| LIFE Pictures of the day -- From the wild to the crazy to the beautiful.
- Thread starter doemasters
- Start date
Patsy and I made a trip yesterday to revisit the Kinlock bluff shelter, located in the SW edge of Lawrence County in the Bankhead forest. It has a very unique petroglyph. I had my Boy Scout troop out there in the early 90s and by chance a UA anthropology professor had a group of students there. He was explaining several of the petroglyphs on one particular boulder as we listened in. He said the cross carving had been found in two other shelters in Mississippi where it was known some of DeSoto's men had stayed on their return trip back to the gulf. There's no record that DeSoto's men came through our county but it is interesting.
Here's the boulder that most of the petroglyphs are carved on.
The shelter is huge, 300 feet long, 100 feet deep and 70 feet high.
Here's the boulder that most of the petroglyphs are carved on.
The shelter is huge, 300 feet long, 100 feet deep and 70 feet high.
Terry, here's the real pisser. UA and the Smithsonian explored the shelter, dug all underneath it, cataloged over 1000 items and carried the artifacts with them. Lawrence County has one of the best Native American museums at Oakville in the USA and Lawrence County officials have tried to get the artifacts back but of course have failed. So they're sitting in boxes somewhere in Washington, DC and Tuscaloosa where no one can enjoy them. They dated the shelter had been in use as far back as 10,000 BC.
Local history / folklore says this man lived under the shelter between 1912 - 1915.
And of course graffitti abounds. This was not done by the same person who carved the cross.
My dad and I visited the shelter after the excavation in 1962 and there was an original, what is called sunburst, carving of the sun with rays shooting out in this spot, By the time I revisited with my Scout troop in the early 90s, someone had chiseled it off. Probably destroying it while making the attempt to steal it.
TerryP
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