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Southwest Archaeology NotebookA field notebook of Southwest archaeology

Stratum 03 · Rock Art & Petroglyphs

Rock art of the Southwest: petroglyphs and pictographs

How petroglyphs are pecked and pictographs painted, what the common motifs might mean, and where to see major panels with clean hands and clear rules.

Dark desert varnish boulder face covered in pecked spirals and bighorn sheep figures above a gravel bench at golden hour

Rock art is the Southwest's largest archive and its easiest to damage. These three guides build a careful reader. The first separates petroglyphs from pictographs and explains the workshop: stone, pigment, hammerstone and patience. The second faces the honest problem that there is no dictionary, showing which readings scholars share, which they argue over, and why descendant communities treat many panels as documents that still belong to them. The third lists the major public panels, from Petroglyph National Monument to Newspaper Rock, with the etiquette each one expects.

Carry one rule the whole stratum repeats: look, photograph, record, and touch nothing. The reasons, chemical and legal, are spelled out in each guide.

In this stratum

  1. A clipboard holding gridded transparent film over a sandstone panel at low morning sun, with a fine marker, ruler, and plumb line resting on the rock ledge beside it.

    Drawing a Rock Art Panel by Hand

    A hand drawing of a rock art panel is a scaled, interpreted record made in the field, not a photograph.

  2. A handheld recorder resting on a flat sandstone ledge beneath a shallow overhang at midday, with the shaded rock face behind it and a windblown juniper visible at the edge of the frame.

    Sound in the canyon: acoustics and rock art

    Sound is part of the archaeological record at many rock art panels and small sheltered sites, but it is rarely recorded with the care given to the images.

  3. Deeply patinated petroglyph figures beside a painted red ochre panel under a rock overhang lit by reflected morning light

    Petroglyphs and pictographs: a primer

    Rock art is the Southwest’s oldest surviving graphic art, and it divides cleanly by technique: cut into stone or painted on it. Technique is also the honest place to start, because it dates, attributes and protects the panels.

  4. Wide sandstone wall carrying spiral, animal and humanoid figures in warm evening light with a visitor observing from a respectful distance

    Reading rock art without overreading it

    Every gift shop sells a decoder ring for rock art, and every professional archaeologist will tell you the decoder ring is wrong. Here is what careful reading looks like, from confident ground to honest unknowing.

  5. Long basalt boulder row beside a desert trail with visitors reading a pecked panel in slanting light under a wide sky

    Where to see rock art in the Southwest

    Public rock art is easy to visit badly and wonderful to visit well. These six destinations cover every major tradition and technique, and each has rules that are really part of the art.

Every field note in this stratum is dated against the Pecos Classification timeline, the spine of the whole notebook, and two neighbouring strata extend it: Ancient Peoples and Iconic Sites.