Native American Indian Rock Art

Native American Indian rock art includes two styles of creation: pictographs, which are drawings or paintings made on rocks, and petroglyphs, which is when the images have been carved into the rock. Scroll down to read more ...

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Native American rock art seen in Utah

Native Americans created these images in order to record the history of tribal events, but also included ceremonial images and even maps of hunting areas.

The greatest concentration of Native American Indian rock can be found in the southwestern United States. Eastern Utah alone has over one thousand known rock art sites, and New Mexico and Texas also contain a wealth of sites.

Look at the image above, found at Newspaper Rock in southwestern Utah. Do you see the person riding a horse hunting a deer with his bow and arrow? Do you see the buffalo grazing behind him? Would you guess that the presence of a wheel might suggest this rock art was done at a time after contact with Anglo settlers? What else do you see?

How about this photograph below? There is one clearly-drawn animal in the lower left, but is this a really big animal to the right of it? Or is that just a natural shape that happens to looks like an animal? If the second one at right is an intentional image, then what might the reason be for the drastically different sizes of these two animals?

Native American petroglyphs seen in Utah

To learn more about Native American Indian rock art and to see more pictures, please visit some of these great sites which specialize in rock art:

The Rock Art Foundation

Types of Rock Art