Social and behavioral scientists study religion or spirituality in various ways and have defined and approached the subject from different perspectives. In cultural anthropology and archaeology the understanding of what constitutes religion involves beliefs, oral traditions, practices and rituals, as well as the related material culture including artifacts, landscapes, structural features and visual representations like rock art. Researchers work to understand religious thoughts and actions that prompted their creation distinct from those created for economic, political, or social purposes. Rock art landscapes convey knowledge about sacred and spiritual ecology from generation to generation.

Contributors to this global view detail how rock art can be employed to address issues regarding past dynamic interplays of religions and spiritual elements. Studies from a number of different cultural areas and time periods explore how rock art engages the emotions, materializes thoughts and actions and reflects religious organization as it intersects with sociopolitical cultural systems.

Real-life dramas lurk behind the more familiar formal and structured content of archaeological literature. These untold tales reveal the personal experiences of the authors and the events encountered in the course of many decades of archaeological field work and travels throughout the Northern Plains, the American Southwest, and Mesoamerica. Some of them describe threatening encounters between landowners, stakeholders, and a public unsympathetic to archaeological pursuits. Close calls and drug-runners add to the potential risk of visiting rock art sites near the US/Mexican border. Other accounts explore the challenges of conducting rock art field work in adverse and demanding physical and social contexts. While these personal adventures are often shared between archaeologists over a beer, at parties and conferences, or around the campfire, they are seldom written down. Here are a few of these stories.

Social and behavioral scientists study religion or spirituality in various ways and have defined and approached the subject from different perspectives. In cultural anthropology and archaeology the understanding of what constitutes religion involves beliefs, oral traditions, practices and rituals, as well as the related material culture including artifacts, landscapes, structural features and visual representations like rock art. Researchers work to understand religious thoughts and actions that prompted their creation distinct from those created for economic, political, or social purposes. Rock art landscapes convey knowledge about sacred and spiritual ecology from generation to generation.

Contributors to this global view detail how rock art can be employed to address issues regarding past dynamic interplays of religions and spiritual elements. Studies from a number of different cultural areas and time periods explore how rock art engages the emotions, materializes thoughts and actions and reflects religious organization as it intersects with sociopolitical cultural systems.

Real-life dramas lurk behind the more familiar formal and structured content of archaeological literature. These untold tales reveal the personal experiences of the authors and the events encountered in the course of many decades of archaeological field work and travels throughout the Northern Plains, the American Southwest, and Mesoamerica. Some of them describe threatening encounters between landowners, stakeholders, and a public unsympathetic to archaeological pursuits. Close calls and drug-runners add to the potential risk of visiting rock art sites near the US/Mexican border. Other accounts explore the challenges of conducting rock art field work in adverse and demanding physical and social contexts. While these personal adventures are often shared between archaeologists over a beer, at parties and conferences, or around the campfire, they are seldom written down. Here are a few of these stories.