Cave Paintings Of Baja California: Discovering the Great Murals of an Unknown People - Hardcover

Harry W. Crosby

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0932653235 ISBN 13: 9780932653239

Publisher: Sunbelt Publications, 1998

Synopsis

The Great Murals of Mexico's Baja California are one of the five greatest sites in the world for primitive rock art. They rank with those of southern France, northern Spain, northwest Africa, and outback Australia. These Great Murals, created by an unknown people, are without doubt the most distinctive trove of rock art in the Western Hemisphere. The site was unveiled to the modern world in the 1960s by adventure/mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner who brought in UCLA archaeologist Clement Meighan to validate the importance of his find. But it was not until the 1970s, when author/photographer Harry W. Crosby undertook a systematic search for the largely unknown works hidden in the mountains of central Baja that the scope and significance of the find became known. He documented his search and discovery of over 200 previously unreported rock art sites leading to the original publication of The Cave Paintings of Baja California by Copley Books in 1975 which first introduced this cave art to the general public. Since that time, Baja California's Great Murals have been designated a United Nations Heritage Site.

This lavishly illustrated full-color account is greatly revised and expanded from the original edition and offers Crosby's unique perspective on the painted sites and painting styles found in different parts of the Great Mural area. Crosby's explorations, studies and writings since his original forays into the mountains of central Baja California have established him as one of the foremost authorities on Baja California's colorful past. This is the most complete treatment of this world-class archaeological site currently available.

Every year, more and more professional researchers, rock art aficionados, and curious tourists visit the caves and rock shelters of Baja California. To them as well as the armchair traveler, this is an invaluable reference work, field guide and adventure narrative to the magnificent art that survives on this rugged peninsula. This is a classic that will be read by the specialist and general reader for years to come.

The Cave Paintings of Baja California was named a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, History Book Club, and the Natural History Book Club. The book is endorsed by the Mexican government. Contributing photographer is Enrique Hambleton. Specifications: 246 pages; 10" x 10" hardbound with dust jacket; 71 full color photographs; 11 black and white photographs; 8 full color maps; 6 black and white maps; and 108 full color illustrations; bibliography; index; glossary of technical, colloquial, and Spanish terms.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Interest in the Great Mural area stimulated by the publication of this book has led to the production of a one-hour television documentary being created by Tamarisk Group which is slated to air nationally sometime in 1999. The author, Harry W. Crosby, will be featured in this documentary.

Review:

Crosby's prose style might be described as "scholarly," but the text is enlivened by the way he weaves together his story of the painters and their world and his own journey of discovery, mostly on mule back, through the hinterlands and among the occupants of the long Baja peninsula...But it is the photographs and maps that bring this book, and its subjects, to life. They speak with eloquent power, giving voice to the past, to a people whose arrival and departure will ever by a mystery. The reader is moved to travel there, despite the distance and discomforts, to gaze, to smile and to wonder. -- Richard Sterling -- Historic Traveler Magazine, 4/98, Richard Sterling

Frankly, I found the book one of the most remarkable ever to be published. Harry Crosby has opened a wonderful window to the past. For this impressive book, he found and photographed 200 previously undiscovered rock shelters painted in the Great Mural style. CAVE PAINTINGS OF BAJA CALIFORNIA is a labor of love. -- Hispanic Times Magazine, 5-6/98, Robert Kendall

It is certainly fitting that this book should have been selected by the Book of the Month Club as one of its history selections. Harry Crosby is certainly to be congratulated as are his publishers -- the later having clearly risked a lot of capital on this lavish investment. It is a large scale, yet personal and intimate, book of scientific description, of scholarship, and of great beauty. So is it now and forever the foundation on which all future studies of Baja California rock art will stand. -- Bernard L. Fontana -- Southwestern Mission Research Center Newsletter Bernard L. Fontana

The cave gods must be looking over Sunbelt's shoulder. Since it was released in February, CAVE PAINTINGS was selected for three book clubs, reviewed favorably in the top review journals, and mentioned in the WALL STREET JOURNAL. That's not all. An Emmy-award winning producer is taping a one-hour, TV documentary to be aired in 1999. The documentary will gather together experts to talk about this world wonder. -- Foreword Magazine, 6/98

The greatest concentration of prehistoric cave paintings in the Western Hemisphere did not come to public attention until the latter part of our own century. In the mountains of central Baja California, on volcanic overhangs over labyrinthine canyons, loom scenes up to 150 feet long and 35 feet high, of deer, mountain sheep, birds, snakes, even whales and manta rays, as well as humans, male and female. Figures are stylized in red and black, occasionally ochre and white, with image heaped on top of image, giving a sense of life teeming and frozen where one expects bare stone. How did a people who left no evidence of the most rudimentary agriculture, no trace of shelter for themselves, manage to execute sophisticated murals that soared six times their own height? Who, for that matter, were those people?

It is cause for celebration that the best popular work on the subject in English is back in print. Harry Crosby, author of several works on the peninsula, including most recently, a compendious history of the missionary period, first published his narrative of the cave paintings in 1975. In less thorough fashion, the paintings had already been written about by Jesuit padres, a French mining engineer, mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner, and a scattering of archaeologists, and the murals themselves had been familiar all along to the ranchers who live among them. With those ranchers for companions and guides, Crosby made it his goal to find and catalog them all. His account is anything but pedantic. Slightly revised for reasons of style more than content, it conveys the excitement of the search while pausing for portraits of ranchers, observations on pack --The Bloomsbury Review, 5-6/98

About this edition

• Publisher: Sunbelt Publications
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0932653235
• ISBN 13: 9780932653239
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 246