Around the Lower Pecos in 1,095 Days: A Baseline Rock Art Documentation Project

Summary

The Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and northern Mexico houses some of the most complex and compositionally intricate prehistoric rock art in the world. Presently, there are over 300 archaeological sites reported to include rock art in Val Verde County Texas, with a vast majority not being revisited since they received their site designation 30 to 50 years ago. In January 2017, Shumla Archaeological Research and Education Center launched the Baseline Rock Art Documentation Project: a three-year project designed to gather an extensive dataset from all known sites and from previously unreported rock art sites discovered through canyon surveys. Data such as accurate site locations, high resolution panoramic images, 3D models created by Structure from Motion, and context photography will be collected in the field. New, amended, updated, and revised TexSite and Shumla Rock Art Site Forms will also be completed and submitted to our SHPO designated repository. This vast and multi-faceted data set will open areas for future research including rock art distribution and directionality patterns, motif attribute studies, landscape archaeology, and conservation assessments. It will also digitally preserve into perpetuity the full rock art assemblage for an entire archaeological region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Investigating a Ten-Millennia Record of Hunter-Gatherer Lifeways in the Northeastern Chihuahuan Desert

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15851