A Reassessment of Red Linear Pictographs in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas

2013 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 456-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn E. Boyd ◽  
Amanda M. Castañeda ◽  
Charles W. Koenig
Keyword(s):  
Rock Art ◽  
Field Analysis ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Artistic Style ◽  
Relative Chronology ◽  
Microscopic Field ◽  
Recording Project ◽  
Pecos River ◽  
Lower Pecos ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractRed Linear is one of four presently defined prehistoric pictograph styles in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and Coahuila, Mexico. Based on interpretation of images and two experimental radiocarbon dates, the style was presumed to have been brought into the region by intrusive bison hunters around 1280 B.P. This would place production of Red Linear after the large, polychromatic Pecos River style paintings (4200–2750 B.P.). However, during a recent rock art recording project we identified Red Linear overlain by presumed older Pecos River style. This prompted our re-examination of Red Linear through analysis of 444 figures from 12 sites. We produced a list of diagnostic attributes for Red Linear and documented stratigraphie relationships through macro- and microscopic field analysis. We identified 38 examples of Red Linear under Pecos River figures, thus inverting the relative chronology for the two styles and forcing a reconsideration of previous assumptions regarding the culture that produced the art. This paper demonstrates the potential afforded by analysis of rock art assemblages to reveal inter- and intrasite patterning of attributes and provide insight into relative chronologies. Further, it cautions against the use of variation in artistic style as a marker for ethnicity.

Response to Comments by Harrison

2015 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 204-205
Author(s):  
Carolyn E. Boyd ◽  
Amanda M. Castañeda ◽  
Charles W. Koenig
Keyword(s):  
Rock Art ◽  
Field Analysis ◽  
Independent Group ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Microscopic Field ◽  
Pecos River ◽  
Lower Pecos

AbstractIn our article “A Reexamination of Red Linear Style in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas,” we presented the results of an analysis of 444 Red Linear style pictographs from 12 sites in the region. Using this greatly expanded data set, we produced a list of diagnostic attributes for the style and documented stratigraphie relationships among pictographs through macro- and microscopic field analysis. We identified 38 examples of Red Linear under Pecos River style, a style previously assumed to be older than Red Linear. No Red Linear figures were identified superimposing Pecos River style. These results were verified by an independent group of archaeologists and chemists engaged in the analysis of Lower Pecos rock art. We concluded that Red Linear style is either older than or contemporaneous with Pecos River style. In Harrison’s comments, he argues that our methods were faulty and the data inadequate to support our conclusions. We address a few of Harrison’s critiques in our response; however, a more careful reading of the original article and supplemental materials is advised.

scholarly journals Speech-Breath: Mapping the Multisensory Experience in Pecos River Style Pictography

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Carolyn E. Boyd ◽  
Ashley Busby
Keyword(s):  
Rock Art ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
The World ◽  
Application Techniques ◽  
Graphic Device ◽  
Pecos River ◽  
Lower Pecos ◽  
Multisensory Experience

Archaic period hunter-gatherers of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and Coahuila, Mexico, created complex rock art murals containing elaborately painted anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures. These figures are frequently portrayed with dots or lines emanating out of or into their open mouths. In this article, we discuss patterns in shape, color, and arrangement of this pictographic element and propose that artists used this graphic device to denote speech, breath, and the soul. They communicated meaning through the image-making process, alternating brushstroke direction to indicate inhalation versus exhalation or using different paint application techniques to reflect measured versus forceful speech. The choices made by artists in the production of the imagery reflect their cosmology and the framework of ideas and beliefs through which they interpreted and interacted with the world. Bridging the iconographic data with ethnohistoric and ethnographic texts from Mesoamerica, we suggest that speech and breath expressed in the rock art of the Lower Pecos was tied to concepts of the soul, creation, and human origins.

Medicinal and hallucinogenic plants identified in the sediments and pictographs of the Lower Pecos, Texas Archaic

Antiquity ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 70 (268) ◽  
pp. 256-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn E. Boyd ◽  
J. Philip Dering
Keyword(s):  
Rock Art ◽  
Plant Remains ◽  
River Region ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Pecos River ◽  
Lower Pecos

The rock-art of the Pecos River region, on the Texas-Mexico border, is deservedly celebrated for its very large and inspiring human depictions, convincingly interpreted as images of shamanism. Study of plant remains in associated middens gives a new aspect to understanding of the images.

scholarly journals A Black Deer at Black Cave: New Pictograph Radiocarbon Date for the Lower Pecos, Texas

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lennon Bates ◽  
Amanda Castañeda ◽  
Carolyn Boyd ◽  
Karen Steelman
Keyword(s):  
Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Radiocarbon Date ◽  
Plasma Oxidation ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Pecos River ◽  
Age Range ◽  
Lower Pecos

A Pecos River style painting of a black deer from Black Cave Annex (41VV76a) in southwest Texas was radiocarbon dated. Using plasma oxidation and accelerator mass spectrometry, we obtained an age of 1465 ± 40 RCYBP (2 sigma calibrated age range of A.D. 470-660). This age is younger than the accepted age range for Pecos River style paintings, which is approximately 4000-3000 years B.P. This new measurement in association with other younger dates prompts us to question whether the Pecos River style endured for a longer time period than previously thought. More radiocarbon research is needed in order to understand how this anomalous result might fit within the Lower Pecos Canyonlands rock art chronology.

A Comment On “A Reassessment of Red Linear Pictographs in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas”

2015 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Burr Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Rock Art ◽  
American Antiquity ◽  
Diagnostic Characteristics ◽  
Pecos River ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Lower Pecos

AbstractBoyd, Castañeda, and Koenig (2013) recently published a hypothesis in American Antiquity that Red Linear style rock art predates, or is contemporaneous with, the Pecos River style. While the authors present intriguing examples of over-painting at 41VV83 and 41VV612, their definition of the Red Linear style should be questioned based on its lack of diagnostic characteristics relative to the Pecos River style. The Boyd et al. report is preliminary in its findings and falls short of overturning the existing regional chronology; thus, further stylistic studies of Red Linear art are recommended.

Review Feature: A review of The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art by David Lewis-Williams. London: Thames & Hudson, 2002. ISBN 0-500-05117-8 hardback £18.95 & US$29.95; 320 pp., 66 figs., 29 colour plates

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lewis-Williams ◽  
E. Thomas Lawson ◽  
Knut Helskog ◽  
David S. Whitley ◽  
Paul Mellars
Keyword(s):  
Rock Art ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Hominid Evolution ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Anatomically Modern Humans ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Cave Art ◽  
West European

David Lewis-Williams is well-known in rock-art circles as the author of a series of articles drawing on ethnographic material and shamanism (notably connected with the San rock art of southern Africa) to gain new insights into the Palaeolithic cave art of western Europe. Some 15 years ago, with Thomas Dowson, he proposed that Palaeolithic art owed its inspiration at least in part to trance experiences (altered states of consciousness) associated with shamanistic practices. Since that article appeared, the shamanistic hypothesis has both been widely adopted and developed in the study of different rock-art traditions, and has become the subject of lively and sometimes heated controversy. In the present volume, Lewis-Williams takes the argument further, and combines the shamanistic hypothesis with an interpretation of the development of human consciousness. He thus enters another contentious area of archaeological debate, seeking to understand west European cave art in the context of (and as a marker of) the new intellectual capacities of anatomically modern humans. Radiocarbon dates for the earliest west European cave art now place it contemporary with the demise of the Neanderthals around 30,000 years ago, and cave art, along with carved or decorated portable items, appears to announce the arrival and denote the success of modern humans in this region. Lewis-Williams argues that such cave art would have been beyond the capabilities of Neanderthals, and that this kind of artistic ability is unique to anatomically modern humans. Furthermore, he concludes that the development of the new ability cannot have been the product of hundreds of thousands of years of gradual hominid evolution, but must have arisen much more abruptly, within the novel neurological structure of anatomically modern humans. The Mind in the Cave is thus the product of two hypotheses, both of them contentious — the shamanistic interpretation of west European Upper Palaeolithic cave art, and the cognitive separation of modern humans and Neanderthals. But is it as simple as that? Was cave art the hallmark of a new cognitive ability and social consciousness that were beyond the reach of previous hominids? And is shamanism an outgrowth of the hard-wired structure of the modern human brain? We begin this Review Feature with a brief summary by David Lewis-Williams of the book's principal arguments. There follows a series of comments addressing both the meaning of the west European cave art, and its wider relevance for the understanding of the Neanderthal/modern human transition.

Ancient Texans: Rock Art and Lifeways along the Lower Pecos

1988 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 354
Author(s):  
Eugene B. McCluney ◽  
Harry J. Shafer
Keyword(s):  
Rock Art ◽  
Lower Pecos

A New Framework for Interpreting Contact Rock Art

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Smith ◽  
Jordan Ralph ◽  
Kylie Lower ◽  
Jennifer McKinnon ◽  
Matthew Ebbs ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rock Art ◽  
South Australia ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Specific Contact ◽  
Temporal Succession ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Different Parts ◽  
New Framework

This chapter addresses the challenge of seeing beyond the motif. Based on a case study in the Mid North of South Australia, this chapter presents a new analytical framework for analyzing style in rock art and using stylistic characteristics to identify authorship. The framework can be customized to different sites and/or regions to provide more nuanced understandings of specific contact trajectories. The results of this study suggest that innovation in contact rock art initially occurs in a single aspect of style and that a sequencing of innovations may be able to provide a temporal succession for contact motifs. The wider value of this framework is that it provides a basis for developing regional or site-specific models of style that may help researchers obtain greater insight into the authorship of contact rock art in different parts of the world.

Final response and future directions

Antiquity ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 89 (343) ◽  
pp. 221-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Ling ◽  
Zofia Stos-Gale
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Positive Attitude ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Deep Insight ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Final Response ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Insight Into

It is rare for authors to be able to read comments on their paper by leading colleagues and to have the chance to respond before its publication. We would like to thank the editor of Antiquity for providing this opportunity. The comments express both acceptance of, and doubts about, interconnectedness between the eastern Mediterranean and Scandinavia in the Bronze Age. Kaul's comments demonstrate a deep insight into how Nordic archaeology reveals this interconnectedness; that is clearly expressed in his latest publication on the topic in Antiquity (Kaul 2013). Moreover, both Kaul and Sognnes, who accept these interconnections, have an excellent understanding of Scandinavian Bronze Age rock art. In fact, most of the reviewers’ comments express a positive attitude to the interpretation of the rock art images as possible representations of oxhide ingots.

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