Assessing the Variability and Chronology of Red Linear Style Pictographs of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas: Final Results

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper aims to further define the characteristics of Red Linear style (RLS) anthropomorphs and establish its temporal relationship with other regional rock art styles of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas and Coahuila, Mexico. In 2013, Boyd et al. presented a list of diagnostic attributes for the RLS based on 444 figures across 12 sites. In addition, their study identified 38 RLS figures under Pecos River style (PRS), relatively dating RLS as older than or contemporaneous with PRS. This paper expands upon Boyd et al.’s dataset to include anthropomorphic attributes from an additional 20 RLS sites and establish a comprehensive list of RLS diagnostic attributes. This expanded dataset confirms that the figures under PRS display attributes unique to RLS. To establish RLS pictographs in a temporal context using absolute dating methods, I selected five anthropomorphs depicting clear diagnostic RLS attributes for AMS dating. The radiocarbon ages from the five Red Linear figures range from 4276 to 4830 RCYBP, placing production of the style to the Early Middle Archaic Period. Therefore, contemporaneous with the oldest known dates for the PRS. These absolute dating methods support Boyd et al.’s and place Red Linear temporally along other aspects of the archaeological record.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36635.0