ABSTRACT
Within the Caribbean, Puerto Rico enjoys a unique proliferation of rock art; carved and painted images are recorded for some 500 locations on an island 64 by 178 kilometers. The number of images per sites ranging from as little as one to over one hundred petroglyphs, pictographs, or a combination of those two types of lithoglyphic expression. The first type predominates among the images and can be found along waterways, in caves or other types of rock surfaces, on stone slabs aligning ball courts or plazas, and on beach rock. One reason for this proliferation relates to the island's abundance of lithic raw materials. Petroglyphs carved into beach rock have been reported from only two sites on the island, with the highest number of images associated with Maisabel, a large settlement on the north coast. Puerto Rico's rock art may be organized into a three-fold classification scheme of anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and abstract figures, along with combinations of these three classes.
