Travel, Archaeology, Photography
The Sinaguan Cliff Dwellings and Ancient Pictographs and Petroglyphs of the World Heritage Site of Palatki National Monument near Sedona, Arizona
Just a short drive from Sedona, Arizona, the ruins of ancient dwellings and rock art, as old as 6,000 years, adorn the red rock cliffs
Published in
7 min readMay 31, 2023
It’s the quiet that catches my attention. The six miles we bumped along down a rutted dirt road to Palatki National Monument have carried us into a distant and ancient world filled with the gentle whisper of wind through the pinyon pines, the screech of blue jays and the utter absence of traffic noise.
I can only imagine what it must have been like to scramble up over a tumble of boulders to reach your two-story apartment building at the base of a red rock cliff. From up here, the view out across the flatlands would have offered great protection from unexpected visitors. At certain times of the year, water would have flowed in a torrent from up overhead, but you would have been tucked away under a rock shelf…
