ABSTRACT
Experiencing the rock art at Horseshoe Canyon is absolutely a sensory and emotional experience for most visitors. Humans have used these canyons for shelter, hunting, ritual, and now, recreation. The figures in the Great Gallery and other sites in Horseshoe Canyon range in size from under one foot to over nine feet high. The anthropomorphs sometimes include appendages, some of which are not present in real humans. They typically are depicted face-on and have bilateral symmetry. The animals that accompany them usually are shown in profile, and include snakes, birds, bighorn sheep, antelope or deer, and dogs. On the walls of Horseshoe Canyon, dogs are depicted as part of both human and spirit realms. Ceremonies to maintain connections between Earth, humans, animals, and spirit world are necessary to fulfil and reinforce the role of human as communicator between and with Earth's constituents, physical and spiritual in many indigenous belief systems, including those of many Southwest Native Americans.
