Some long-distance photos taken on my Pixel 7a of petroglyphs visible from the viewing stations perched high above Newspaper Rocks, near Tuba City, Arizona USA. The Hopi people call the site Tutuveni, meaning "newspaper rock." Due to graffiti and other destructive acts perpetrated on these rock faces in recent centuries, visitors are now forbidden to inspect these historical artefacts up close.
Fortunately for me, we -- my partner and my niece -- visited on a bright, sundrenched afternoon in mid-February 2025, allowing me to capture some of the fine gradations in tone, along with the fading outlines, of these etched icons and messages. I then "pushed" the contrast using the editing tools on my phone and cropped the images to isolate the inscribed faces shown here.
From an article from SF Gate from 2012: "The site contains some 5,000 petroglyphs of Hopi clan symbols, the largest known collection of such symbols in the American Southwest. According to researchers with the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, the many etchings on the boulders of Tutuveni date as far back as far back as A.D. 1200.
"On the dark desert varnish of the boulders are rows of bear paws, corn stalks, spiders, coyotes, kachinas, clouds, cranes. Some of the symbols represent various aspects of Hopi cultural life, but most are the markings of the Hopi clans, or family systems, which are usually named for animals or other natural objects.
"The Hopi made these engravings during ceremonial pilgrimages from their land to the Grand Canyon to mark the passage into adulthood for Hopi young men."
