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:
No comments:
Post a Comment