Petroglyphs vs Graffiti, artifacts vs trash

[Don Morris]

Vandalism vs graffiti – if only we knew. Most of the time, we have no earthly idea of the motives or mind sets of the original artists, although we do indeed speculate endlessly. Where we can get some glimpse of motive, it does indeed look like at least some rock art does have some sort of religious significance, but this usually isn't very clear. Mostly we just have images on rock and we project our thoughts on their images.

[Don Morris]

Plenty of people besides Gov't employees are allowed to know the location and go see the rock art- basically anyone with a bona fide scholarly interest when we are talking about unprotected rock art sites. There are many rock art sites in many parks and forests that are shown routinely to the general public; these are usually in locations where the rock art can be protected form vandalism.

A good local example for you would be Painted Cave. Again, protection is the priority, which is why the iron bars at Painted Cave keep people from direct contact, but allow good vision.

Protection of fragile rock art, and, indeed, of any archaeological site is hard, and destruction or damage is easy. At least we have good studies and reports on much of what we have due to people like Campbell Grant and many others.

[Nick Gatel]

http://www.forsythlv.com/redrockvandals.htm

[Steven Hanlon]

i walk past a lot of trash because it does two things:

1 – reminds me why i don't litter and hopefully will remind others not to litter.

2 – reminds me how ignorant people can be – you don't need a map to know you are close to a road.

[Author]

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