A team led by
Utah State University geologist Joel
Pederson has used luminescence dating techniques to document the timing
of geologic events in southern Utah’s Canyonlands National Park, and
thus “draw a box” around a probable window of time for the creation of
the paintings in Horseshoe Canyon’s Great Gallery. “The most accepted
hypotheses pointed to the age of these paintings as 2,000 to 4,000 years
old or perhaps even 7,000 to 8,000 years old. Our findings reveal these
paintings were likely made between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago,” Pederson
told
Phys.org.
The new dates suggest that the artists may have co-existed with the
Fremont people, who are known for their carved pictographs. “Previous
ideas suggested a people different from the Fremont created the
paintings because the medium and images are so different. This raises a
lot of archaeological questions,” Pederson explained.
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