Impact Explorers: The Sistine Chapel of Rock Art: Nine Mile Canyon, Utah

I want to take you all on an adventure down memory lane with me to almost 2 years ago when I participated in an amazing archaeological experience in an incredible placed called Nine Mile Canyon. As I was recently pondering on my experience there, I realized that this experiences needed to go into my blog, even though a bit of time has passed. I hadn’t initially considered this experience to be one to elaborate on since it wasn’t a luxurious or buck-list kind of destination (not that these are the only reasons to blog about travel) but now that I think about it, this experience really was amazing and worthy of sharing.

This experience happened when I was in my first semester of my Ph.D. program at ASU. I was assigned to be a research assistant (RA) for Dr. Christine Vogt on a community outreach archeology dig on BLM land in Utah. As an aside, part of my Ph.D. work entails that I work part- time either as an RA, TA, or an instructor for my own class while being a full-time student at the same time. So, my RA position was to help facilitate this public archaeological dig by recruiting different school groups around Utah to come dig up this pit house that was found in Nine Mile Canyon, Utah. I had actually never heard of this place before, and I now I can’t wait to go back! Nine Mile Canyon is like the Sistine Chapel of indigenous rock art and is located near Price, Utah. The canyon extends for over 45 miles and has lots of amazing Fremont (neighbors of the ancestral Pueblo people) dwellings in addition to cool artistic depictions of animals, people, and other cool symbols found all over the canyon walls.

While the dig season had 5 different groups each working a weekend along with an ASU rep, my turn to represent ASU was with the Blessed Sacrament Catholic School’s archaeology club on the last dig of the season. It was so much fun! The school had a really knowledgeable and passionate club leader who used to be an actual archeologist but became a teacher to have more of a reliable career. The kids were way fun to work with, too. They loved the experience and we found lots of cool artifacts. In fact, I found a pottery shard and a mano! A mano is a rock tool used to grind up corn and other food items. Other artifacts found within the group included bifaces, which were kind of like projectiles (arrowheads). I had to learn some of these terms while I was out there.

The experience was unforgettable and provided a great lesson on the importance of engaging the community to foster stewardship of priceless natural and cultural resources. I doubt those kids will ever forget this experience either. I mean, I never got to go on an archaeological dig when I was a kid! Who wouldn’t want to be a real-life Indiana Jones?