Petroglyphs in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands: Preliminary Analysis of Context, Style, and Chronology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Art of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Petroglyphs have been an understudied form of rock art in the Lower Pecos canyonlands of Texas, in large part due to the small number of sites known to include carved, incised, or pecked designs. The most famous petroglyph site in the region is Lewis Canyon, where over 1,000 figurative petroglyphs were pecked into the limestone bedrock. Aside from Lewis Canyon petroglyphs have been considered uncommon in the region. While petroglyphs may be far less pervasive than the hundreds of pictograph sites, Shumla has recently documented over 15 additional sites containing figurative petroglyphs. Interestingly, these newly identified petroglyphs are starkly different than the imagery at Lewis Canyon. This paper describes the documented petroglyph assemblage, and puts forth preliminary thoughts about the context, style, and chronology of these features. It is important that we begin to recognize the patterns and variation that exist among the petroglyphs of the region as well as compare these with petroglyphs in the immediate surrounding areas of Texas and northern Mexico.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• The Art of Archaeology

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25727