Captured in Stone: Women in the Rock Art of Canyon de Chelly

Tara Travis

Inside the narrow walls of Canyon de Chelly National Monument resides one of the larger concentrations of American Indian rock art in the southwest. The variety and scope of the rock art is breathtaking. Large panels of “pictographs” (painted images on stone) and “petroglyphs” (pecked images on stone) depict people, animals, plants, religious deities, and abstract shapes and lines. Generally, rock art panels appear in conjunction with other indicators of the past such as fragments of buildings and scattered artifacts of pottery, wood, and vegetative matter. Some of the more elaborate panels (or groupings of rock art images) appear in large alcoves where families—even whole communities—lived. 

The descriptive nomenclature used by archeologists to discuss rock art has obscured information about women. Applying scientific methods of data collection in order to avoid any tendency to “project” their life’s experience onto the shapes of the past, archeologists have identifed depictions of the human form as “anthropomorphs”—a term applicable to either a male, female, or generic human form. The use of this term has left some observers with the impression that there are few representations of women in rock art. The large sampling of rock art found in Canyon de Chelly belies this idea.

In an archeological survey of Canyon del Muerto (one of the two main canyons comprising Canyon de Chelly National Monument), a team successfully recorded hundreds of known archeological “sites” and discovered and documented over three times as many previously unknown sites. Of the 787 panels of rock art in Canyon del Muerto, 172 contain anthropomorphs. Although gender identification was not always possible, archeologists identified male and female figures in their field notes. Although a full analysis of the rock art data is still underway, staff archeologist Al Remley offered the following generalization, “...one thing is clear, when women and men are identifiable they appear to be interacting with one another.” 

Obviously, one of the reasons we know some of the figures are women is by the inclusion of anatomical features, differences in size, and personal adornment (such as hair whorls that appear in historic Puebloan societies). One example of sexual dimorphism is seen at a place called “Ceremonial Cave” where a pictograph shows two figures holding hands; one figure is stick-like in it’s application with a helmet-shaped head while the other figure has an oval head and appears to be pregnant. In this same panel is a row of six figures who appear to be linked arm to arm. The figures are spaced female/male/female/male and appear to be engaged in a dance. This panel was painted around 1500 years ago, when active figures were commonly represented. Other panels illustrate women dancing, walking, giving birth, undergoing healing ceremonies, and interacting with smaller figures that may be children. The women are depicted in these panels spanning hundreds of years, showing the immense range of women’s experiences; from the intensely personal to the ceremonial and communal. Indeed, rock art resources are precious, for the images communicate in line, color, and form some of the character in the faces of the women, families and communities of the ancient past. 

Grant, Campbell. Canyon de Chelly: Its People and Rock Art. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1978.

Tara Travis, who directed the cultural landscape survey on which this article is based, is the historian at Canyon de Chelly National Monument. Images courtesy Canyon de Chelly National Monument.