MESAPRIETA2026-001 - rock art depiction
Mesa Prieta horned figure
United States - New Mexico - northern Rio Grande - Mesa Prieta - North America - Southwest
Function not recorded Candidate only
Source term: bullroarer
On a basalt face at Mesa Prieta, above the northern Rio Grande, a figure in a horned headdress stands with one arm thrown out to the side. At the end of that reach, pecked into the rock, is a long narrow shape. The Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project, which recorded the panel as a three-dimensional model, says the figure appears to be using a bullroarer, and notes that its sound is likened to rushing wind or rolling thunder. What the model cannot show is the line between the hand and the shape: no cord resolves on the surface. Nobody has dated the panel either, on a mesa whose images run from the Archaic to the present day.
This figure, wearing a horned headdress, appears to be using an instrument called a bullroarer.
Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project, description of photogrammetric model 015_124_005E (published 7 May 2024)
- Object
- Pecked rock-art panel, recorded as a photogrammetric surface model. A horned anthropomorph stands with one arm extended laterally toward a long, narrow pecked element. No physical object is involved. The model does not cleanly resolve a cord between hand and element, nor a circular motion arc.
- Function
- Depiction identified by the recording project as a figure using a bullroarer, with the sound likened to rushing wind or rolling thunder; no rite, performer role or context is recorded for the panel itself.
- Source
- Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project, photogrammetric model of panel 015_124_005E, published on Sketchfab 7 May 2024 under the title "Bullroarer 015_124_005E"; the project's model description supplies the identification; no explicit reuse prohibition was located
- Source location
Page references
Sketchfab model 015_124_005E and its project description; internal capture mesa-prieta-015-124-005e-exact-surface.png
- Source confidence
- low Mesa-level anchor for Mesa Prieta on the northern Rio Grande between Espanola and Velarde. The recorder deliberately publishes a panel identifier instead of a coordinate, so no panel or shelter location is available and this point should be read as the mesa, not the site.