Comparative Analysis of Petroglyphs at the Crack-in-Rock Community

Summary

Recent archaeological research in Wupatki National Monument has led to a complete baseline documentation of a suite of petroglyph assemblages located at the Crack-in-Rock community in Northern Arizona. Through collaborative efforts between the Museum of Northern Arizona, the National Park Service, and Northern Arizona University, this paper details a comparative analysis approach to understanding the use and placement of rock art within the region. The Crack-in-Rock community boasts numerous standing architectural features and over 300 petroglyph panels, yet the area is surprisingly devoid of cultural artifacts. In an area well-known for its abundance of cultural remains, the community stands as an outlier in the national monument. In an effort to better understand Crack-in-Rock’s placement in the regional context, the petroglyph assemblages at the three sites in the community—Crack-in-Rock, Middle Mesa, and Horseshoe Mesa—were subject to both statistical and spatial analysis. The findings of this paper demonstrate how rock art research can broaden our understanding of the cultural landscape of the past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17607