Petroglyphs of East Tank Mesa and the Mac Stod Great House: Using Rock Art to Gauge Regional Influences in Petrified Forest National Park

Summary

East Tank Mesa is a prominent landform located within the new expansion lands of Petrified Forest National Park: harboring a high concentration of Pueblo II-Pueblo III petroglyph panels and one of the region’s few possible Chacoan outliers. This possible outlier is the Mac Stod site: a seven-room pueblo possessing some of the hallmarks of Chacoan architecture (core veneer masonry, large rooms, long straight walls, and well constructed rectangular doorways). The nature of Mac Stod, and whether it truly is a great house outlier remains unclear though. This uncertainty was addressed through a survey of East Tank Mesa’s rock art panels and comparing the depicted elements to panels found throughout the rest of the park and the greater Southwest. By understanding what regional influences are represented in the mesa’s rock art, we may begin to gauge whether the Mac Stod site was ingrained within locally focused systems of interaction or may represent an expansion of Chacoan influence. Ultimately this project will contribute new data on the rock art within Petrified Forest National Park, enhance our knowledge of one of the park’s few possible Chacoan sites, and advance our understanding of this region’s relationship with the peoples of the greater Southwest.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Recent Archaeological Research in Petrified Forest National Park

Keywords

Spatial Coverage