It is problematic to refer to the petroglyphs as “rock art” because they exist outside of the realm of being merely art for the sake of art. The petroglyphs had a strong symbolism for those who made them and continue to have ceremonial purposes for many of the local Pueblo people. The images include renderings of realistic occurrences seen in nature such as mountain lion tracks, sheep, and various birds from roadrunners to macaws. There are also nonrealistic humanoid forms such as the humpbacked flute player, horned serpents, and kachina masks. The combinations and contexts in which the symbols are placed are significant and should be understood in relationship to “rock formations, cracks, patination, overhangs, directional orientation, proximity to trails, streams or bodies of water, food sources, plants and animal habitat, and human settlement remains”(Patterson-Rudolph). The images might be metaphors for concepts that were important in the Pueblo world or might have indexical or iconic meaning in their placement and design. Those that are ceremonial pertain to the ritual and mystical relationship of the artist to nature and the cosmos. Some images are mnemonic devices in lieu of a written language used to record concepts and legends. Generally, the petroglyphs near Albuquerque tend to be pecked or abraded into the rock surface. Interpretation of the petroglyphs is difficult; meaning is subjective and often known only by the person who made the image.

For the descendents of the artists, the petroglyphs continue to have deep cultural significance and ceremonial uses and they are still visited and updated. According to Philip Lauriano, Sandia Pueblo Tribal Councilor and Turquoise Kiva Chief, “[t]he petroglyphs are the nerve center of the Pueblo culture, religion and tradition. They are there to guard, to protect, to teach, to advise, to doctor, to cure“ (in Huser).

The petroglyphs are an important resource in New Mexico for many cultural groups besides the Puebloans. The fact that they are protected as a National Monument is testimony to this. A student identified as “Morgan” from S.Y. Jackson Elementary School is quoted in the Petroglyph National Monument’s newsletter Las Imágenes “I think that this place should be protected for three reasons: The petroglyphs because they are part of New Mexico’s culture. The land, because we need to know about our land and our history. The animals because they are so cool and they might go extinct. I hope these reasons will help make you care about this National Monument” (Ford, ed.). The monument has significance that crosses ethnic boundaries and bridges age gaps. Whether one ascribes to the Pueblo concepts of spirituality or not, the images themselves are respected and the ideas behind them are powerful.

A large number of people have been active since the 1960s attempting to protect the area from human impacts such as vandalism and development. Many agree that to walk among the petroglyphs is a spiritual journey and that there is a peace, a serenity, and a reverence that is contagious. For some, the significance is in the images and the history of occupation there. For others, the place is important because of the understated natural beauty and the feeling of being alone among these things such a short drive from the hustle of the modern, urban environment of Albuquerque.

The Petroglyph National Monument is at risk from persistent threats of urban dwellers close by and it has been given protected status because of these dangers. Urban sprawl creeps up from the east in the form of tract houses and numerous sub-divisions to accommodate the growing population of Albuquerque. They bring with them a network of powerlines, roads, and fences. Plastic bags, beer cans, and discarded fast-food containers litter the area as they do many other natural places that exist close to urban ones. From the Monument, one looks at the brown haze that settles over the city, buildings that have popped up since the last time you were there, and light pollution that turns night into an eternally thick, orange dusk to the east. Background to the sounds of wind and the chirping of birds, the omnipresent hum of automobiles and industry penetrate the air. Turning back to the petroglyphs, one often must look past the scars of bullet-holes from target practice and beyond recent symbols scratched over the ancient ones. Robert Gish, life-long resident of Albuquerque, wrote of his own “sins and crimes” in defense of the petroglyphs: “I too shot callously at the distant rocks, laughing at the booms and whistles of bullets and ricochets...” and he reflects on a personal transformation that occurred to him on the West Mesa: “My fervent hope now is that my same refusal to obliterate a sacred face in a sacred place will be felt and shared by others who have even more destructive weapons than a 30-06” (in Huser).

Much to the chagrin of many who visit the Monument, visual pollution is present all around the petroglyphs. Defacement and vandalism are problems that the National Park Service is constantly at odds with. Graffiti here has a lengthy and durable history. When the Spanish sheepherders on the Atrisco Land Grant tended their flocks in the 18th century, they carved their own cultural symbols onto the landscape. They placed crosses near the petroglyphs in attempts to negate the non-Christian ceremonial images. They also abraded their sheep brands into the rock. As cultures changed and migrations occurred around the West Mesa, the temptation to participate in the tradition was often too great to deny. Now, next to an image of a lightning-bolt snake with horns are the words I was here 2-77.

So the question arises, where do petroglyphs end and graffiti begin? There are many people who answer that there is no difference between them. That they are all just examples of graffiti. Some of it is just older than the others. And in fact, etymology traces “graffiti” to the Italian word graffiare which means “to scratch.”

Given the harsh punishments doled out in our society to the graffiti artist and the negative connotations that accompany their artworks, isn’t it contradictory then to protect petroglyphs and revere those who made them? Should the same respect and protection that is given to the Archaic images also be extended to the sheepherders’ brands? Should we consider anything newer than 100 years to be defacement? These questions are difficult to answer and create problems for the park which inevitably must be handled as trespasses against the law (Archaeological Resources Protection Act, 1979). The presence of graffiti here is greater than just a cultural resource management problem though because the disrespect that is inherent in the vandalism is seen by many Indians and non-Indians as desecration of the religious and spiritual attributes that the images are imbued with.

There are many social scientists who recognize the importance of studying modern graffiti alongside ancient art. Graffiti can inform us about many characteristics of the everyday inhabitants of the urban environment. Psychologist Ernest Abel has been studying graffiti and the reasons behind its manufacture: “[Graffiti] are the expressions of someone’s inner feelings, and as such they are no less a reflection of the character of a society than more polished artistic and literary works. Perhaps they are even more representative, for they are products of the less talented segments of a society. They are not the workings of a society’s best minds. But each society only has a few best minds, and they express the ideals of that society” (Abel). But then, it might be argued, this is part of the reason that graffiti is so unpopular. Perhaps the individuals who make and enforce the laws would rather the voices of the “less talented members of society” be muted.

How does this concept coincide with the petroglyphs? It is generally thought that the petroglyphs were created by the elders of a society who were well-versed in the ceremonial and spiritual activities of the group to which they belonged (personal conversation, Matthew Schmader, Assistant Superintendent Open Space Division). The accumulated data from the petroglyphs about the behaviors and lifestyles of those who created the images participates in our understanding of them as a people. We might surmise though that the images represent the ideology and the ideal rather than the common experience of the every-day individual.

From graffiti we can learn about what is important to individuals and sub-cultures within the larger group. Graffiti might say something about dwelling in modern cities, about territorial concepts and disputes, and about urban youth in general. Some graffiti might be static under a bridge for years with no one ever really knowing that it is there. Others on stop signs or the sides of buildings might be washed away within hours of the “tag.” Still others begin on the sides of trains in New York and then are altered in Kansas City two days later and again in San Francisco in an exquisite corpse form of messaging. Whether we like it or not, graffiti is as much a part of the urban landscape as the billboards, street signs, and public buildings upon which they occur.

While we can learn about sub-sections of society through graffiti, we can also study the larger culture from whence these ideals have come. The punishments for the modern street artist are often severe: In Albuquerque, if caught red-handed one might spend time in prison, be forced to make a public apology, have his property seized, and be placed on a clean-up crew. This type of punishment “appeals to anti-graffiti campaigners for its retributive qualities; it serves as a sort of legally sanctioned ‘degradation ceremony’ designed to humiliate and publicly disgrace convicted writers” (Ferrell). Here the dominant ideology enforces itself upon the values and beliefs of the subordinate. Because the graffiti usually tells a different story about community living than politicians and other civic leaders might promote, it has been criminalized. The artists are deemed vandals and their messages are promptly erased from the public eye. This erasure is an attempt to negate the thoughts that compete with the publicly accepted positions inherent in the culture.

Oftentimes what we currently think of as graffiti is precisely located in time and space, is created using specific techniques and technologies, and is manufactured by a select sub-group of the population working under strict guidelines and pressures. For example, graffiti is most densely located in urban places, on public property, and directly in highly visible areas. Graffiti can appear on shop-front windows, on the sides of public transportation, on fences and walls, street signs, lamp posts, and on billboards and in alleyways. The aesthetic is highly stylized and often is unreadable to the casual observer, requiring experience and initiation in order to decipher the message. Sometimes, examples might consist of abstract symbols, graphic imagery, and code-names. A sort of “heroification” can occur among the groups as those particular artists with strong talents or fearless attitudes are elevated in status. In many cases, the graffiti are not mindless doodlings of bored vandals: Some artists risk their personal safety in order to write their message by hanging upside-down from overpasses or squeezing in between subway cars in crowded stations. Others, when caught, are subject to imprisonment, fines, and embarrassment. Yet while researching this project during a public tour at the Petroglyph National Monument, I was informed by another visitor that graffiti is nothing more than “the territorial pissing of dogs.” When I asked my informant to clarify, she admitted that some types were more acceptable than others and that public mural projects were usually better than “tags.”

But is it fair to characterize this expressive form as nothing short of animalistic activities that are more instinctual then behavioral? As Norman Mailer points out in his essay about graffiti: “Who was going to dare to look long enough to see that it was a name and not an obscene thought in the writing?” (in Kurlansky). The negative connotations connected to graffiti are partially based on ideological biases and partially on fear and misunderstanding. In 1988, one graffiti artist from New York City responded to the question of public non-acceptance to his work: “I’m famous ‘cause I ain’t scared of the cops and I got the style... No clerk, no… schoolteacher can say if I got style. Only someone who’s out there… [doing murals] on the subways, in the parks can know to judge what I done” (in Lachman). In the case of public acceptance of murals, graffiti might become permitted and sanctioned by the larger populous as a positive form of expression. When it does though, it loses its impact and an element of truth; the graffiti ceases in its identity as such when it becomes legal and permitted. As a civic service, the graffiti in public murals tends to be an affirmation of the ideology rather than a resistance to it.

Public non-acceptance of graffiti is a newer phenomenon than the graffiti itself and has not necessarily been present wherever graffiti has occurred. With the invention and availability of spray paint and permanent markers in the latter part of the 20^th century, graffiti increased dramatically, especially in urban environs. It was not until the 1970s in New York City and the 1980s in Albuquerque that graffiti began to be seen as an urban problem. A debate between politicians and residents of the city that took place in the Editorial pages of the New York Times in 1972 chronicles the variance in viewpoints. The president of the city council wrote that “Graffiti pollutes the eye and the mind and may be one of the worst forms of pollution we have to combat.” He was later rebutted in a letter to the editor that stated “I say bravo to the kids who are changing an otherwise depressing, dark environment into something which at least has association, color, and vitality” (in Austin). While graffiti was at first appreciated and accepted by many members of society, politicians have begun to create campaigns against the destruction of community property. Along with police officers and judges, the public has been edified to think of graffiti as a blight on the city and of the artists as criminals. Historically, this switch occurred at the same time that the public in Albuquerque began to be educated to accept the petroglyphs as not graffiti and the protection of the images began to be reinforced with political action.

It should be remembered that modern graffiti is a problem for the individual home or business owner as well as the civic society as a whole. Oftentimes graffiti might appear upon storefront windows and on houses or out buildings on private property. Graffiti is destructive, often offensive, and generally must be cleaned-up at great expense to the resident and tax-payer. Cost to these people certainly contributes to the lack of acceptance of spray-paint art in the rural environment. It similarly participates in the resistance to National Monument status and protection of the petroglyphs by real-estate companies and industry who seek to occupy this area as revenue is forfeited in the clichéd concession. Urban growth is prohibited in the north by the Sandia Pueblo, in the south by the Isleta Pueblo, on the east by the mountain range, and on the west by the Monument (Stephanie Ford, personal contact). As a revenue problem, the people of Albuquerque are against a rock and a hard place and the Monument makes a mountain from a molehill.

Albuquerque’s environmental story is told as a treatise of visual pollution on the official web-page (http://www.cabq.gov/aes/s5vp.html). The cost of graffiti to the residents of Albuquerque is $1,000,000 for 18 months and there are an estimated “1000 active taggers in Albuquerque alone.” There are eleven people who work on the Graffiti Removal crew and they are active six days a week for 8-10 hours a day. They use chemicals and high-pressure washers to clean the vandalism from concrete arroyos, bridges, and utility poles. When the graffiti is persistent, the crew mixes paint on site to cover it. The author of the web-page estimates that 10% of the graffiti are racist hate messages, 10% is related to “gangs and gang violence where these groups mark their territory or send messages about drug activity or drug availability,” and that 80% of the vandalism is created by children between the ages of 10 and 15. Finally, the stance of the Albuquerque city governing body is that “Graffiti adversely affects businesses, tourism, public safety, economic development and overall quality of life in Albuquerque.” No reason is given explaining exactly how or why these institutions are adversely affected.

This brings us full circle to the rock images on the West Side of Albuquerque. Petroglyph National Monument was visited by over 60,000 people last year. In the visitor center, several descriptive signs inform the viewer about who the artists were and what the petroglyphs are. They also tell the visitor what they are not: “Petroglyphs are not ancient doodles or ‘Indian Graffiti.’ Rather, they are powerful cultural symbols reflecting the society and the religion of the Pueblo Peoples.” and “Petroglyphs have an historical, cultural, and spiritual value. Modern graffiti does not!” This provides cultural data and historical proof for the visitor about the value of petroglyphs and the non-value of graffiti in direct relation to one another. No answer is given as to why modern graffiti has no “historical, cultural, and spiritual value” just that these images do while graffiti does not. Many graffiti artists would argue that their images are also culturally relevant and historically significant. Modern graffiti might not tell us about the most important or talented folks in the society, but they are no less valid because of this. Petroglyphs, in comparison, having been done with ritual and spiritual intent by learned elders who were acting on behalf of the larger community, tend to inform us about the ideals of the society.

While it is easy to mistake modern graffiti as worthless, it is also possible to misinterpret the petroglyphs as having greater significance than they actually do. “A small number of the rock pictures were doubtless done as a form of amusement and to while away an idle hour... There is ethnographic evidence that some crude pictures were done by children and others were copies of older examples on the same rock surface ‘made for fun’ by recent Indians with no knowledge of their meaning” (Grant). Erroneous explanations might be resultant of personal biases wherein the interpreter assigns meaning specifically aligned with the position of the imposing paradigm. Perhaps ethnographers were given inaccurate data by their informants because they wanted to tell elaborate or self-important tales rather than expose the true meaning behind the images.

The case of vandalism is further exasperated when the earlier tale told by Robert Gish about shooting his rifle on the West Mesa is compared with one told by Zuni ethnographer Matilda Cox Stevenson. She reported that “men sometimes shot rock art depictions of game animals, especially deer, with arrows before they set out to hunt. Some evidence suggests that suitable pictographs and petroglyphs are still used in this way, at least on a limited scale, although the weapons are now guns rather than arrows, spears, or atlatls. Whether shooting at rock art figures is motivated by a belief in the efficacy of ritual activity to ensure a successful hunt or by a simple desire for target practice, the bullet holes and disfigured images are mute testimony to the fact that such shooting occurs” (in Young). If the shooting was done recently for target practice, is it inherently different than that done as Stevenson described? Does it matter who was the shooter?

Does it matter who was the artist? Does the protection of petroglyphs at the same time and in the same place as the erasure of graffiti imply a racially motivated segregation? The dominant imagination in America has preferred to view “Indians” as spiritual, sacred, and committed to the stewardship of land. At the same time, this same imagination depicts urban youth with spray-paint cans as vandals who have no respect for their environment and have no spiritual motivations for their art. Are either of these impressions likely to be true to life or are they nostalgic manifestations based upon particular aesthetics and dominant ideologies?

The protection of the petroglyphs is important for numerous reasons and a multitude of people. The petroglyphs were added to the rock walls of the mesa not because the Native Americans view the images as necessarily profound and “magical” but because they view the place as sacred. This landscape in which the artists interacted was no more real nor was it more important than the environment that graffiti artists interact with. They are different forms of expression but the interaction is the same: Individuals representing themselves in “public” places where their messages will have a symbolic affect for those who read them. Symbolic meaning exists in the mind. Icons of identity and indexical relationships are as true for each of the two types of artist in this discussion. The difference is imposed by those who look at the images once the artists have departed.

I was informed by Matthew Schmader, Assistant Superintendent of the Albuquerque Open Space Division, that in essence the making of the petroglyphs kept the societies alive. He indicated that he did not think the graffiti artists would cease to exist if they were not allowed to do their spraying. I respectfully question this position because the individuals who do the graffiti must be involved with making their images in order to survive as a group. Should graffiti artists cease to make graffiti, the group of graffiti artists would concurrently disappear. One reason that the petroglyphs are called “not graffiti” is because of the protection that is so relevant as threats become unmanageable. Defending the historical worth of the petroglyphs is difficult enough against high-powered rifles and hastily carved initials; defense against a looming population explosion with bulldozers and the necessity for more roads is quite another. To refer to them as “doodlings” makes it that much easier for the impacts of modern Albuquerque to supercede the preservation of the past. In a similar way, by referring to modern graffiti as having no value makes it easier to erase the handwriting from the wall.

Allow yourself for a moment to imagine a National Monument wherein modern graffiti were protected, documented, and interpreted. How might this place look in comparison to Petroglyphs National Monument? The escarpment of lava rock and desert plants would be replaced by 17 miles of poured concrete speckled with pigeon droppings. The sounds of car horns, train whistles, and police sirens would be protected similarly to the peace and quietude of the natural landscape. The block-lettered signatures, caricatures of artists, and territorial symbols in vivid Krylon would be studied as laboriously as the abraded images of anthropomorphs, exotic birds, and four-pointed stars. In many cases, this is exactly what the modern, urban environment has become except that protection is granted to the background upon which the images appear. Petroglyphs National Monument exists to protect both the place and the images that occur there while the laws and values of the city exist only to protect itself. The punishment of those who interact with the urban environment for the sake of protecting the disruptions and the distractions of slick, mirrored windows, sharply angular rebar, and parallel lines of gray concrete is the furtherance of socio-economic American expansion into the Southwest. This activity is through no fault of those who seek to preserve the past nor should the artists be held responsible for the misunderstandings of their particular art forms.

Inherent in this picture is the conundrum that exists between protection and erasure, between primitivism and civilization. What we value- and what we do not- shapes the way that history is written and remembered and moulds the future that often is contradictory to the present. Much in the way that I pass time stooped in the backyard of my house in the Sandia Mountains plucking potsherds from the ground while I (irritatedly) ignore the styrofoam cup that has blown across my fence with the wind. As bull-dozing, road-building, urban-sprawling mentalities become increasingly present on the mental landscape, a strengthening desire to oppose this paradigm will take the shape of protection, of museumification, and of imagination in order to hold-on to the remnants of the vanishing. To refer to the petroglyphs as common graffiti is to belittle their significance and value. In a similar way, to refer to artistic renderings beneath bridges and on billboards as visual pollution does the same.

References

Abel, Ernest. (1977) The Handwriting on the Wall. Greenwood Press: Westport.

Austin, Joe. (2001) Taking the Train. Columbia University Press: New York. City Council President Sanford D. Garelick, New York Times 5-21-72 and Peter Patterson, letter to the editor, New York Times 12-14-72.

Ferrell, Jeff. (1993) Crimes of Style: Urban Graffiti and the Politics of Criminality. Garland Publishing: New York and London.

Ford, Cheryl; Editor. Las Imágenes. Spring 2001 Vol.5.

Grant, Campbell. (1967) Rock Art of the American Indian. Promontory Press: New York.

Huser, Verne; Editor. (1998) Voices From A Sacred Place: In Defense of Petroglyph National Monument. Artcraft Printing: Seattle WA.

Kurlansky, Mervyn and Norman Mailer. (1974) The Faith of Graffiti. Praeger: New York.

Lachman, Richard. (1988) “Graffiti as Career and Ideology.” American Journal of Sociology 94.

Patterson,-Rudolph, Carol. (1993) Petroglyphs and Pueblo Myths of the Rio Grande. Avanyu Publishing: Albuquerque.

Young, Jane. (1988) Signs From the Ancestors. University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque.

http://www.cabq.gov/aes/s5vp.html (viewed 4-9-03).

http://www.yeahbutisitart.com/graffiti (viewed 2-28-03)