Death Valley 2022/23

[Beardilocks]

Back to exploring:

I stopped by this DVII/III location near a spring the other day just to check it out.  Im quite sure most of you can identify the location, but keep it under wraps as it is a sacred site.  

I’m not sure what to call it exactly.  Alice Hunt calls it a “Burial Mound Area”.  And with over 20 suspected burial mounds here, that’s not wrong.  But there’s also maybe 4 dozen rock circle/pit/clearings of unknown use scattered willy-nilly around, a few clear sleeping circles out at the edges of the site, several indecipherable cairn alignments, as well as illogically placed hunting blinds… So the full scope of this site is hard fathom.  But it’s definitely very special.  


Burial mound


Rock circle



Strange cairn rock alignment 


Some of the “cairns” are obviously fallen stacked rocks.  Others appear to be more like stacked rings.  The rings seem to all have a stone sitting directly in the center.  But whether that’s incidental or purposeful is anyones guess.



Another strange alignment.  This one appears to be two cairns flanking a ring.  Definitely haven’t seen that configuration before. 


What appears to be rocks stacked around a mortar stone.  One hole was almost 8” deep.  



This area was very odd.  It’s in a rather tight wash between benches.  It has what seems to be a burial mound next to or including a huge boulder and 3 or 4 rather elaborate hunting blinds all facing each other and not at all where you would expect to find game coming through.  Also, the only petroglyph in the area.  This wash is also between two benches with elaborate alignments on them.  A memorial of some kind?  Who knows.  All the other burial mounds are out on the fan in the open. 











One of two obvious sleeping circles that I noted. There could be more further up the fan. 


Not really a lot of pizazz visually like Picto sites or geoglyph sites.  But it packs a pretty big wallop for significance and gravity.  I wish I knew the correct Shoshone words of respect to say in a place like this.