Petroglyph Panels in Isolation: Differences in Cultural Expression through Rock Art Placement in the Landscape of Petrified Forest National Park

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Research in Petrified Forest National Park" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Across Petrified Forest National Park, ancestral Puebloans left their mark on the landscape through the creation of thousands of petroglyph panels. While the exact meaning behind the glyphs depicted in petroglyph panels has been blurred by the passage of time and poses a formidable interpretive challenge to archaeologists, the locational context of petroglyph panels has the potential to provide insights into the nature of cultural expression occurring across different rock art sites. While many petroglyph panels within Petrified Forest have a clear association with pueblo settlements located in their vicinity, many more petroglyph sites are in relative isolation on the landscape; these different petroglyph site types may provide evidence for distinctive forms of sociocultural expression occurring at these sites. A GIS-based locational analysis will allow for the identification of isolated petroglyph sites and ethnographically-documented landforms of cultural significance that these sites occur on. This paper will additionally compare the distribution of easily-identified glyphs of sociocultural significance between isolated petroglyph sites and those associated with habitations to identify possible differences in representations of sociocultural affiliation occurring across these two site types.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Archaeological Research in Petrified Forest National Park

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26138