Kotha Circus

About This Experience

It was one of those desert days when the sky seemed almost impossibly clear. Not a cloud to soften the sun, and as the morning progressed the heat became increasingly noticeable. We knew that reaching Kohta Circus—also written Khota Circus in some accounts—would require a fairly long hike, but the landscape and the possibility of finding rock art along the way kept us moving. Fortunately, this was not one of those hikes where everything was concentrated at a single destination. Quite the opposite. As we wandered through the sandstone, separate panels began appearing here and there, sometimes obvious and sometimes requiring a careful look at the darker varnished surfaces. Each discovery gave us another excuse to stop, photograph and examine the figures before continuing farther into the heat. That scattered nature of the rock art eventually made perfect sense, because Kohta Circus is not really one panel at all. When rock-art researchers Eileen Green and Elaine Holmes described the complex in 1999, they recorded eight principal panels, seven of them facing almost exactly east. The group had been brought to modern archaeological attention in June 1998, when Bob Ashbaugh rediscovered the panels and gave the place its modern name. “Circus” referred to the extraordinary profusion of zoomorphs—animal figures—crowding the rock surfaces, not to anything connected with an actual circus. The largest recorded panel measured about 22.5 meters, or 75 feet, in length, although later visitors commonly describe it as roughly 80 to 90 feet depending on where they consider the panel to begin and end. It is frequently described as one of the largest and densest continuous petroglyph panels in Nevada. Nothing really prepares you for that main wall. After the scattered discoveries along the hike, suddenly there is an enormous dark sandstone surface covered with figures. At first it almost looks chaotic. Bighorn sheep appear everywhere, mixed with anthropomorphs, birds, serpentine forms, tracks, spirals, geometric patterns and animals that are much harder to identify. Some figures are beautifully clear while others have become faint through centuries of weathering. The name “Circus” begins to feel appropriate simply because there is so much going on. Among the animals identified or proposed by different observers are bighorn sheep, deer or elk, coyotes, water birds, geese, quail, eagles or other raptors, turtles, snakes and other small creatures. Some identifications are far more certain than others, and we have to remember that a shape that resembles a particular animal to us may have represented something very different to its maker. One especially striking figure appears to show a large deer or elk whose tail is deliberately connected to a spiral. The connection seems intentional, but nobody knows what it meant. Looking at the long panel, some researchers and modern observers have noticed what appears to be organization rather than random accumulation. In parts of the wall, rows of animals seem to travel in one direction across the upper portion and then return in the opposite direction below. Several sheep are linked nose-to-tail by lines. This has produced the attractive interpretation that the panel might record movement or migration—perhaps of animals, perhaps symbolically of people, or perhaps a story involving both. But this remains an interpretation rather than a translation. There is no surviving key telling us that a spiral means a journey, that a line represents a route, or that the animals constitute a literal migration narrative. It is possible that generations added individual images to the same wall until a composition that now looks like one story gradually emerged. The farther we explored, the more obvious it became that the main Circus wall was only part of the experience. Separate panels occur around the natural sandstone amphitheater, and some of the most extraordinary are far above the canyon floor. One important group lies approximately 10 meters—about 30 to 35 feet—above ground level. Their elevated position has helped preserve the petroglyphs exceptionally well. Compared with many of the weathered figures lower down, some of these high carvings remain astonishingly crisp, with fine pecking and dark surrounding desert varnish producing a dramatic contrast. Standing below them inevitably raises another question: how did the artists reach those surfaces? The landscape may have changed, sediment levels may once have been different, natural ledges may have provided access, or people may simply have climbed much more confidently than we would today. Whatever the answer, their position gives those panels an almost theatrical quality, looking down over the natural arena below. These high panels are also where the history becomes especially interesting. Green and Holmes concluded that much of the imagery displays strong Puebloan influence. One of the clearest examples is a curious reclining flute player, appearing on both the long and high panels. Similar horizontal, stick-like flute players are known from northeastern Arizona, particularly Tsegi Canyon. Earlier rock-art researchers associated comparable figures with the late Pueblo III period, broadly within AD 1100–1300. That does not date the entire Kohta complex to that period—the panels almost certainly contain imagery created at different times—but it provides an important stylistic clue suggesting that at least some figures belong to a later Ancestral Puebloan artistic tradition. Small carefully executed bird figures and a ladder motif also have parallels at Puebloan sites in Arizona and Utah. That cultural connection makes sense within the broader history of the desert. Human beings have used the surrounding landscape for at least 12,000 years. Archaeological evidence includes projectile points, roasting pits, food remains, shelters and hearths. The region also functioned as a corridor through which people and materials moved; pottery, salt, marine shell and other resources demonstrate contacts extending far beyond the immediate desert. Archaic hunter-gatherers were followed in later periods by Ancestral Puebloan communities associated with the western or Virgin branches of the Puebloan world. Still later, other Indigenous peoples used the landscape, and by the time Spanish travelers reached the region in the eighteenth century, Southern Paiute communities were living there. Southern Paiute people continue to maintain cultural and spiritual relationships with this land today. For that reason it would be misleading to assign every petroglyph at Kohta Circus automatically to a single people or century. The rock surfaces probably preserve traces of a long and complicated history. Perhaps the most fascinating—and controversial—interpretation of Kohta Circus came from Green and Holmes themselves. While recording the panels they noticed a peculiar anthropomorphic form repeated at least fourteen times. They informally called it the “conehead” because of its distinctive pointed head or headdress. They proposed that these figures might actually depict katsina masks or ceremonial beings. Comparing the cone-shaped forms with Pueblo ethnographic and archaeological material, they suggested possible associations with ceremonial figures such as the Twin War Gods, Sotuknang or Aholi. They also pointed to the remarkable eastern orientation of seven of the eight panels, the apparent northward formation of small birdlike figures and the presence of flute players traditionally associated in some Pueblo contexts with fertility and seasonal ceremonies. Bringing these observations together, they proposed that ceremonies related to the Pueblo katsina tradition—possibly Powamu rites—might once have taken place within the natural amphitheater. It is a fascinating theory, especially when standing inside the natural setting and looking at the high panels as if they were positioned above a ceremonial plaza. There are even concealed passages and natural approaches that Green and Holmes suggested could have allowed dramatic entrances and exits. But this interpretation has to remain exactly that: a hypothesis. We cannot say that the cone-headed figures definitely represent katsinas, nor can we demonstrate that a particular ceremony occurred here. Rock-art interpretation becomes dangerous when resemblance is transformed into certainty. The original artists left the images but not their explanation. The same caution applies to some of the more elaborate modern readings of the upper panel. Certain observers see short lines as rain symbols, basket-like forms as full or empty burden baskets, spirals as journeys and the reclining flute player as an appeal for rain. From those elements an entire narrative has been proposed: declining rainfall, empty food stores, a decision to migrate and a coyote leading the people on another journey. It is a compelling story and perhaps even contains pieces of the original meaning, but there is currently no way to prove it. What is much more securely established is that the petroglyphs connect this desert landscape with a much broader Puebloan cultural world. The flute players, birds, ladders and other forms have stylistic relatives hundreds of miles away. Archaeological evidence from the surrounding region also demonstrates long-distance movement of people and materials. Green and Holmes later even explored possible connections extending farther south into Mesoamerica, but such interpretations remain much more speculative than the basic Puebloan stylistic parallels. The safest conclusion is that Kohta Circus was not culturally isolated. Whoever made these images participated in networks of movement, exchange, belief and artistic tradition that extended well beyond this one sandstone amphitheater. By then the heat of the day was becoming difficult to ignore. Under the perfectly clear sky there was little relief, and the long walk meant that every additional panel added both excitement and more time under the sun. But that was exactly what made the day so enjoyable. We would finish photographing one group, begin moving again, and then notice another dark wall with faint shapes on it. Another stop. Another set of animals. Another anthropomorph or spiral. Another reason to forget temporarily how hot it was. Eventually the scattered panels led us to the enormous Circus wall and the extraordinary high panels above it, and suddenly the length of the hike felt completely justified. What fascinated us most was not any single petroglyph but the sheer variety. Some images were immediately recognizable; others were completely mysterious. Some seemed playful, others ceremonial, and some almost looked like pieces of a story whose beginning and ending had disappeared. Even archaeologists who have spent years studying these panels can only propose possibilities. Migration, hunting, seasonal ceremonies, fertility, rain, clan identity, journeys and katsina beliefs have all been suggested, but perhaps several completely different meanings coexist on the same walls because different people returned here at different times. That may be the real beauty of Kohta Circus. It is not simply one panel or one story. It is a collection of stories layered across a remarkable desert landscape, some still partly recognizable and others completely lost. After a long hike beneath a clear and rather unforgiving sky, having found panel after panel scattered along the way, we finally understood why this place had acquired such an unusual modern name. There were animals everywhere, strange human figures, birds seemingly in motion, spirals leading nowhere we could follow and mysterious beings watching from high above. It really did feel like a stone circus—but one created centuries ago, whose performers are still on the stage while the meaning of their performance has disappeared. The hike back was still long, the sun was still hot, and our legs certainly…