Burro Flats Painted Cave - Pictographs

Pictographs

Among the pictographs at Burro Flats are two human stick figures wearing headdresses with lines radiating from the heads. There are also stick-figure animals with four fingers, a circle with a star inside, a plant resembling a cornstalk, and more abstract groupings of circles and trigrams. The cave is a small, hollowed-out portion of a long, low rock set into a grassy slope. The Burro Flats pictographs have been termed "the best preserved Indian pictograph in Southern California." Archaeologists estimate the drawings are several hundred years old. There is a replica of the pictographs at the Southwest Museum in Highland Park, Los Angeles.

In 1971, the Los Angeles Times reported that some have suggested "that the cave's drawings were made by Indian maidens who slept here and drew what they saw in their dreams, perhaps as part of puberty rites." Others have suggested that it was used as an astronomical observatory and to celebrate the winter solstice. The Chumash celebrated the "return of the sun" as their civilization depended on the sun for life. Anthropologist Al Knight has described the importance of the winter solstice to the local Chumash as follows: "The entire local Native American Indian religious ritual cycle is centered on the moment of winter solstice. It's like rolling together our Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's celebration in one event." Another theory is that the drawings were a cooperative effort between the Chumash and Gabrielino tribes in the 15th century to celebrate the solstice and friendship between the two tribes. One anthropology professor has opined that the Burro Flats pictographs were painted between 500 A.D. and the arrival of the Spanish settlers. He noted, "They've had very little vandalism, one of the least molested sites I know of."