ROCK ART: MINNESOTA

Rock art in various forms can be found all around the world in caves, on rock faces and along rivers, anywhere that people found to express themselves. In Minnesota, there is an impressive collection of petroglyphs in southern Minnesota called the Jeffers Petroglyphs. The Jeffers Petroglyphs are located in Cottonwood County in south-central Minnesota, A wide variety of tools, animals, and shamans are represented in the rock art which dates from 3000 B.C. to A.D. 1750.

There is also a collection of petroglyphs within the Pipestone National Monument in Rock County, Minnesota. The Pipestone National Monument is located in Rock County in extreme southwestern Minnesota. Many of the petroglyphs at Pipestone are thunderbirds or human stick figures. The site has been dated from A. D. 1600 through historic times, much later than the rock art at Jeffers.

Until recently, those were the most notable in the southern portion of the state. The Wellner-Hagemann Site is located about three and a half miles from the Jeffers Petroglyphs Site in south central Minnesota. The petroglyphs here were located as a result of an archaeological survey done for the Brown County Parks Department by Impact Services of Mankato, Minnesota in 1991. There were four clusters of petroglyphs including a circle containing a figure adjacent to what appears to be an atlatl adjacent to two geometric figures. The second cluster includes a fish, a human figure with a bow(?) and a single human figure. The third cluster appears to be a thunderbird and the fourth cluster includes an atlatl and some "counts".

Written by Kathy Roetzel, 2000