Horseshoe Canyon — The Great Gallery and a Much Older Human Landscape
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Transcript
Horseshoe Canyon preserves some of the most remarkable rock art in North America, including the Great Gallery with large, elongated painted figures associated with the Barrier Canyon style. The images predate the modern park and long predate Euro-American ranching or mining. Their exact meanings are not known, and responsible interpretation should resist inventing a single story for them. Archaeology can describe pigments, style, sequence and regional context; descendant Indigenous communities may hold other knowledge and relationships to the place. What the gallery proves beyond doubt is that Canyonlands was culturally significant long before outsiders described the region as a remote wilderness.