Rocked Awake
By Shannon Livingston-Harris
The desert plucked every cloud from the late spring sky. Standing next to my husband Cory, I’m fixated on the lithics he’s displaying in his open hand. The fragments shine in the proselytizing light of the mid-day sun—our only spectator in the Mount Irish Archaeological District
All photos by Shannon Livingston-Harris.
Jake, an archaeologist for the Bureau of Land Management, identified the artifacts that Cory’s holding. Stooping close to the ground where we found the fragments, Jake looks up at Cory and me.
“Native peoples skillfully fashioned local stones into tools, and we’re lucky to see fragments from the tool-making process centuries later,” he says, educating us on the historical and cultural significance of this 640-acre archaeological site in eastern Nevada.
Hunter-gatherers started visiting the Mount Irish Range around 4,000 years ago, and the remnants of campsites, stone tools, middens (areas for prehistoric waste), and rock art are still here. As Jake said, we’re lucky to cross paths with artifacts like lithics that allow us to imagine and appreciate the lives of those who walked before us. The experience corrects my pacing to that of the natural world, causing my spirit to buzz with a new humility.
As Cory sets the lithics back on the ground (it’s illegal to remove them from the site), I notice nearby rock art. A rectangular figure, aligned vertically with a short antenna protruding from the top of its head, is carved into the boulder. I point in the direction of the petroglyph.
“What do you think it means?” I ask. Jake smiles, shrugs, and shares his best guess.
“It might be a marker of some kind, but we honestly don’t know.” The three of us stare at the marking in respectful curiosity, engaged in that mysterious search for meaning shared by many art museum patrons. How can we sincerely know what the artist had in mind?
Cory and I began volunteering as site stewards for the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) in 2021. Trained through SHPO, we visit sites of archaeological, historical, and paleontological value and document their condition, sending our reports to land managers. Archaeologists like Jake introduce us to these locations, teaching about the profoundly layered past. Site stewardship is a unique opportunity to intimately witness the Nevadan landscape, educate ourselves on more than 10,000 years of cultural history (and 540 million years of paleontological resources), and work toward preserving our statewide heritage.
Now the crepuscular hour, Jake, Cory, and I walk back to our vehicles, ready to return to our respective homes. I watch the horizon spill shades of pink and orange and listen to the sound of loping mule deer—their hooves hitting the ground and rising again, bounding onward. A slight wind carries the smell of pinyon-juniper to my nose as I recall the smooth, sharp texture of the lithics on my fingertips from earlier.
In this cradle of human history, I’m rocked awake.
Shannon Livingston-Harris is a content program manager for a California-based tech company, a lifelong learner of natural history and human origins, and a Las Vegas resident.