There was a village here, established more than seven hundred years ago by Ancestral Puebloans. Most scholars no longer refer to them by the pejorative term the Navajo used, Anasazi, meaning “ancient enemies” or “ancient strangers.” Little is known about them. They were responsible for many of the petroglyphs; the Zuni who found the site much later called it Atsinna, “place of writings on the rock.” Little of the village remains: a small grid of recessed stone walls, a larger room that might have been used for religious ceremonies.
