North America Petroglyphs in Utah