MESA PRIETA PETROGLYPH PROJECT

We believe that the most effective way to ensure the preservation of petroglyphs on the mesa is to educate local people about them and their importance. To this end, in 2009 the Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project developed a STEM-based 4th grade curriculum, Discovering Mesa Prieta: The Petroglyphs of Northern New Mexico and the People Who Made Them. It is being taught in about 10 local Pueblo and other community schools, with new teachers being trained in its implementation every year. Some 200 school children, plus their parents, teachers, principals and bus drivers, benefit from this instruction each year. Not only do they learn about the importance of heritage stewardship for the state and the country, but they learn why it is important to themselves to make personal connections. The curriculum includes a visit to the Wells Petroglyph Preserve to walk the trails and apply the knowledge they have learned in the classroom to the actual petroglyphs in their natural and cultural landscape. Many of these children have never hiked in their lives. We take First Lady Michelle Obama’s initiatives promoting children’s physical exercise to heart.

The 2009 edition focused mainly on Ancestral Pueblo history and culture, explored through the lens of the petroglyphs on the mesa. Since there are also many Historic Period glyphs present, and many historical Hispano villages in the area, we decided to expand the content to address that. The Project was successful in receiving a grant from the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs' Historic Preservation Division in 2014. This support has enabled the development of extensive new text and visual content for our curriculum which celebrates local Hispano history and culture. A new unit called La Entrada explores the arrival in 1598 of Juan de Oñate's crowd of European settlers and the effects, good and bad, of that historical event. A second large unit features a fictional Colonial village in northern New Mexico, the people who lived there and what they did. This allows a historical look at cultural activities that students are participating in today: casas y comidas, agriculture and acequias, villages and settlement patterns, sheep herding and weaving, curanderismo, childhood, fiestas, etc. The content is image-rich, interactive and is translated into Spanish. As well, it is available free on a new website accessible to all via the MPPP website. An annual teacher training is given to local teachers in its implementation and resource trunks and teacher support are provided.

The side-by-side and superimposed petroglyph images of many people over 7500 years on Mesa Prieta is a metaphor for the cultural incomings and interactions over those years that have made northern New Mexico the vibrant place it is today. We hope to expand the use of the curriculum into the Albuquerque area over the next year.

This program focuses on recognition of the importance of the largely undisturbed natural environment that northern New Mexico's Mesa Prieta embodies. In 2014, the Wells Petroglyph Preserve on Mesa Prieta was recognized by the Cultural Landscape Foundation in Washington, D.C. as one of 11 at-risk and threatened art-in-the-landscape site in the United States. Program activities include monitoring and remediation of potential and actual erosion of the fragile base materials which underpin the basalt boulders of the Wells Petroglyph Preserve on Mesa Prieta, especially at road cuts and on tour trails. Further activities include the routine condition and security reporting of boulders and terrain during petroglyph recording on other private properties on the mesa.

The boulders are significant as they are the canvases on which thousands of petroglyphs have been created over 7500 years. Before there were highways and maps, there was the landscape, within which people of prehistoric and historic times traveled for subsistence and socio-cultural reasons. Cultural landscape is an essential component of cultural connection and identity and its preservation is critical to the understanding of the human use of Mesa Prieta over thousands of years.

While resources for erosion remediation are slim and depend on time available, The Archaeological Conservancy (the owner of the Wells Preserve) for materials and volunteers for labor, a preliminary understanding of areas of critical concern is being built.

The school curriculum and docent-led tours of the Wells Preserve address the geology and geomorphology of the mesa as well as the history and importance aboriginal use of plants and animals, early agriculture and animal husbandry. As well, the development of an inventory of the geological and biological assemblage is being considered, in order to integrate this information into recorder training to create a broader picture of conditions on the mesa. With the possibility of increased human traffic on the mesa, continuing drought and wildfire potential, a benchmark needs to be created.

The Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project trains volunteers in recording of petroglyphs and other archaeological features according to the protocols of the Archaeological Society of New Mexico's Rock Art Council. To date more than 45,000 individual petroglyphs have been recorded. As well, many Cultural Landscape features such as trails, structures and water management constructions have also been recorded. The mesa has been divided into about 20 landowner properties. Two large properties have been subdivided into 200 x 400 m. recording proveniences which are being surveyed by teams. Once each is completed, photos are processed and recording paperwork scanned. In 2015, digital data will be uploaded to three professionally staffed servers in three geographically separated cities across the United States for preservation. Data will also be entered into MPPP's GIS database which can be queried by researchers for interpretation and the creation of new knowledge about human activity in the area over 10,000 years. Reports will begin to be forwarded to NM's Archaeological Records Management Section in 2015.

Some 35 volunteer recorders on 11 teams record year-round on Mesa Prieta. Teams are provided with recording equipment: pack, box for paperwork, digital camera, GPS receiver, photo shade, metric measuring tape. At training, recorders commit to working in the field once a month for one year, weather permitting. Some have been with the project for more than 10 years. Ages range from late-twenties to 85! It is thought that there may be 75,000 images on the mesa in total: another 15 years is envisaged for completion of this program.

The Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project conducts tours of the Wells Petroglyph Preserve, the most concentrated area of petroglyphs on Mesa Prieta. With perhaps as many as 10,000 images, the Wells Preserve was registered as a State Cultural Property and a National Historic Place in 1999. Six tour trails on the Preserve are maintained by terrain preservation volunteers with materials provided by The Archaeological Conservancy, non-profit owner of the Preserve. About 15 trained volunteer docents give some 75 tours to about 600 adults and school children annually. Four public tours are presented each year: two in spring and two in autumn. As well, private tours are given to groups and individuals year round. Minimum age is 10 years. Those wishing to visit the Preserve can sign up online on our website. Tours are about two hours long. Visitors learn about the geology of the mesa, the cultural history of those who left their images on the basalt boulders over more than 5000 years and the importance of heritage and environmental preservation. Native Americans are especially encouraged to view the petroglyphs, free of charge: many of them may have been made by their own ancestors. Other visitors pay a fee to support project project programs.

From January to April each year, in partnership with the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs' Historic Sites, the Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project presents a public presentation series on the last Tuesday evening of each month. The venue is Historic Los Luceros on the northern Rio Grande, a popular heritage property that, importantly, features both an Ancestral Pueblo village and an early Spanish Colonial property. Presentations are given by experts on archaeology, geology and other topics, including a visually-rich PowerPoint given by our Recording Coordinator on MPPP recording and discoveries on Mesa Prieta during the previous field season. Coffee, tea and snacks are provided. MPPP branded merchandise is available for purchase.

The Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project maintains a small library at our office in Velarde, NM, which focuses on petroglyphs and pictographs around the world, Native American and Hispano history and culture in the Southwest, and the archaeology, history, arts, geography and biology of the northern Rio Grande Valley. Donations of books and other resource materials are solicited from volunteers and others and area available to teachers, students, volunteers and others. It is not open to the general public, but is intended to be a resource for our educational programming. A vertical file is also maintained related to local information. Oral histories of local residents are maintained here as well. One volunteer manages loans and accessions in a Filemaker database.