Petroglyphs, or carved rock designs, and pictographs, or painted rock designs, are known by the general term rock art. In what are now the states of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado, prehistoric hunter-gatherer Indians began to decorate canyon walls, rock shelters, and boulders with rock art several thousand years ago. Navajos, Apaches, Pueblo Indians, and even Spanish soldiers and settlers continued to create rock art over the centuries.
The three major southwestern Indian horticultural groups who created rock art were the Hohokam of southern Arizona, the Mogollon of southern Arizona and New Mexico and West Texas, and the Anasazi--now known as the Pueblo Indians--of southern Utah, Northern New Mexico and Arizona. They existed from approximately A.D. 1 to A.D. 1500. In addition, the Fremont culture of Utah employed a dramatic rock-art style based on Anasazi motifs from A.D. 700 to A.D. 1200.