A Reddit user shared their frustration after finding one of Northern Virginia's few remaining petroglyphs scarred by graffiti.
The post, shared with the r/LegitArtifacts community, showed ancient rock carvings along a hiking path in what appeared to be the Bull Run Mountains Natural Area Preserve. The carvings survived for what could be thousands of years, tucked beneath an overhang where the average hiker would walk right past them.
The stone surface was marked with scratches and etchings over the original carvings. The poster described finding trash scattered across the area and said that a nearby burial ground for people who were enslaved had been littered, too.
"Nothing is sacred anymore!" they wrote. "There are other petroglyphs, along Difficult Run in Great Falls. It's a local hang-out spot for partying teens etc. and those, unfortunately, have long been covered with graffiti."
They added, "I couldn't just pass by without cleaning up."
Petroglyphs are among the rarest traces of Indigenous life in the mid-Atlantic. Once defaced, the damage is permanent; there is no way to restore carved stone to its original state.
Federal law does offer some protection. The Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 makes it illegal to damage or deface rock carvings, graves, and other sites on public land. A first offense can carry up to two years in prison and a $20,000 fine. Virginia's own Antiquities Act classifies the defacement of archaeological sites on state-controlled land as a Class 1 misdemeanor.
When someone vandalizes a site, it takes away the chance for others to experience that connection with the natural world and the people who lived on this land long before us. Protecting these places means preserving the relationship between humans and Earth, something that gets harder to maintain every time it's broken.
Commenters shared the poster's anger.
"I know natural resource protection isn't always the highest priority, but I'd imagine you'd get some attention if you notified the appropriate archeologists/law enforcement," one wrote. "This is a very significant site."
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Another called for harsher penalties, saying: "This should be a major crime. Five years in a jail minimum and lifetime ban from all state and federal parks and museums. It lasted thousands of years just for some loser to destroy all that amazing history."
"Of course it was vandalized," someone else noted. "It's an irreplaceable piece of history and some ash hole had the bright idea that if he or she destroyed it, then nobody else could see it."
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