Utah Rock Art Research Association Annual Symposium

This is an excellent opportunity for members of the public to learn more about Utah’s rock art! This is a conference with exciting, accessible information.

Our annual symposium. Two days of field trips to great rock art sites. Two days of speakers. Our business meeting which gives you an opportunity to tell us how we are doing. Dinner, auction, watermelons, fun and frivolity.

There are camping spots available at the Park. These are on a first come basis, no reservations. You can also “dry camp” free at the venue on the dirt around the area. You will need to stay away from stables and track area, so as not to disturb the horses. If you are not camping at the Legacy Park, book your hotel or campground NOW because St. George and Washington City are heavily booked that time of year for the St George Marathon and Huntsman Senior Games.

The URARA symposium is available to members only. Partly because, if you love rock art like we do, we’d love to have you as a members. And also to protect our list of sites from web index engines. Join us and enjoy the symposium.

2019 FEATURED SPEAKERS

Christopher Drover, Ph.D., RPA, is in his 34th year as a faculty member in the Anthropology Department at
the University of California, Irvine. Professor Drover’s degrees are all in anthropology; he received his BA
(1969) and MA (1970) from California State University, Fullerton, and in 1979 he was awarded a Ph.D. at the
University of California, Riverside. He taught anthropology at Golden West College (38 years; retired 2011),
and he also taught part-time at California State University, Fullerton (1971), Chapman College (1973), and the
University of California, Riverside (1977). Dr. Drover has also been involved in CRM work since 1970, having
served as Principal Investigator for the Museum of Northern Arizona and Director of Cultural Resources for
Chambers Consultants and Planners, The Keith Companies, and TRW.

Lynda McNeil University of Colorado, Boulder, Anthropology Department. Beginning in 1995, my research
interest in rock art (archaeology) addressed the question of through what mechanisms did humans preserve
their collective knowledge over generations before the invention of writing? I investigated bear cult traditions
encoded in Yenisei River (Southern Siberia) rock art, joining a team of international researchers on an
expedition to that region, as well as Colorado Plateau Ute Indian rock art, Bear Dance spring rites, and oral
traditions. I am currently working on the role of information sharing in the constitution of small-scale social
networks during the transition to agriculture in the northern Southwest. My research correlates linguistic,
material cultural, and rock art evidence that shows interactions between different social groups and
migrations in the northern Colorado Plateau region during Basketmaker II to Pueblo Unexampled of my
current work include investigating Basketmaker II social networking and information sharing in collaboration
with David Shaul, a linguist studying Uto-Aztecan languages, and Kiowa ethnogenesis involving Eastern
Basketmakers, Eastern Fremont, and historic Kiowa in collaboration with Scott Ortman, Assistant Professor,
Dept. of Anthropology, University of Colorado at Boulder.

Bernie Jones has a B.A. in Visual Arts, from California State University Long Beach, and a Master’s degree in
Arts Education from California State University, Fullerton. He worked in arts education for nearly 40 years both
as a teacher and administrator. He is retired and currently is working on a variety of projects. He has had a
lifelong interest in Native American culture, talking to various peoples, reading ethnographies, and collecting
artifacts and cultural material from the time he was a boy. Forty-five years ago, he attended a lecture on rock
art at the Bowers Museum in Orange County, California. That lecture resonated within him, reminding him of
a story that his parents told. When moving to California in 1951, his family stopped at Newspaper Rock in the
Painted Desert, Arizona. He became so engrossed with the images there, they had to physically remove him
from the site. For the past 45 years he has studied, written about, and recorded rock art from various parts of
the world. Like most of his fellow researchers, he realizes that one lifetime will not be enough to see all there
is of this wonderful visual legacy. Cross cultural comparisons of art forms have always held a fascination for
him. For the past four years he has been researching “Flower World “imagery found on the Southern Colorado
Plateau, in Arizona. Flower World concepts began in Mesoamerica and appear as cultural material including
petroglyphs, in the Pueblo III, and IV rock art record of the American southwest. Comparing the icons found in
the southwest to imagery from Mesoamerican cultures, and their use as described in ethnography’s has been
fascinating.