Fred Blackburn will discuss his work Prayer Rock: In the Shadow of the Bear on Tuesday, Jan. 7, at 7 p.m., at the United Methodist Church, 515 Park St.
Prayer Rock sits in the heart of Lukachukai country and was the place of the last great archaeological horse expedition conducted as part of the Charles Bernheimer expeditions in 1930.
A year later, Earl Morris returned as part of the Carnegie Institution’s excavations that included the landmark site Broken Flute Cave.
For 11 years, Blackburn investigated the area with the Jefferson County Open School to find the nearly 30 sites and to make sense of the importance of the Basketmaker III discoveries. Blackburn will review the findings and the importance to archaeology.
Blackburn’s Cowboys and Cave Dwellers, 1997, is in its fifth printing.
The Wetherills, Friends of Mesa Verde, 2009, is in its second printing. Prayer Rock includes work with the National Park Service and the Navajo Nation on the expeditionary history of Inscription House.
Blackburn has been involved in boards including Children’s Kiva, Cortez Sanitation District, McElmo Canyon Research Institute, and Canyonlands Natural History Association.
For more information, call Diane McBride at 970-560-1643 about this free program.