Leaning Strata is the visual manifestation of an extensive set of investigations Smithson was conducting during the mid-1960s, which included geology, astronomy, perspective, mapping, and the nature of time and matter. The title suggests a geological configuration. The stepping of the elements in the form, if continued according to the system established (i.e., moving at a regular rate away from the implied center), would conclude in a spiral. This is not unlike Smithson’s elementary crystallographic structure, which attained its greatest scale in his earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970) in the Great Salt Lake in Utah.