Barnesville Petroglyph facts for kids
Quick facts for kids |
|
|
Barnesville Petroglyph
|
|
Human footprints at the site, outlined in charcoal
|
|
 Location in Ohio
Location in the United States
|
|
| Location | Off Track Rocks Road, southwest of Barnesville |
|---|---|
| Nearest city | Barnesville, Ohio |
| Area | 3 acres (1.2 ha) |
| NRHP reference No. | 74001400 |
| Added to NRHP | July 15, 1974 |
The Barnesville Petroglyph is a special place in eastern Ohio. It has ancient rock carvings, called petroglyphs. This site is about three miles southwest of Barnesville in Belmont County. People have known about these carvings since the 1850s or even earlier. Even though the site was damaged a lot in the 1900s, it is still an important archaeological site. It is now recognized as a historic site.
Contents
Who Made These Ancient Carvings?
Native American people created the Barnesville Petroglyph carvings many centuries ago. We don't know exactly which Native American group made them. Some people think the Adena people made them. The Adena lived in this area between 500 BC and AD 300.
However, the Barnesville carvings look a lot like other petroglyphs in western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia, and other parts of eastern Ohio. Because of this, a petroglyph expert named James L. Swauger believed the same people made all these carvings. He thought they were made by people from the Monongahela culture. These people were influenced by the Ojibwe and first arrived in the Upper Ohio Valley around AD 1200.
The Rock They Are Carved On
The petroglyphs are carved into a very large rock. This rock is made of a type of sandstone called Dunkard. It sits in a forest on top of a hill, about 1,320 feet high. The boulder is about 11.5 feet long from east to west and 14.7 feet long from northwest to southeast. It slopes down, with one end nearly three feet above the ground and the other end touching the ground.
Many other sandstone rocks are scattered around the hilltop. But only two of these rocks have human carvings on them today.
What Do the Carvings Show?
When experts first studied this site, they found carvings on several different rocks on the hilltop. One of these rocks was even taken away in the early 1900s by people pretending to be from a museum. It has been lost ever since. Smaller carved rocks were also noted, but a survey in 1971 could only find carvings on the largest boulder. Experts thought the other stones might have been stolen, worn away by weather, or just lost among the many similar rocks. Four years later, the second large carved boulder was found again. It had been buried or hidden, so the earlier survey missed it.
The main large boulder has 113 different designs. These designs are grouped into six types:
- 47 mammal prints: These include tracks of bears and deer, other paw prints, and outlines of animal skins.
- 26 bird tracks
- 21 human body parts: These include five faces and 16 feet.
- 12 geometric shapes: These are abstract patterns.
- 4 snakes
- 3 pits: These are small dents in the rock.
We can't be sure exactly which animals made the prints carved on the stone. But experts think they are animals that Native Americans in the area would have seen often. The small pits are like "nut-cracker holes" found at another site. They were probably made one by one. It's also possible they are the only parts left of carvings that have worn away. It's hard to tell what kind of animals made the smaller tracks. An expert from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History couldn't tell if many of them were dog or cat prints.
Some of the most unusual designs are the animal skins and human faces. Only one other petroglyph site in the Upper Ohio Valley has designs that look like stretched-out animal skins. Also, the noses on some of the human faces are very rare at other petroglyphs in this region. The "geometric" carvings are mostly abstract designs. These kinds of "doodles" are common at Native American petroglyph sites in the area. They might show that many different sites were made by people from the same culture.
The carvings at Barnesville are different from those at another important petroglyph site in Belmont County called Barton Rock. Barton Rock is on a large boulder in the middle of Wheeling Creek. It mainly shows images of turtles and birds. This is common for petroglyph sites near rivers. Barnesville, with its many animal tracks, is more like other sites found on higher ground.
Why Are These Carvings Important?
The first written record of the Barnesville Petroglyph was made in 1857 or 1858 by Thomas Kite. Other descriptions followed. In 1872, Charles Wittlesey and J.H. Salisbury published a more detailed description. They described carvings on the boulder that was later thought to be lost, as well as the carvings that were always known. A very complete description was included in James L. Swauger's important book, Rock Art of the Upper Ohio Valley, published in 1972.
Because so many of the carvings are footprints, local people often call the petroglyph the "Track Rocks." Many well-known petroglyphs have nicknames like this. For example, the Sugar Grove Petroglyphs in Pennsylvania are called the "Picture Rocks."
Besides the carvings, the area around the petroglyph is important for archaeology. Many smaller ancient tools have been found nearby. These include different types of projectile points (like arrowheads or spear points). Most of these were made by the Adena people or other ancient groups. Also, a nearby place called Shannon Cave might have archaeological value. Some people think that some of the petroglyph carvings might point towards this cave.
Because it is such an important archaeological site, the Barnesville Petroglyph was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. It is one of four archaeological sites in Belmont County listed on the Register. The others are the Brokaw, Opatrny Village, and Tower Sites, which were all villages of the Monongahela culture. Only two other petroglyphs in Ohio are on the Register: the Leo Petroglyph State Memorial and Inscription Rock.
