The Gorge Project: Icon, Place, and Cosmos along the Mighty Rio Grande

FAIN: FT-58338-10

Severin Fowles
Barnard College (New York, NY 10027-6909)

The proposed project builds off of a multi-year rock art and landscape survey of the Rio Grande Gorge (RGG), a large rift valley near Taos, New Mexico. Initiated in 2007, the "Gorge Project" was designed (1) to document a vast array of endangered rock art and related prehistoric sites in the RGG (2) to explore the cosmological significance of the RGG to Ancestral Pueblo communities through an analysis of the distribution of rock art and related features of the landscape, and (3) to develop new understandings of the role of iconography in Pueblo ritual practice. Funding is sought for a two month stay during the summer of 2010 to consult with local indigenous groups and to prepare both an interim report and published article documenting Stage 1 of the project, during which over one thousand important rock art panels were recorded.