Late last year vandals irreparably damaged a rock art petroglyph panel in Big Bend National Park. 2021 was a hard year for United States rock art with major instances of vandalism reported in Utah (here, here) and now closing the year in Texas. Anyone with information about the incident in Texas should contact the Big Bend National Park Communication Center at 432-477-1187.
The National Park Service reports that there have been over 50 instances of vandalism to rock art in Big Bend since 2015. Read more at Art News (here) and Texas Monthly (here).
At the Ancient Art Archive, we believe that the only long-term solution to vandalism is education. We must build a long term and wide spread appreciation for the images our predecessors left written on the landscape.
To that end we have built education into our Mural of America project. The aim is to provide a framework for understanding the value of rock art to both the general public and targeted audiences. We view it as an exercise in empathy -something sorely needed today.
More information on the prehistory of Big Bend can be found here.
