"Service Learning and Community Collaboration at
Picture Canyon , Flagstaff "

Kelley Hays-Gilpin is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University , and Edward Bridge Danson Curator of Anthropology at the Museum of Northern Arizona . Recent publications include Ambiguous Images: Gender and Rock Art , winner of the 2005 Society for American Archaeology Book Award, and two edited issues of MNA's Plateau Magazine devoted to the topics of rock art and kiva mural paintings. Her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Arizona (1992) applied cross-media comparison to Basketmaker III period rock art and decorated artifacts, and she has continued to work with many media, including pottery, textiles, and basketry as well as rock art. Current projects include the Hopi Iconography Project, a cross-media project demonstrating Hopi cultural continuity that is conducted as a collaborative effort between MNA and the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office. She is also working with Jane Kolber to prepare a book on rock art research in Chaco Canyon by Kolber and a team of volunteers.

Picture Canyon is a large Sinagua petroglyph and habitation site located on state trust lands within the City of Flagstaff, Arizona, adjacent to the Wildcat Hill Wastewater Treatment Facility. Grass-roots community efforts to preserve the site as open space, wildlife refuge, and cultural resource are complicated by land status issues, rights-of-way, vandalism and other destructive activities, downstream water rights, upstream effluent discharge, health and safety issues, and tribal concerns. Northern Arizona University 's Anthropology program focuses on applied anthropology and cultural resource management. For the past two years, NAU students enrolled in a graduate and honors undergraduate seminar called “Archaeology of Rock Art” have worked with a variety of community-based archaeologists and other stakeholders to map the site, make management recommendations, and otherwise assist local government in its cultural preservation and ecological restoration efforts. Students engage in hands-on service learning, peer mentoring, and multimedia projects of their own design. They learn that archaeology is about much more than research, and that the petroglyphs themselves are not the only interesting aspect of rock art studies; at the same time, they make a real difference in the community.