Puerco Ruin and Petroglyphs in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park preserves the remains of a major Ancestral Puebloan community and a large body of rock art. Occupied mainly from about 1100 to 1200 and again from 1300 to 1400, the pueblo grew to more than 100 rooms around an interior plaza and became the park’s largest known archaeological site. Its people farmed the Puerco River floodplain, made baskets and painted pottery, and traded with groups to the west and south. Drought helped concentrate population there in the 1300s, before later climatic change led to abandonment by about 1380. More than 800 petroglyphs, including migration and solstice imagery, illuminate both daily and ceremonial life.

Photo: Wikipedia · Public domain

Photo: Wikipedia · Public domain

Sun Valley, Arizona · USA