2020 Kansas Notable Book; Rex Buchanan & the Petroglyphs of Kansas Smoky Hills

today on key pierre presents we're featuring the best books of the year about kansas or written by kansas authors i'm kate mcintyre it's the kansas notable books of twenty twenty each year i interview with many of the kansas notable others as possible and squeeze all of those interviews into a two part show to coincide with the annual cannes festival in topeka the twenty twenty but festival was canceled due to the coveted eighteen pandemic so we're taking a slightly more leisurely approach to the kansas notable books this year over the next few months you'll hear longer conversations with our campus notable others starting with this one petroglyphs of the kansas smoky hills both bills it's about kansas and has not one not two but three kansas co authors or craig's who teaches at the washburn university law school just body former kansas secretary of agriculture and my next guest rex buchanan director emeritus of the kansas geological survey rex it is great to see you

know each case could have your first things first we're doing this interview in keeping with npr as best practices for safe field reporting we're about how far apart would you say we are racks troth to fourteen feet are ridiculous that investment amsterdam gets about twelve feet apart and disinfectant all of our equipment and we're doing this outdoor it's in breakfast backyard to be a specific but it is the backyard so you may be hearing cars and birds and neighbors in the distance so with that in mind let's go to rex what is the petroglyphs but you know it has a rock carvings on general categorization people make and refer to rock or you hear that term a lot and rock or is not a traumatically fond of the rocker consists of petroglyphs which are carvings and rock paintings which are

paintings with payment on stern and probably a lot of people are familiar with but the grass or paintings from say a cave paintings of france and spain you get that in in this country as well but and in the project we were involved with virtually everything is a popular for a rock party said these are actually carvings into the sandstone yeah we focused entirely on this book on carlin's in for the most part what's called dakota sandstone cretaceous age rock about hundred million years or so and the dinosaurs it's a real saw sandstone so it makes a pretty good medium could draw into some places it's forbidden other places so soft ego moe scratch with your finger some it's a good medium two to scratch on to to carve him to the proms at that is that it also roads fairly easily so many of these

features a problem we are an hour long lived and more reasons for doing the book was simply to document what they looked like the day they've been subject to vandalism from people of comely are messed him up and erosion some of the most spectacular petraeus a lot like i remember seeing jazz is no longer present because it naturally right away because that sandstorm substrate they're wrong rex i was really hoping that we could do these interviews somewhere out in douglas county actually looking at a petroglyphs of a you could describe it for our radio audience but it turns out there are any petroglyphs around here tell me what it is about why don't we have them here and what is that about ellsworth county particular it's not a good sight for them yeah there was that but the skeleton was never really going to be in the cards you there are populists outside of the art crop belt of the smoky hills in various parts of kansas but not very many and

in some places i could give you reasons for that on imports of say western kansas there's not much in the way of really hurts smooth surface to trip to carve onto soon there's virtually nothing out west around here in theory you could you could carve into some of these limestones but for whatever reason you don't see much here are some locations where you do find a montgomery county down on the oklahoma border there are few there are several he's in the gypsum hills down and saw central kansas right around here know i think a combination of geology and cultural worldview of the tribes or in the area or what combined to make the smoky hills a place we find a lot of insects when you talk in your book about some of the some of the cultural

factors that made this may be a relief good spot for rocket express and yeah things that it's a little hard to know exactly why these things are where they are because there's lots of sandstone heard lots of sandstone all over the state that typically lot out there i would say most of the locations we went to you could associate with a couple of things a lot of these were in caves or rock overhangs a lot more associated with water and in particular anonymous ocean springs i think in both cases you could probably can trip are at the location as a connection to another world and now research get into the interpretive part of which i think is very difficult for people to day when we take people out there a lot of the signs the first question that was asked when you walk up and see one is well what does this

mean that's a really problematic loaded question for for somebody coming from our cultural viewpoint tried to to determine the meaning of something created by a completely different culture several hundred years ago but i do think it's safe to say that that these locations are deliberate thirty years i can't tell you exactly why these things are where they are but i'm pretty sure they are where they are for very definite reason to unify can pay whatever but very often i think they are associated with other and seen worlds places that that you and i can see and caves or springs provide conduit between the world we can see in that unseen world and i don't think it's any accident that that's where you find the big picture of these features stories saying there that act are less served some kind of spiritual purpose

i would guess they have a spiritual connection to actual i would say that's more than it gets out of the world the one thing i think i could say without without almost with certainty about the future is the not accidental or not duels or not somebody drop in a rainstorm without the time of day and the arts draw a picture of a horse i don't see any evidence for that whatsoever these are very deliberate very well constructed in some cases but we've got a steady the drawings curving to get do have meaning and very often i would say and again the words were used to talk about this are problematic when you're trying to look at him for more european western european point of view that i would say that they do have they're often a spiritual connection some of them are telling stories but a lot of them are features that have a spirit tor connection fertility figures for example say may represent a place that people go for special ceremonies i think yeah and more than

likely they were drawn by people who had the power to draw those things where the standard interpretations is that drawn by sean and out of those are people who didn't can be ten of the mediator between the world that we live in the world we see in that unseen well there's a lot going on with these things but i will say it's one of those projects the longer that we looked at and the more that we looked at him i think the less i understood him when we first walked up you think well here's a story of a battle you look at the features on it see all sorts of sanctions it first and you're certainly sort of drops away after all i'm visiting with rex buchanan director emeritus of the kansas geological survey and one of the co authors of petroglyphs of a kansas smoky hills rex realizing that there's a lot of variation among the petroglyphs could you describe a typical line you know i'm not sure there is a typical

now for the sake of the text of the book i came up with three categories animals and to pull more fewer humans and geometric figures gary many of the sites that we go to have one or all three of those cliffs hamper often they will be combinations of those features those categories in other words are not mutually exclusive you have a cliff the culmination of a person in a geometric figure or combination of animals or all three combined into one i don't know that i can say that there is anything that's typical but there are some that you find a lot of sides fertility figures that i mentioned early on those are really common and that's a really common one is a simple cross one of the tribes that is they're often in the literature credited with drawing these features in central kansas or the pawnee and one end of the pawnee was particularly oriented towards stars and constellations and we

know that they're drawing of a star was not the classic five pointed stars like like i would draw you might draw across here and on i would say those fertility figures in those those crosses this probably represents stars are among the most common beyond that you see a lot of people in you see a lot of other animals and water much striking things about this is and very often the cases the animals are relatively few lines that go there are bird to us that we show people that are in the book that in essence are two lines to swooping lines soon as you see you know exactly what's been depicted it's the most stark artistically all of them then you can imagine and that those are the ones that for sure the special experience there that made this book really been a pleasure to do i'm glad you mentioned that because when i was looking

through all the photographs and the photographs or beautiful in this but when i was looking through the photographs some of them were really obvious especially the interim enter morris the the petroglyphs to look like people although some of them are very stylized but there's others may i don't look out for a long time and try to figure out their events they're telling me that the bison i'm not sure i'm seeing i guess those are legs how that's guesswork because there or isn't the type of thing that as see you study them you see things more clearly yeah that's a good question and i would say we really tried to minimize interpretation here for all the reasons i've talked about a record for the most part we want you look at these things and see what you see having said that the bison photo that you spoke of and by the way burger instead we get these photographs i think is just that he wrote this book because they're just so spectacular but the bison if if we were sitting close together i would point out features on the photograph

and you would say yeah you're right it is but there's no question they're other foot and overtime your eye gets accustomed to see in a sense the bison for example that you're talking about never saw the bison are reminded me some of the cave paintings in france i mentioned earlier now that i've worked with this stuff for years and years and years the stylistic similarities to fall away and it's easy to see that the similarities for me have a look at this stuff having said all that there is no question i could open up this book almost randomly and show you a pattern with that i didn't understand that modifier percent one time and i'm not sure i even try anymore that is yet again people always ask what are these mean and sometimes i tell people you know i'm not sure that's really the right question to ask you need to try to understand these in a very different way and if you bring your western american mindset to

these and try to picture these instant a spiritual experience that you're used to or even more strained imagine as if you're looking at art in an art museum you're known for values on of these drawings department to be there who is a good example or as we did this book like i mentioned was because he's features a runaway eroding way to being vandalized run to document how they look right now is it sad that they're gone away yeah no question it's it's it's painful to me to go the site were some of the most spectacular petroglyphs existed in nineteen ninety five interview on today having said that or they meant to be permanent that the people the bottom there and ten for those things to be their centers and centrist or did they intend for them to do the same thing that their role as naturally which is to erode away i don't know the answer to that my point being don't conflict because it looks at the year that they're going way that may not be what they were there for

some money when we were working on this book i would sit at josh and burke don't just think about the things we see think about the things we don't see and ask yourself why don't we see that there are relatively few fish in these cliffs it was one i recognize in a fish or birds lot of horses won turtle that i know if maybe one beer where the sect why why are not or a lot of them a lot of the denizens of planes in terms of animals that we know that they're not they're both in trouble the time i did all those are good questions to ask even for what the answers are good and try not to look at these away people to participate on his books people draw lines on the populace on the photographs to show you here's the

bison or to help you see the bus hoping for a couple dozen half that once i try to do on the text because i've read so much literature the text will describe it and then you look at the photo and go what where i don't see it i tried to avoid as much as possible and i was open was a fight talk about something the tax you look over and go ok i see there might not always work i think that's preferable to me drawing it for you because if if we drop the bison for you in effect we've said ok we're going to tell you what to see what's not point in this book i don't doubt that a lot of people are no prison term for more reading when we've given talks don't look at the features a nazi stuff we didn't say and that's part of the point as well that border you look at these photographs the more you see in effect the la times i saw things of photographs of it see out there on alf crop of photography just pulls out certain things come a day makes the difference and that's what i think makes the central atlantic

endlessly interesting and where there's a lot about bricks worked so much is that lends itself to that repeat viewing hour i'm glad you brought up the whole issue of is it sad that these are are eroding one of my thoughts that i had as i was looking through it was a real sense of sadness and how many of them had been vandalized or that people have written their own graffiti around or on top of these petroglyphs but it made me wonder should we be looking at these differently than we look at modern day graffiti is there it was this basically it was an honest it's graffiti but are we running describing more meaning to advance say you know jacques was here yeah that's a good question and i do think some of these features are identity

marking monitored for a commonly said there's a hamper what you see not just here but you see it all over the world is a common leaf clifford drawn and i do think that's an identity marking i was here aka different from haskell want to have one of those him prince henri end of his pickup in our opinion page and i said what's at me and he said that means this is mine keep your boats off so in some senses yeah i think you're right and in some senses i think its announcing a presence maybe you can view an autograph on iraq the same way but i would also say that they're the there's much more meaning you could describe to him far beyond that and i do think it would be wrong it's pretty easy to differentiate the average high school kid out there with what they've done compared to these folks and again some ideas back to states that he draw a picture of a horse or a bird with quite the

elegance that these folks remember should have a different viewpoint of a horse or a bird you consider for sure bird almost a relative few look at animals differently than we look at it today we'll get him as others not quite related to us if you looked at him the way other cultures might've looked at him almost certain that will translate into the way you draw the stakes so move on to one analyst and appoint interim i think some of that is at work there but in a lot of cases original question there far beyond that therefore oregon those fertility features in theory there's a lot more than one hundred in just a simple treatment geometric drawing near rex it just occurred to me that one thing we haven't talked about with the petroglyphs is how old are they hear in the distance as priest into question what answers we don't really know for

sure because there's no real good way to date the sanctuaries pigment you can date pigment in some cases where you've got like him because grover the rock you can do that but that's never been done much in kansas that doesn't really lend itself to that or we can get it guests were you see a broader portion of their current or she notes post fifteen forty one bizarre two horses get interviews back into the plane's so you know that hits maltby before that and other cases where you see figures anthropomorphic figures wearing uniforms are pretty high that years late seventeen hundreds probably more likely early eighteen hundreds lava sets trends pre soft is not the hold up for thousands of years since i would say compared to a lot of drawings are a lot of soulless cave and french ritual thousands of years old is a recent visit to three hundred years now in a few places some of that sense of really hard and i think there's some that

i believe stylistically and because the rock or probably will appear and maybe for five hundred years to prove it that that's probably as old as anything and be talking here so relatively recent compared to much of the rest of the world a visit with rex buchanan he's one of the co authors of petroglyphs of the kansas smoky hills it was maybe twenty twenty kansas notable book i just reminder we're having this interview in rex his backyard there are birds there are cars there's lots of natural noise going on which is maybe and fitting with an outdoor book like the petroglyphs of kansas smoky hills of severe was in the blue jays squawk daugherty aria you're really trying to tell me that we're all washed away literally and at that point you brought up there are

depictions of soldiers cut that was one thing i was really surprised to see and the petroglyphs was these pictures of people with stiff writes kate you can identify them by bear's stripes on their uniforms and it's a depiction of people wearing uniforms rocky and mostly this the textures extended captions for the photographs or at the first extended caption i said its depiction of soldier and sam review rebecca's and you don't know that all you know is that a perfume or in uniform because of the stripes was an unusual for some of these tribes to work with the army and were closing in on a particular solo indian council a good a good lesson in them or you think you know the people i should probably do know where those depictions sort of my band began to say it because you know what do you to say in fact one was a mossad favorite stories but

it's not one of my one of the stories in the book a moral reasons we did the book was because i grew up here in kansas cited kim's history is a seventh grade or maybe you did too but it always felt to me like even in seventh grade kansas history started in fifteen fourteen one with corn outer come across appliances like explicit exist until european show up in it and then i remember being in moderately offended by their interpretations because really been here for five or six hundred years and yet obviously people been here a lot longer a few years ago a minute i worked at the spitzer art music and we saw a painting of native american with his head cut off and i stopped and looked read the label and it said holzwarth county kansas it in sixty seven sixty eight a chemical which made and sixty nine until researcher turned out it was a story of a group of pawnee scattered been working for the us army who were headed back to where they lived it got stopped by settlers in ellsworth kelly who called up

the soldiers from fort harper and today's town of tomatoes jason's scouts into iraq cave or over and killed him companies aren't poor surgeon from four harper cannot cut off the heads of things aponte scouts and sent him back to washington dc for so called ethnographic study of either scouts who were working for the use us army commanding the men wearing uniforms like you just mentioned i grew up about twenty five miles from where that happened i'd be under that spot repeatedly i had never heard that story josh regret about ten miles away whose relatives own that spot had never heard that story or may not be a pleasant story but on your nose when we askance and sullivan though that nobody does it end we typically location in fact that was our locations in working with a book i brought up some folks from the pawnee tribe in that was one the first place win well it was to show them the location

was ordering today they knew that story was not a new story we went to the occasion and i walked away and left him there for forty five minutes or an hour it was really kind of war the special experiences in and put this book together and again i think gets at the heart of him there's a lot more chances history that a lot of times what we've been taught so far let's talk to me about the process of putting this book together and how you worked with her grades and just thought you know the books are grown of josh and i for some reason i really remember why but for a long time we would do these fugitive brief february march we just baltimore told people and say hey we're the pattern of sweet spinach they do and eventually that morphed into the idea of doing a book ortiz is really important about this book is that it's not a guidebook that none of the locations are down a flight here in the closest you get is a township and good luck finding a location for bees that information almost all his locations on private property and

for the most part the landowners don't typically want you there for good reasons all sorts of good reasons including that vandalism that you've talked about already so when we got ready to do the book the role sort of divided themselves up naturally burke has done photography for other guidebooks in and we were good friends and sober did a photography josh was the one that negotiate with local landowners in ellsworth kelly which is where most of the photographs are from and help with the logistics there and then and i read most of the text and so sort of a division of labor as a result of that in some respects i think the hard part was probably the berkshire all this on film for reasons that you could ask him about that because the quality of the images that he was after but for the most part some of these or on public property or a couple of them some of them are well known locations are easy get permission go to the most them are places

that you're trying to get one or two shots a coal plant on earth they reluctantly let you on with the knowledge you're not coming back so in berkeley and take his photographs it was kind of okay buddy this better and so these were tough conditions there is one of these photographs inside a rock overhang more of the most interesting locations of the wall that the exposure words for half or five minutes because the darker now or things that i think is really cool about that location is not only is it a really interesting left unsaid anthropomorphic sort of animal features as well but also the knowledge that for books that when he took his photograph and where i set my first song was where person said when they carved minnesota in that spot you know that the person says that to produce that future that's a special experience in a lot of the aspects of this really special it's interesting to try to make a bring go places that it's not used to go on as you twenty four century

white american male especially since even though this is rock that's relatively easy to carve into it's not like this would be a three minute exercise this is someone that would have to have fat there for a while here the user and all the folks that went out with us who specializes in southwestern art made the point on that one which is you don't see me dad rock are that these people are doing what they're doing they're doing it because they're very good at things it was really striking to me and i haven't seen this mentioned in the literature but there are two locations in here one i'm on a burglar from the other one a shield andra gillespie there are two examples want to have the burden to have the shield that look so much alike that i swear they're paid almost have to be done by the same person now can i prove that now that is a true i don't know but a hard challenge if you were to look at these things were looked at and you would walk up and say anybody that

book you can look at but those two sets of gloves separate about twenty five miles and you'll discover shake your hand when they look so similar you're so again my mind immediately wants to go to a baby were dealing with the nineteenth century version of picasso here say that that's a kind of trap you really wander into could've been the same person might get it sure looks like it might have been that makes a person probably pretty special i'm i guess again i think most of the richard riese oversees organ just by anybody these are done by people who have been his special connections a special powers to other worlds some of these clips look like they are coming out of the rock one of them in particular is an armed that you can't see it connected to a body and it sort of trials often of the rock almost as a gift the body is with the rock and you see that in those cave paintings in france and punched it connotes looking at this medium very

different way that's enough some in the rock world we can't see it we don't know that it's there but the person that has the power to see a notice while it's almost like when you hear it on of sculptors who take a piece of rock and somehow see something in that rock and bring it out yeah it's like michelangelo knew that the body was a moral tunnel he had to do was get rid of that stuff around there's a little bit again of your brain won't think of it that way and not true that sentence into tibet would affect how much or it's a good way to think about it but it is a little bit overblown analogy right but it does require this mine shaft a lot of these enormous in the photographs there or one on top of the other your future few painted a landscape you got a house here a boat here a person hearing all be separated of these

clothes are superimposed one right on top of another very different construction and again i think it's a reflection of the folks that create these things i just have a different mindset than a different view of the world in that we have and there it is very difficult for us to comprehend having said that there's nothing wrong with the connecticut trying to think of them and those ways into much for its american in this book the navy folks that we work with or appreciative of people who do we approach the singer's respectfully and thoughtfully and didn't try to force our values are and i think they appreciate the fact that somebody cared enough to do these as well i'm visiting with rex buchanan he's one of the co authors of petroglyphs of the kansas smoky hills along with or craig's

and just thirty it's the first and r kansas notable book series conversations with the authors of the best books by kansans or about kansas selected by the state library of kansas center for the book you can find a complete list of this year's kansas notable books at their website k s l i b diet info and j mcintyre my conversation with rex buchanan will continue right after this you are listening to k pr prisons and kansas public radio from the university of kansas we're nine he won five lawrence and ninety one three all spurred junction city a mining kansas public radio support for katie are present on kansas public radio comes from friends of that topekans to the topeka sue has worked to educate children and adults on

wildlife conservation for over eighty five years old when daley from nine to five more information is that topekans to the war we think at our apps you have access anywhere any time to your favorite kansas public radio programs like a pr present and this american life never missed your favorite show again by downloading the app for free and thanks for listening to today i'm kate here presents we're featuring some of the best books of the year by kansans or about kansas i'm kate mcintyre it's the kansas notable books of twenty twenty selected by the state library of kansas and visit with rex buchanan he's the coauthor of petroglyphs of the kansas smoky hills along with or craig's and just body works you mentioned two other people who contributed indirectly to this work and that's james indeed one of the founders of wichita

and the famous photographer alexander gardner talk about them and how they lent their expertise to this project you know that the us had those are good questions especially the gains made connection because for a few people harass me about the media was a lot of real people on the plane to reintegrate account for our of wildlife around the plane's isn't making fifties sixties and he drew games were from memory a few years later a number of clips that he had seen at a site and russell catch in that notebook where he drew those figures is a digitally available at wichita state university and one of my friends from high school has a sister who works at that that that the special collections department which passed a tent city a note about that sketch book and it just happened that when i was doing extended caption on us sergeant russell canada's one another note from her with the like to james meet sketchbook and one of the figures that he does a

sketch of i think we put the figure in the book is a photograph and you look at the two things and you know the drew his version of that left in one of the other locations in fact it's a spot that's featured on the cover to cover of the book ashes place where me and wrote his autograph and to the sandstone now can i prove that was james army that did it or no i can't prove that but if you were to pick a name to carve into sandstone very troubled current name in stone stone i don't think james army is going to be the one that you would probably pick up within your own you might be somebody famous david james army it's not exactly a house term so i'm pretty sure we've seen his autograph on a response and then the other one is alexander gardner famous photographer took the last photograph of abraham lincoln came to kansas city kansas pacific we're donating sixty seven it really somewhat first photographs of most of the statements of great wins

awards he photographed at least a couple of these locations including a vocation where the pawnee scouts were previously what's really valuable for us is party they're calling for breast tissue research group photographer but also the fact that they didn't tell us what these things look like before white people come out the side to do their own carting saloon bar often heard of talks about this question how can you tell the difference will future forever burn ursin there's a carving i've got bored why it's a maid carving because you don't see much preaching sixty seven graffiti marred below that but there's really not much in the coffin for his work and under tough conditions or is it is this great big large format camera his horror on these glass plate negatives in why do is that roar across the smoky hills which is not least rugged landscape on the face of planet summer policing survive alone a lot of cases raja works of

art so yeah those are two folks that i think sort of helped us and we included figures from one rule won't work unless you just as a side note i believe that was james to road that did a book several years ago we feel cereno their photographs from that kansas city back in i have done a fair amount of pre photography some with john troll down and we did a bit down the grand canyon a free photography it's a standard technique but by saying the one fourth there was the quality of the additional photographs occasionally gut carter photographs to start with for years really lucky though they stop iran is killers were going for four west point but fortunately thank goodness i got for arrested in smoky hills so we've got to pay tribute photographs it but even after their legs cannot have you open up your book excerpt lives of kansas but he held and slipped two i would say one of your favorites that led to one of the one of their photographs and

describe it for us yeah a couple of them one of them is a natural hard to talk to the children to question i'm only working on this book we we just had so many photographs and i would go to britain say you know don't cut a few out and pained expression or burps face was so most of them stayed at that but the one woman was so striking to me because i thought about before is the one that was the in the dark the long for a five minute exposure because the religion or three figures the drum tower to one of yours what looks like a human with arms fingers at rich and your body but also because of the way the body is constructed for a long time now we use informal names on the center referred to this as an insect figure because it looks so much like that after the left of it is what i thought was an anthropomorphic figure another kind of retain your body coverage of the

stockyards and her very first time or fortune haskell came up afterwards and i really think that figures not a body but it's a guide on or produced flags with the v on like me very often carried out there and waited now that he said that the goals with that one of the militants america's what in the lead for people refer to as a turkey track and it's really three pronged track i'm not saying it's a depiction of a turkey track that's just a good way to talk about it it might be a depiction of a turkey attractive models big picture of constellation it might also be a section of the head of a big boost in grass while always referred big boost in this tricky for grass and if you look at the head of it that's what it looks like it is one of the more prominent figures that you see they're so all three of those are in there the whole thing there's not much graffiti virtually no graffiti in this one scene crusted with the headless white like emma grows in that dark spaces a bunch of other or sometimes call tally marks even though indiana nature that's what they're meant to

represent that's just how we talk about a lot going on there and the other one that i would turn to as a curving of a horse and when we have this talk in person which i don't do that anymore and over is a room that when we were doing an instant in person every time i would fly shirts slide up onto the screen the crowd that there would be a collective almost gasp from the crowd was audible they would call every every town from berkeley sure that i'm sure was like the greatest compliment and i can see why because again it's wonderful to really simple kinds of drawings a little bit of graffiti in this one just a few initials effect on the cover that book for comment was very books covering the last minute we can with a more complex the us from another location that benighted there's a bunch

of the bison when you talk about there's a double spread of the bison in here that i think is just spectacular some of those some other ones were toward the end of a book or from locations within could just a couple miles of where i grew up places that i worked a lot as a kid and closer to streamline meaningful to me here i'm so so hard bitten but those two were kind of representative of a foreigner asking about rex cannot have you turn to page one hundred and seventy two there's a photograph from wright's county mitchell town set i'm sure there's a certain role in this photograph that's been identified as that i'm going to mispronounce this intaglio that's why i said and i didn't know those commentaries for kbr one time and i had people say it's and paleo and i think that's italian knit my response was the seizures and kansas people in kansas city and ted leo therefore it is

contained here so you said write it out the other features just within a few miles of where i grew up and in and ted leo that people are probably familiar with mom bloggers among native americans cokie amount over by st louis there is places particularly in iowa minnesota seem a lot throughout eastern us mounted up ground are often the shapes of animals were other features in attendance fan of the converse of that or people dug out the ground and create a future by digging up the ground and to fairytales and i am somewhat agnostic about this but we put it in the book it's not touch with were put in a boat and work is it's real close to several of these features standard interpretations is that this is going and ted leo dugout spot that's in the shape of the serpent course made with an egg and it's now out we got drone photography from this done by couple folks bill johnson and colbert from like a huge rv parking ramp to

run for photos of that then would that feeling here and you can decide if it looks like that to you like i said i'm still somewhat agnostic but i think most folks are probably in the archaeological community would agree certainly this is from a place that is culturally rich with native americans which are tried to steer huge numbers in the fifteen hundreds and this is almost certainly the location where corn iran and two he referred to his quiver indians when he came out here almost certainly wichita indians there are huge huge numbers in these upper headwaters of arkansans river now gen campbell people sit here and say wow which todd douglas feature will nobody can prove that but that's certainly a conclusion that would be reasonable to come today but it was not grow old loman in folks really it became well known in the eighties what people found it went out and shock in the bottom of that out on the chart and took an aerial photograph out of an

airplane with that again when you see that is a lot like a snake yeah looks like a snake and i put it up a chop doesn't look so much like a summer again this photograph maybe thought it did and there are glorious not very far from here had that have that set the same shape as well so that and again this is opposite the pawnee and upon a more familiar with this feature has to know exactly where it was and i think if i really have the sculpture should point is there's no question they would claim absolutely soon i like that way to you and and neither will be right or the other questions people ask about that feature a lot is isn't oriented associated with celestial features and yet that question that the petroglyphs a law which is you're certainly are places you get features that are oriented it's the solstices

and i know people have suggested that in terms of this feature here again i am somewhat agnostic or the last set of photographs that we did for this book goes out on december twentieth of owning the team they before the solstice arrived there right on sources but the sun and move along a day every hours travel line things up and make things fit and it's really pretty subtle so changes over time that sensible and keep in mind that this to some of these features that look like their way up a high on a bluff to day like i would need a ladder to get there and get closer and today they might've been ground level at that time registered new telegram and we consider higher the would be car wrecks and an effort to preserve petroglyphs have any effort been made or has been suggested that date carve out a piece of rock and say take it to a museum or i'll sell to a place that's not

just been suggested it's been done in effect and working on this book several photographs this book you'll see panels and those were the people there we're trying to the reviews are not modern day preservationists these are people wanted taken hall so they did a few of those actually wound up at the museum gives museum of history over it because you can see that's not a good idea so good idea for a lot of reasons the primary one and it obviously folks can or simple bumper they can't see him in that context they were meant to be seen a good about what we talk about and get these things are within the landscape they're part of the landscape they are in the landscape for reasons i mean i know what they are but they're not meant to be removed from the landscape in when you pull out a penalty taken someplace else even if you do that with the best of intentions you have in fact i think and destroyed much of the meaning of the future itself they're often in a world that i lived in if you can't tell me where art rock came from

or if you can't tell the city archeology where and artifact came from much of the value of that future is destroyed would we have to know the provenance to know what to say about so i can't take an instance in oregon which that removal is a good thing in any way shape form are some occasions where people can be out in buses are on private property and says ek go look at their locations throughout watkins is but in nebraska and in the southwest where they're publicly accessible to people to look at them all time and by and large they get away with that in the sense of there's poison southeast nebraska that privilege graffiti free and florida state park union case the park so it is doable but it only takes one knuckle heard to them a race or in the face even worse maybe a feature that's managed to survived for

centuries about that because i have to say i have to met in reading patrick willis of kansas mike he tells one of the things that i found frustrating was to me like when you see these you want to go visit them and it's frustrating that you may have a home you may have created some demand for something for which there is no supply i absolutely understand the frustration in undervalued better example a lot of trees look at those cave paintings from france i have a few years ago wesco of his famous one from in southern france spain persona places few years ago many and i went to france and we are there are caves were you still can go look at jay picks so we went and spent the morning at you know what the great experiences of my life i've seen the paintings photographs and paintings are immature sea but there was

no substitute for walking into that cave this was a commercial cave with a group of people with a guy just like you wouldn't get at carlsbad caverns or someplace like that but to see the size and the lighting you could hear the sounds of that setting havens didn't know book is going to recreate their so in that sense you're absolutely right to be frustrated because most of his improv proper you're never going to see him anyway because as your income is this book so is this book better than nothing you better believe i would make it of course i began our growth spent three years working on it absolutely isn't a substitute oh of course it's not that city couldn't be we try to do with that best we could by providing the context so that each chapter there's a pullback picture there is what the landscape looks like and then we zoom in on individual features but no i understand your frustration

and i like i tell it in that in the sense that obviously this is meaningful and going back to these locations today and a lot of both or even more meaningful to me so i wished him jack kevorkian rex yet but director emeritus of the kansas geological survey you've written several books about natural structures and that's what you're known for what felt like working with a man maybe medium well it's a good question here you know a lot of the features that and stuff never about us or landscape features neutral features theres all daunting because in effect we're conservative society the street here in the side of the street to work on is in some respects an archaeological site but even the art world side in this book i made

it sort of plea and they're not they're not using the term rock art affect those books like this would use the phrase rock art in the title rather than poetry i did not want to use that phrase dude apply to these features and so i went off on sort of the disposition about why i'm sure that their people and our history world you if they were to read that would shake their heads in sadness of my ignorance of the language of art history so there's a question we waded into a world that was very different than those older adults are not only are working in the world of archaeology where you could maybe argue that we didn't belong working innovative world where you might argue that we don't belong is that is there are some trepidation it comes up that you

believe that we spend some nights out by the fire in the house right here worrying about exactly those those things that affect whether czars commission royalties from this book are going to historical museum in ellsworth county historical museum and rice kerry and the native american rights fund in boulder colorado and one of the reasons is the last thing that i think we want to be accused of was somehow trying to profit out of this one right you are both know nobody makes any money off the books nowadays anywhere mercer stephen king john grisham and torture or not stephen king john grisham but it was important for us to let people know that we understood some of those concerns were trying to address some of those concerns and when we walked into their strongest claim that we are the world's foremost experts on any of this have said that there's no question as a close connection to the geology and what's being worked on here in between

where we grew up in joshua's case ellsworth kelly much as rice cafe in these features i've been drawn up their gives us a certain level of credibility that some folks don't have because these things are porn oscars we grew up with that we knew about him as kids even if nobody would talk about it and nobody wanted to move they were there we knew they were there there were important parcel landscape so give us the right to do this you decided we felt like if you read an excerpt from your bike or do what has ever done that before but there's a wonderful bit out of the preface and the reason the profits grew out of one of those commentaries that i did for kansas public radio but it was a description of a cave location up on a hill that has a big bird collection side of the end of august read the first few lines

and the last few months a few years ago we live in an informal feel triplicate native american rock carvings in the smoky hills of central kansas and overcast chilly day in late april we stopped at the base of the hill in the eastern edge of ellsworth kelly height over a small dam and then climbed up the side of a hill so steep that we had a drab cement plants to pull ourselves up thick sandstone kept the hill among the jumble boulders was a small rock shelter total feet long it's for covered with debris left by turkey vultures and pack rats we're going to talk about what we saw in so we're it begins to rain and then i closed with this or were inside that rock shelter a storm blew up from the worst to begin writing softly the rain turned to sleet and then briefly to hail satan inside a shelter we looked out over the valley and waiting for the storm to pass it's tempting to think of this landscape this timeless prominent

the boss was a pond built long after the bourbons curved here sitting crossed the hills was a modern high voltage power lines reminders of the sites and changes the bird inside that cave had seen some labor driving itself will be gone taken by an actionable corrosion the photographs in this book by what most of those carvings to do it one storm blew through about downhill slide walking through now where big boost him leading the bird behind in solitude to keep looking out over the smoky hills that's rex buchanan reading from petroglyphs of the kansas smoky hills a twenty twenty kansas notable but rex buchanan of the co author of that along with bert grades and joshua's body rex thank you so much for visiting with us thank you good actor close reading your questions are good ones and obviously you're paying close attention to punch for dreamer a hero today and keep your prisons we featured just a few of this year's kansas notable poets the best books by kansans are about kansas selected by the state library of

kansas will be talking to you more of the kansas double others on keep your present in the months to come i'm kate mcintyre keep your prisons is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas next week i'm katie are present we mark the thirtieth anniversary of the landmark americans with disabilities act it's a conversation with disability rights advocate and activist judy human soul be the keynote speaker as the university of kansas mark the aba at thirty later this month shopping malls are being built movie theaters restaurants and it was not illegal to build things that weren't accessible to discriminate in hiring a disabled person unless there was a specific law that state to be human on the next ep are present at this same time and kansas public radio stations