Friday, September 01, 2017

Note on Some Turtle Shell Revelations

Or “Adding the eyes sometimes makes the rock art come alive." - J.L.


     At first you might not ‘get it,” but that stone wall (or that pile of stones) might contain some realistic imagery of Cultural Icons, dependent of course on the creator’s artistic ability.

     Unhappy with a couple of images of the gateway in the previous post to this one, I wandered back up to that big old “wall” (or qusukqaniyutôk) in order to get a better capture. Along the way I kept a look out for capstones that could be turtles or Tûnuppusuonk - turtle effigies. Yesterday I happily looked through that file and quickly stole an image and pasted some box turtle eyes onto a bit of crop and paste work before and after.
    This morning I look at it and say to myself “That’s not the dome-like carapace of a box turtle, now is it?” So off to pirate an image of a snapping turtle leads me to Wikipedia to lift this one:
      So, correcting myself, here’s the newer image (until I find a snapping turtle who will pose just like that photo on top of that stone wall for me):
    Close by, a little further north, is another interesting sort of turtle that might be a grinding slick of sorts (maybe to roughly shred some soft material?). Thinking “You might not get it” shows how the trick is to view the turtle effigy or Tûnuppusuonk, I’ll show the “hurried on a freezing cold day” capture:
   And then the older one where the viewing angle helps you “get it:”
So I’ll overlay the photo with the correct eyes, toss in another lifted image of a snapper:
Here’s another:
    As a friend once said, “Adding the eyes sometimes makes it (the rock art) come alive.”
(Is it a lower jaw - made of a similar stone/split stone?)

Sometimes there’s a protruding spike sort of thing on a turtle shell, just as in the image above. This has nagged my thoughts for years (at times, I mean – not in every waking moment, although it sometimes occurs in dreams). Maybe it’s not the nuchal notch, but a portrayal of the spike on that first vertebral (along the backbone) scute that fits into it perhaps (and yes I know it’s a box turtle in the photo, but it’s the one that triggered the thought yesterday when I was pasting box turtle eyes on what I should have seen as anything but a box turtle):
How about side by side snapping turtles, Mr. and Mrs. Common Snapping Turtle made of stones?
Single stone "carapace and head" variation:

    I guess I’ll add some of these Snapping Turtle Overlays to the Flickr Album with the whole collection:

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