Mountains, Shrines, and Rock Art: Landscape in Ancestral Pueblo culture from the Colorado Plateau, North American Southwest

Since 2011, the Sand Canyon–Castle Rock Community Archaeological Project has been conducted in several canyons of the central Mesa Verde region, southwestern Colorado in the North American Southwest. One of the project’s aims is to reconstruct the relationships between Ancestral Pueblo culture settlements and rock art vs. environment and surrounding landscape. All these elements were related to the beliefs and rituals of Pueblo societies in the thirteenth century A.D. Although contemporary Pueblo people live a few hundred kilometres south and southeast of the Mesa Verde region, many of these sites still have a special meaning to them and are mentioned in Puebloan oral traditions, histories, and myths. In the Southwest, other sacred places, including shrines, lakes, and mountains are significant for various Indigenous groups: Apache, Navajo, Ute, and others. They are part of cultures that still exist and for whom many landscape features are essential for their ritual life and perception of the world. Nowadays, a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between human settlements, rock art, and the landscape is possible with the use of digital documentation and spatial analyses including various methods of digital photography, 3D laser scanning, Geographic Information Systems, and subsequent reconstruction and visualisation.