Stories in pictures Images of human and animal flute players are easy to find on a vast, not-too-remote mesa near Velarde. The Wells Petroglyph Preserve holds an extraordinary density of rock pictures, among them turtles, serpents, shields, handprints and
THE MESA PRIETA PETROGLYPH PROJECT
The landscape on the side of this big mesa is spectacular, the loose pattern of juniper, saltbush, cholla, and prickly pear interrupted by thousands of black basalt boulders. On an abundance of them are distinctive shapes pecked into the surface by people, some done thousands of years ago and some as recently as the present decade. The density of this assemblage of petroglyphs is far greater than at any other site in New Mexico. Is it evidence of a large population that once existed at this site across the Río Grande near Velarde? Or was the place so special that people came from all around to make their marks?
“It was on a trade route that was very important, so we see petroglyphs of an armadillo playing the flute and Plains-style weapons depicted,” said Jennifer Goyette, director of the Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project (MPPP). “But, that said, there are also densities of petroglyphs that indicate that they may have been important ceremonial spaces. We don’t really know.”
People have visited this arid mesa for at least 10,000 years. A Folsom point unearthed here provides that vintage. Many petroglyphs at Mesa Prieta were made after the coming of the Spanish in 1598; several of the earliest depict Christian crosses and horses. But more than three-quarters of the petroglyphs date to the Pueblo IV (Ancestral Pueblo) Period, which lasted from about 1200 to 1600 C.E.
“I think one of the more unique things about this mesa is that it is close to the first Spanish settlement, so you see the interaction of the cultures in these petroglyphs,” Goyette said during a mid-September hike along one of eight trails in what is known as the Wells Petroglyph Preserve. “Here’s a rock panel that appears to have a lot of ceremonial figures: a figure holding a shield, a humpbacked flute player, a turtle, and what appears to be a dog. This figure has bells on its knees. It looks like a dancer, and it might be holding a weapon. And on this side, there are some Christian crosses. Here’s another rock where you can see images that may be Pueblo, but then there are numerous crosses, and then there’s actual writing with a date [in the year 1950], so we have these juxtaposed time periods on the same rock, and in some cases we have images from the Archaic period [which the MPPP defines as 5500 B.C.E. to 600 C.E.] that have been overlaid. You can see the difference in the patina, and you can tell it has been revisited for possibly thousands of years.”
The dramatic display of petroglyphs extends all the way up to the top of the mesa. “The top has been grazed and now it’s sagebrush flats, basically. If there are rocks, they’re probably buried in the soil. We do find other things up there, like eagle traps and grid shapes that may have been Pueblo gardens,” Goyette said. “Our preserve is 181 acres, and we are actively working with private landowners, businesses, and state and federal government agencies to record the entire mesa of 36 square miles. That’s probably a couple of lifetimes of work.”
The Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project was established to record the rock images, to educate the public, and to preserve the mesa for future generations. “I was already a petroglyph junkie when I came here, and I was just flabbergasted by what I saw,” project founder Katherine Wells said. “I decided that something had to be done about it. In 1999, I had enough neighbors and friends and archaeologists from Santa Fe who were excited about it to start a project.”
The Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project and the Wells Petroglyph Preserve have been relatively anonymous, unlike, for example, Albuquerque’s Petroglyph National Monument and the La Cieneguilla Petroglyph Site. “We kept it that way for a long time, but we have thought about possible national monument status,” said project founder Katherine Wells. She added that the nomination process will wait for a new administration in Washington. The preserve is already on the State Register of Cultural Resources and the National Register of Historic Places. The nonprofit MPPP relies on grants, donations, and income from tours, sales of merchandise, and various fundraising efforts, and
“WE IMAGINE THAT THERE MAY BE 100,000 INDIVIDUAL IMAGES ON THIS 12-MILE-LONG MESA. WE IMAGINE THAT IS EVIDENCE OF THIS MESA BEING VERY, VERY SPECIAL.” — MPPP chief archaeologist Janet MacKenzie
the MPPP’s summer youth intern program is entering its 18th year. The MPPP programming for elementary schools includes a curriculum guide, teacher trainings, and activity trunks that may be checked out for classroom use.
Fieldwork began in 2002. Five years later, Wells donated 181 acres to the Archaeological Conservancy in Albuquerque, and it became known as the Wells Petroglyph Preserve. This protected parcel has the most concentrated kaleidoscope of petroglyphs on Mesa Prieta. “At first we thought there might be 20,000 images, and we have now recorded 55,000,” she said.
The question persists: Why are there so many? “We ask ourselves that, as well as, ‘Why isn’t there a petroglyph on this or that perfect boulder?’ ” said Janet MacKenzie, who is the chief archaeologist with the MPPP. “We imagine that there may be 100,000 individual images on this 12-mile-long mesa. We imagine that is evidence of this mesa being very, very special. And we imagine that that specialness may relate to ceremony and sacredness.”
ONsome boulders there are layers of images, and Native people are still interacting with the petroglyphs. “There are Super Deer and Super Rabbit on the north end of the mesa,” MacKenzie said. “Super Deer has not been there more than six or seven years, and he’s this tall figure, standing with his fists up. He has antlers and he has a lightning bolt down his tummy. But we really don’t know if he was made by a Native American during a ceremony event or if it was a New Ager. That is an aspect of what we see here, and we don’t know of any way to know.”
That’s because another impenetrable quality is the age of the petroglyphs. MacKenzie said trying to specifically date these images is less logical than ordering them temporally by culture. “There are a number of ways we do that ordering. One is by pattern. For example, we think we understand that the Archaic was limited to, or embraced, the abstract, geometric, and nonrepresentational. Another way we order is by superimposition: Things on top of other things are likely to be younger. Another way is direction: The Archaic peoples liked theirs to face up — often, not always — and the Pueblo people liked theirs to face southerly and easterly — again, not always. And the historic period, along with the Euro-American people today, could not care less.” But she added that there are emerging techniques that may allow dating. “Mineral washes over panels can provide material that can be carbon-dated. Marvin Rowe, who often works with my husband [Mark MacKenzie, director of conservation for the Museum of New Mexico], is doing work on that.”
Patination, the erosional and weather-generated process that bestows a patina film on exposed rock surfaces, offers another challenge to scientists. “There is a group at Los Alamos National Laboratory that’s working on understanding patination,” MacKenzie said, walking over to a basalt boulder. “Here’s a rock we think has early Archaic markings and they’ve been repecked in some places. Those marks are lighter. When you make a petroglyph, you’re pecking through this dark rind, the desert varnish, and you’re exposing the lighter, natural color of the rock to make your image, but then it slowly repatinates.” The darker images are thus the oldest. The LANL people hope to figure out how long the process takes, with a view to dating rocks on Mars.
One of the many pecked images of flute-players looks like an armadillo on roller skates. On either side of it are pairs of twins, one pair with bows and arrows and the other pair with clubs. “In this area right here, there’s a lot of sex and violence going on,” MacKenzie said. “There are a number of vulva forms. Here’s a female figure with hair whorls. She’s upside-down, and on either side are possible babies and a comma-shaped element that may represent a sprouted seed, a fertility symbol. Then a female down here has hair whorls and you can see her labia, and her hands are up. It has been suggested by some Pueblo people that this could have been a birthing place.
“Then over here are images of animals with cloven hoofs, with weapons pointing at all of them. This could be narrating a hunt scene or it could be a hunting propitiation ceremonial scene. It could also be something completely different. We will never know.” The urge to decode seems ever-present in petroglyph researchers. “It is. We do not tend to interpret, officially, but it is the fun part. I am not knowledgeable enough about ritual and ceremony to be able to interpret the things that I see in these panels. We are hoping that qualified researchers — Native Americans and others — will use the database we are developing.
Alittle further down the trail is a big rock with one very distinct mark, a fat cross known as the Venus Star, which may have been a Tewa symbol of war. Not too far away is a rock panel that MacKenzie thinks may have been, or may be, a shrine. “These may date back five thousand years. You can see sixpointed stars and a lot of one-pole ladders. These are among the most common Archaic nonrepresentational patterns.” And then there’s the figure that’s a favorite of Goyette and others at the MPPP: a rare female-form petroglyph. Wells used it on the cover of her 2009 book Life on the Rocks: One Woman’s Adventures in Petroglyph Preservation. The figure has a radiant-sun head, raised hands, and a W-shaped body with what looks like an egg below it. There are
small, bright pecks all around it that MacKenzie says could represent an altered state of mind.
That sort of idea surfaced again in a conversation with Wells at her house on the mesa. The topic was the abstract nature of Archaic-period petroglyphs. “They can be crazy and creative, but we have so little idea of what they were,” she said. “I think it represented nothing in the visual world. It could be something entoptic, like when you get banged on the head and you say you see stars, or when you’re under the influence of a whole lot of different substances. Maybe jimson weed, and hunger and thirst also can generate such images.”
The MPPP selected a petroglyph of a flute-playing quadruped as its official logo. That also turned out to be one of the solar markers discovered at Mesa Prieta. On the spring and fall equinox, the rock above it makes a shadow that descends; at noon, the shadow quite precisely aligns along the figure’s curved top.
ANimage of a mountain lion, reproduced in Wells’ book Life on
the Rocks, provides an intriguing glimpse into the layered history at the preserve. “His body is boxy like a Puebloan lion, his tail is straight like a Puebloan lion, and he has five toes on each foot, but the face is exactly like what we see on a 1750 belt buckle from Mexico, and it’s a depiction of the king of Spain,” Wells said. “My opinion is that the fancy historic images like this were done by the Indians, not the Spanish, because the Spanish had no tradition of doing petroglyphs and for the most part they weren’t up here; they were in town.
“Here’s another image of this type,” she said, pointing to another photo in the book. “It’s a perfect example of the four-pointed star of the Puebloans, which represents war, but it has this other element and it looks exactly like a compass. The Spanish brought compasses and some Indian got the idea, ‘OK, I’ll make this compass petroglyph but it will also be a shield,’ and how powerful is that?”
Some of these petroglyphs seem fundamentally expressive, and perhaps fairly straightforward. Others, like the Archaic one-pole ladder, may be eloquently simple, but why are they there? “I’ve probably seen a hundred of those, and we have no idea what they mean,” Wells said. “But they mean something.”