A Mesoamerican Culture Hero Legend in Western U.S. Rock Art

Summary

Research ties Mesoamerican search for ancestors to U.S. rock art. A hero in Mexican Aztec legend fought his sister, Coyolxauhqui, and the titans, decapitating her, rolling her body down the mountain, and leaving her head on the mountain. Coyolxauhqui is a floating head on Mesoamerican murals, decapitated and dismembered on the Coyolxauhqui stone. She was the moon, queen, and an avatar of their Earth Mother. She is commemorated in Basketmaker and later rock art in Colorado and Utah at 5 Faces and 4 Faces pictographs in Davis and Salt Creek canyons, and in Bullet Canyon, Little Rainbow Park, and Cub Creek. The Earth Mother is represented as unclean, covered with snakes in Mesoamerican iconography. In North America she is rendered in charcoal at Bullet Canyon, Hog Springs, Black Dragon Canyon, San Rafael Swell, Horseshoe Canyon, and presented in this research is a newly recorded pictograph in a deep crevice along the eastern Front Range. The hero, as the hummingbird, is in Tsankawi and Long House ruins, Black Canyon, La Cieneguilla, San Crisóbal, and Galisteo. Titans, as proboscideans, are at Bullard Cove, Shay Canyon, Colorado River gorge, and Indian Creek Canyon.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Methodology and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art   •
• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 18781