Reporting at the 208th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, John Barentine, with Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico and Gilbert A. Esquerdo, with the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., said they think a petroglyph, found in the White Tanks Regional Park in Arizona depicts the well-known supernova of A.D. 1006.

The petroglyph is located in an area once occupied by prehistoric Native Americans called the Hohokam, which archaeologists think lived in the area - outside modern-day Phoenix - from about A.D. 500 to 1100.

Until now, the supernova was thought to only have been recorded by star watchers in the Old World, because simultaneous written records from Asia, the Middle East and Europe recognize the appearance of a "new star" in the modern constellation of Lupus on May 1, 1006.

Confirmation of their proposition would advance understanding of prehistoric Native American astronomy and traditions concerning the night sky.

"The supernova of 1006 was perhaps the brightest such event visible from Earth for thousands of years, reaching the brightness of a quarter moon at peak," Barentine said, "yet to date no representations of the event have been identified in Native American art."

If confirmed, he added, the discovery would support "the idea that ancient Native Americans were aware of changes in the night sky and moved to commemorate them in their cultural record."

Barentine said the discovery also could benefit archaeologists trying to fix precise dates to petroglyphs in the Southwest and elsewhere in the world, "providing a rare opportunity to relate a specific historical event to its depiction in rock art."

Traditionally, assigning dates of origination to prehistoric Native American art has been extremely difficult, because Native American tribes lack written languages and there is little continuity in their cultures and folklore.

"Quantitative methods such as carbon-14 dating are alternative means to assign ages to works of prehistoric art," said Barentine, who studies Southwest archeology as a hobby. "But they lack precision of more than a few decades, so any depiction in art that can be fixed to a specific year is extremely valuable."

He admitted, however, that "Without my background in astronomy, I probably wouldn't have recognized the petroglyph for what it might represent."

To support their hypothesis, Barentine and Esquerdo created an accurate model of the night sky on May 1, 1006, which shows the relative position of the supernova with respect to the constellation Scorpius matches the relative placement of scorpion and star symbols on the rock.

Petroglyphs are among the most durable and longest-lasting human art forms. They are made by cutting a rock surface using a smaller, handheld rock.

"Standing in the desert heat after studying the petroglyphs, the span of the ages hit home," Esquerdo said.

"One thousand years ago," he continued, "someone else was standing in that exact spot looking upon the depiction they created of the star they had seen in previous nights. It was the change in the sky that had brought that artist as well as us to that spot one thousand years apart."

Similar petroglyphs have been identified as likely depictions of historic astronomical events in the prehistoric Southwest. One of the most widely recognized examples is the pictograph near Penasco Blanco in Chaco Canyon National Monument, New Mexico.

There, a painted rock symbol is theorized to depict the supernova of July 4, 1054. As for the White Tanks Regional Park petroglyph in Arizona and its suspected relationship to the 1006 astronomical event, astronomers do not yet consider the results conclusive.

The next step will be to conduct chemical-dating test, which rely on the abundance of certain elements in the rock varnish. The tests could help confine the range of dates in which the petroglyph was created.

A result substantiating an early 11th century date of origin would lead considerable credence to the claim that the prehistoric symbol represents the 1006 supernova event.

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