Volvon Village on Mallory Creek 715 bedrock mortars and countless housepits spread over a half mile. Cupule rock. This village, located in the highlands of the Black Hills, must have been one of the largest settlements in the prehistoric Bay Area, yet it was, apparently, unknown to early archaeologists and historians. It does not appear […]
Stromer Spring25 bedrock mortars, cupules, and PCN-style petroglyphsElevation 2023 ft.We used to drink from Stromer Spring in the not-so-distant past. The Park District warns against doing it now.A nice, single-track trail passes near here. We followed it many times without ever stopping to examine these rocks. If we considered them at all, we dismissed them […]
Don Edwards Preserve4 bedrock mortars, possible cupulesElevation 103 ft.Another one of Jeff’s amazing finds.Nearly all the bedrock mortars we’ve encountered in the Bay Area occur on sandstone. These are the only ones we’ve seen in metamorphic chert.A closer look. Note the paired, shallow mortars. Such arrangements are rare. The only others we’ve seen are on […]
Manzanita berry grinding slick with one cupule.
Tolenas Springs Village41 bedrock mortars, 10+ cupules, probable mortarsElevation 268 ft.An artesian spring once geysered water ten feet into the air near the source of Soda Springs Creek, but quarrying for travertine and onyx (begun in the 1850s) eventually destroyed that flow. Patwins referred to this area as the land of healing waters. A resort […]
Elephant RockOne bedrock mortar, cupules, and carved graffiti.Elephant Rock may have been a “prayer” site. See Cupule Petroglyphs in the Diablo Range by E. Breck Parkman in the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 254-55 (1986).Home of the Elephant Rock.
Mid-Walpert Village32 bedrock mortars, rock wall alignments, numerous cupules and grinding slicks.A low, stacked-rock rectangle on a slope just below the crest of Walpert Ridge dominates this site. Could it have been a sheepherder’s corral? What, for paralyzed sheep? So who would have stacked these rocks if not the Yrgin residents of the small village […]
ALA-6044 bedrock mortars and 182 cupules near the intersection of Crow Canyon Road and Castro Valley Boulevard.The official trinomial for this site is CA-ALA-60. E. Breck Parkman, Senior State Archaeologist for California State Parks, suggests this may be one of the oldest acorn processing sites in the Bay Area. Cultural material excavated here has been […]
Upper Pond Village Creek10 bedrock mortars and 10 cupules.Elevation 1888 ft.This site sits beside the creek that flows down to the Pond Village. One of the mortars here is on a nice, flat slab in the creekbed.All ten cupules are on this rock, although it’s hard to make them out in this picture. Two are […]
Evergreen Valley Cupule Rock on Silver Creek32+ cupulesElevation 570 ft.Thanks to Joel for directing us here.The rock.Some of the cupules on this rock could probably be classed as bedrock mortars.We believe the trinomial for this site is CA-SCL-63. There are PCNs on this rock too, but we didn’t notice any. See A Stylistic Analysis of […]
