Whispers from the Past

For thousands of years, indigenous people have used rock faces as means of communication. Petroglyphs are images, symbols, or designs scratched, pecked, carved, or incised on the surface of rock, and thousands of them appear at hundreds of sites in Petrified Forest National Park. Interpreting images that are hundreds to thousands of years old is not easy, and one method involves asking contemporary indigenous communities about their meaning. Several examples include a figure that tribes have identified as a migration symbol, an important theme in Puebloan oral history, and circular faces on a dark rock surface that modern groups identify as Kachinas, or spirit beings in Pueblo religion and cosmology. Research suggests that the Kachina Culture arrived in this region circa A.D. 1300, and similar symbols found on modern Puebloan pottery and weaving reflect continuity between prehistoric sites like Puerco Pueblo and the present.

Arizona · United States