The Hooper Ranch Pueblo Sun Dagger Shrine Revisited - Revealing Greater Regional Significance

Located above the Little Colorado River in east-central Arizona, a natural rock formation casts a dynamic shadow-line onto a panel of ancient rock art during the summer solstice. Two hours later a rock chimney allows a narrow beam of sunlight to pass through, forming a Sun Dagger that illuminates the petroglyphs beneath it in a dynamic manner, similar to the solar marker located upon Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon. Although this solar marker is considerably older than the one on Fajada Butte, here in succession both the early morning shadow-line and Sun Dagger itself appear to emanate from the hand of an anthropomorphic figure, first bisecting a spiral and then, a few minutes later, an S-shaped image.

Symbolically, the center-line of each of the three nearby Hooper Ranch Pueblo kivas aligns with this ancient Sun Dagger shrine. Significantly, recently a large effigy of Quetzalcoatl which was removed from the site prior to the Field Museum's 1961 excavation has been recovered, and the embellishment of the shrine itself as an equinox marker has been noted.