Small petroglyph, or rock-art drawing, at Casa Malpais, an archaeological site hidden from easy view in the White Mountains of Arizona, near Springerville

The site includes a great kiva, ancient stairways, and rock art of ancient Pueblo Peoples. The culture's rock dwellings were built beginning around 1260 and were inhabited until about 1400, making this one of the latest dated Mogollon sites. The name Casa Malpais has been misinterpreted to mean House of the Badlands, but the name actually refers to the type of volcanic vesicular basalt rock, or Malapi, upon which the site is built. The people we now call the Mogollon culture were Native American peoples from Southern New Mexico and Arizona, Northern Sonora and Chihuahua, and Western Texas, a region known as Oasisamerica.
Title, date and keywords based on information provided by the photographer.
Gift; Barbara Barrett; 2018; (DLC/PP-2018:112)
Forms part of Carol M. Highsmith's America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.
Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.