Throughout the west, once in a while a peck or a paintbrush just won't do it- to get the desired effect, to give the panel a little pizzazz, to kick it into gear- Native Americans would pull out the scratched card. I'm not talking about the 'scratchers' or lottery tickets which many westerners are familiar with. Scratched rock art can produce a sense of motion, static energy, and action which is not commonly seen in Great Basin Style rock art. Some researchers have gone to great lengths to associate scratched rock art with the Numic spread hypothesis and it's true that scratched rock art usually is found at relatively recent looking sites. Whether this is do to cultural change or is something of an artistic movement which occurred relatively recently is hard to say.  There are also older scratched sites which cast something of a cloud over the Numic spread take. For more information on scratched rock art I'd recommend reading such authors as McLane, Stoney, Ritter, and Christensen who have examined many of the scratched angles.
To find a scratched rock art site can be more difficult as this medium can't be seen as readily as your standard pecked, abraded, or incised (a close relative of scratch as this is just repeated scratching) sites. Frequently, you can't see anything at all even from a view feet away if the sun is not shining on the panel just so.  Scratched rock art is found commonly at pecked sites and ever so often at sites which are nothing but scratched. Some rookies who have never come across scratching will occasionally dis it as being glyphiti (graffiti). Scratched rock art occurs all over the west in places far away such as: Grand Gulch, Barrier Canyon, along the lower Colorado River, and along the Snake River in Hell's Canyon. I suspect scratched may have even invaded Canada and Mexico.
The way scratched glyphs were created was by scratching a harder rock on a softer rock. Obsidian and other lithic sources were likely candidates.  It is important to leave lithic material near scratched rock art sites as it's possible that this scratching produces a certain use pattern on the lithic material used to create this art (McLane first noted this in his scratched presentation at IROC [International Rock Art Conference] in Flagstaff in 1994). It is possible that lithic material with this use pattern could be used in conjunction with obsidian hydration to produce dates of when this art was produced. I've noticed this use pattern on lithics at a couple rock art sites, including a Barrier Canyon site in Utah (oops- glyph name dropping).
The photos accompanying this article are more the exception than the rule as most scratched sites are very abstract, difficult to photograph and fit snugly in the 'Conquistadors of the Obscure' category.
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