Petroglyphs in Arizona dating back thousands of years will soon be digitised and reinterpreted with help from local Indigenous groups. At the Deer Valley Petroglyph Preserve, a 47-acre site in Phoenix, around 1,500 symbols created between 500 and 5,000 years ago have been recorded. The site’s petroglyphs were last inventoried in 1980 using now-antiquated methods, and archaeologists believe that more motifs could be discovered. They will work with four regional tribes—the Salt River Pima-Maricopa, Gila River, Tohono O’odham and Ak-Chin—to create an updated database.An archaeological survey of the site was first conducted prior to the construction of a series of dams in the area in the late 1970s, which were intended to protect new residential developments from flooding and monsoons. The archaeologist J. Simon Bruder of the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff was contracted by the US Army Corps of Engineers for the project, working on site for around a month and compiling one of the first extensive quantitative reports of petroglyphs in the state.Bruder linked the site primarily to the Hohokam and Patayan, precolonial cultures that once resided throughout Arizona. A subsequent assessment in 1994 found that the site was much older than Bruder thought, and that it had been used over millennia as a trading centre. One of the oldest known rock peckings there shows an atlatl—a prehistoric weapon that was likely exchanged there during the Archaic period. Atlatls were superseded by the bow and arrow; their presence often serves as a benchmark for dating archaeological sites.Archival images of an atlatl, a type of prehistoric weapon, at the Deer Valley Petroglyph Preserve in Arizona Courtesy of ASU/Deer Valley Petroglyph PreserveThe Deer Valley Petroglyph Preserve was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. A museum housing artefacts unearthed in the area—like ceramic and stone fragments, shells and cobble hammerstones—opened in 1994.“We want to get updated information, like geolocation points and photographs and sketches, so we can better understand which communities and traditions were present here,” John Bello, the assistant director of the preserve, tells The Art Newspaper. “Because petroglyphs are exposed to the natural elements and there aren’t conservation methods for preserving them, these symbols will eventually be covered by the desert varnish.”Battling against ongoing vandalismIn addition to concerns over the eventual natural erasure of the motifs, the project responds to ongoing vandalism at archaeological sites. When the original survey was conducted, researchers found that several petroglyphs had been used for target practice; some boulders were marked with bullet holes. A fence was constructed for protection, although the site has still suffered defacement, such as the carving of initials and dates into its rocks.The archaeol …
See the full article on Arizona residential development, or, read more Arizona real estate investing news. Feel free to share our site with your investor friends.
