Revisiting the Stylistic Similarities of Utah's Barrier Canyon and Texas' Pecos River Murals

Summary

Polly Schaafsma was among the first to recognize the many stylistic elements shared between Utah's Barrier Canyon rock art and the Pecos River style along the Lower Pecos Canyonlands in Texas. While the Barrier Canyon murals are markedly simpler in execution, common elements include anthropomorph shape and torso decoration, composed sets of zoomorphs, and the depiction of wild plants. During this initial study, Schaafsma (1971) defined the Barrier Canyon style based on nineteen sites located in the San Rafael Swell and the associated Green River desert. Since that time, many more Barrier Canyon panels have been located in this region of the Colorado Plateau. This paper reevaluates the argument of stylistic similarity between these two styles in light of this broader data set. The recently published optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates of the type site in Horse Canyon will also be incorporated into a discussion of the cultural association of the Barrier Canyon style and possible temporal variation within the style.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Rock Art Research: A Regional Analysis   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage