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University Of Arkansas Rocks With Virtual Museum Exhibt
March, 2009Stick-like men caper across a cave wall. A ball of sun blossoms on the side of a bluff. Spiral gyres unwind on a blank rock face. These are just a handful of the ancient images carved or painted onto solid rock by the earliest inhabitants of Arkansas.
More than 135 archeological sites in Arkansas contain rock art,
representing one of the richest collections outside of the southwestern
United States. It would take years of family vacations and thousands
of miles on the odometer to visit each site, and the most fragile
examples aren't even open to the public.
But thanks to researchers at the University of Arkansas and the Arkansas Archeological Survey, everyone can now study and view these works of art. With a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council, anthropologist George Sabo directed a team of archeologists and Web designers to develop a virtual museum of Arkansas rock art at http://rockart.uark.edu/.
The site contains a searchable database of rock art images and offers educational materials-from technical papers to lesson plans-to suit the needs of visitors ranging from professional archeologists to elementary school children.
In addition to educating the public, the database serves as a valuable record, documenting rock art so that archeologists can monitor weathering and wear. And by preserving each image, the site also preserves information about the history of human thought, information that can't be gleaned from other types of artifact.
"Iconographic material-be it a decorated pot, a carved smoking pipe or rock art-is the product of people thinking about the world and rendering their visions through art," Sabo said. "That can give us insight into how ancient people thought about the world and how they acted upon those thoughts. If we can figure that out, then we've really said something about past societies and what life was like for ancient people."