An Archeological Overview of Petrified Forest National Park

Stewart, Yvonne

Although Petrified Forest National Park was set aside as a natural park, it is an archeological gold mine, with over 300 sites recorded in the southern half alone. The sites exhibit an unbroken culture history sequence from the Archaic period until shortly before the arrival of Europeans in that part of the Southwest. They contain information about the change from hunting and gathering to agriculture, relationships between the environment and settlement pattern, relationships between major cultural areas and traditions, prehistoric farming practices and prehistoric trade. Environmental studies are critical to our understanding of prehistoric human populations. It is now felt that while environment does not dictate the way a group of people will live and obtain the necessities of life, it does impose limits within which the group must choose various options. This is particularly true in the arid Southwest, where many environmental areas are marginal and where group survival may depend on these choices or adaptive responses. It is impossible for an archeologist to understand completely what occurred in prehistory without a knowledge of environmental specifics for the period studied, as well as the general trends into which these specifics fit.