Russell Baldner’s presentation, Sacred Places: An Introduction to Northeast Iowa’s Native American Rock Art Legacy,” featured striking photographs of indigenous petroglyphs (rock carvings), pictographs (painted figures), and natural landscape. The presentation also included archaeological and environmental context, a primer of rock art fundamentals, and a survey of natural and human threats to and means of preserving northeast Iowa’s late prehistoric to early historic indigenous rock art heritage.

Baldner shared historical and personal insights from his more than thirty years of field, archival, and documentary research. Although often an unknown, Native American rock art remains a rare, fragile, intriguing facet of Iowa’s indigenous cultural heritage. It is also one of the state’s most extraordinary cultural resources.