Ozark Imagery: Documenting Rock Art in the Arkansas Highlands

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The first published account of Arkansas rock art appeared in the late nineteenth century when public museums and other institutions relied on private citizens as well as professional scholars to report all manner of scientific facts and discoveries. The Arkansas state site files include reports of rock art sites from casual observers to rigorous academic scientists, and everything in between; therefore, documentation type and thoroughness varies a great deal among sites. This paper outlines efforts of the Arkansas Archeological Survey’s Winthrop Rockefeller Institute Research Station to verify reported rock art created by Indigenous people, collate records of rock art sites reaching back to the 1930s, monitor rock art site vandalization and looting, and thoroughly document extant and new sites in the Arkansas Ozarks. We highlight the value of using modern photogrammetric techniques in rock art documentation and monitoring and discuss one result of this ongoing research: a revised and updated rock art website for the state of Arkansas.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37291.0