Death Valley Deep Dive 2024

[Beardilocks]

I stopped at an old favorite site of mine that I had last visited several years ago.  Something had been bothering me.  This was an ancient habitation site that had several rock circle foundations, a metate & mano, some lithic scatter, and a couple of scattered petroglyphs.  Nearby there is also a stunning petroglyph collection placed oddly on a steep hillside. 

My conundrum lay in the WHY.  Why live here.  There are no springs anywhere nearby.  The location is tucked oddly into the landscape, almost hidden away.  It's not on any know travel routes in the area.  Obviously it's not always easy, thousands of years separated from the original inhabitants, to understand why they chose a particular place.  But this location was just ODD.  So I set out to explore the surrounding area to see if I could find any context clues. 

I was happy to see that my favorite piece at the site still sits undisturbed:  A metate with mano still placed on it, ready for use.  The petroglyph on the metate is just extra fabulous. 


One of the few scattered glyphs. 


There are several of these rock piles scattered around.  I can't quite glean their purpose. 


And then some lithic scatter.  And then more lithic scatter.  A LOT of pieces.  Too many pieces...


Suddenly it hit me.  The reason for the strange location of this mini-settlement:  It's a chert quarry!  Now it all makes sense.  You could see where the veins of chert had been dug from the ground and some very large pieces of lower quality ore had been left behind.  There are not too many known quarries within the boundaries of the park, so it's very cool to see.  And to solve this one little mystery. 


This may well be coincidence, but I found it odd.  As I was exploring around I found these three boulders, almost in a line, each with a smaller rock placed on top.  Just odd...


Some really pretty tiger-stripe chert. 


More of these odd rock piles. 


I visited a few old friends on the way out.  A map of two springs and a stream or a couple of praying mantises.  Mantisi? 








It was very cool to put a few puzzle pieces together and getting a bigger picture understanding of a site like this.  It's much easier to imagine life here when it was in use.  Many questions remain of course.  Did the same people that lived here and quarried stone for hunting also make the nearby petroglyphs?  Does one exist because the other did, or are they entirely unrelated? 

If you do manage to find this place, please leave it untouched.  It is both a sacred place and an open air museum that can only be original as it is now once.