Meaning of Place

Puerco Pueblo has held different meanings for different people. Its inhabitants found resources there essential for hunting, gathering, farming, ritual, and raising families, making it home. Artists have found inspiration there, and archeologists use sites such as Puerco Pueblo to learn about the daily lives of prehistoric people. Information from over 1000 sites in the park shows that people lived there for over 13,000 years. In archeology, a persistent place is an area on the landscape that is the focus of repeated human activity through time, and Puerco Pueblo, as well as Petrified Forest, is such a place. For contemporary indigenous groups, sites like Puerco Pueblo are part of their heritage and oral traditions, and even after people moved away from the villages there, their descendants return to pray, leave offerings, and interact with departed ancestors, seeing these prehistoric sites as the footprints of the ancestors.

Arizona · United States