A Newly Identified Younger Dryas Component in Eagle Cave, Texas

Recent excavations by the Ancient Southwest Texas Project of Texas State University sampled a previously undocumented Younger Dryas component from Eagle Cave in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas. This stratified assemblage consists of bison (Bison antiquus) bones in association with lithic artifacts and a hearth. Bayesian modeling yields an age of 12,660–12,480 cal BP, and analyses indicate behaviors associated with the processing of a juvenile bison and the manufacture and maintenance of lithic tools. This article presents spatial, faunal, macrobotanical, chronometric, geoarchaeological, and lithic analyses relating to the Younger Dryas component within Eagle Cave. The identification of the Younger Dryas occupation in Eagle Cave should encourage archaeologists to revisit previously excavated rockshelter sites in the Lower Pecos and beyond to evaluate deposits for unrecognized, older occupations.

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

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.

Ethnohistoric Records of Hunter-Gatherer Diet of the Texas/Mexico Borderlands: Implications for Staple Foods of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands During the Holocene

Hinds Cave (41VV456) and other rockshelters excavated in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands have yielded thousands of coprolites spanning the Holocene. To date, several hundred specimens have been analyzed, providing a detailed record of meals consumed by hunter-gatherers who called this landscape home. This article compares the paleodietary records derived from these specimens with the foodways documented in the ethnohistoric records available for the Lower Pecos Canyonlands and adjacent landscapes. This comparison confirms the deep temporal roots of the foodways recorded in the earliest written records of the Texas/Mexico borderlands. Coprolite data corroborate the strong dependence on the seasonal staples of lechuguilla (Agave lechuguilla), nopales (Opuntia sp.), and tunas (Opuntia sp.) observed in the ethnohistoric literature. The temporal endurance of this subsistence strategy suggests that there may be some components of this dietary pattern that could inform on many of the diet-related health issues observed among modern Native American and other populations.