2

SIZE MATTERS: The Transition From Religious to Secular Art in the Lower Pecos Region

Figure 1. The Lower Pecos cultural

area is defined by the distribution

of the Pecos River Style picto-

graphs. The primary Pecos River

Style sites discussed herein are

south of the Rio Grande in the

Serranías del Burro. The Red

Linear sites are north of the river,

clustered around the mouth of the

Pecos and along the Devils River.

changes in mobility and settlement patterns,

and, over time, by allochthonous rock art styles

that reflect a much more secular worldview. The

first of these, the Red Linear pictographs, ap-

peared as a fully formed style, which may have

been developed in more westerly climes (Mark

and Billo 2009). The following discussion focuses

on the systemic changes that attended the de-

mise of the Pecos River Style, the end of the

Middle Archaic period, and the concomitant dis-

solution of the Lower Pecos as a distinct cultural

area, ca. 2600 years ago. Some consideration is

given to the emergence of the Red Linear Style

as one consequence of the influx of people and

ideas into the region.

A Model of Scalar Stress

The context for this model is the

paleoenvironmental sequence in the Lower

Pecos region as initially reconstructed by Bryant

(1966, 1969) and augmented by Dibble and

Lorrain (1968), Patton and Dibble (1982), Kochel

(1980), and others. Briefly, until about 9600 years

ago, the region was a parkland savannah that

supported herds of megafauna and their atten-

dant hunters, the Paleoindians. The onset of a

trend toward aridity altered the floral and fau-

nal communities, culminating in a period of se-

vere drought about 5000 years ago that Bryant

(1969) called the Ozona Erosional. A return to

cooler, moister conditions ca. 3000 years ago re-

3

Solveig A. Turpin

stored the plains-like habitat and permitted the

expansion of migratory bison herds into the re-

gion (Dibble and Lorrain 1968). This short-lived

period ended with a resurgence of drier condi-

tions and a return to Archaic adaptive patterns

that endured until perhaps 500 years ago when

the Lower Pecos was again incorporated into the

sea of grass that was the Great Plains. In the

1880s, severe droughts marked a return to the

semi-desert that is the Lower Pecos today.

My original premise was that the well-docu-

mented trend toward aridity that began at the

end of Pleistocene intensified to the point that

the Archaic hunters and gatherers of the Lower

Pecos canyon country reacted by modifying their

economic strategies and settlement patterns

(Turpin 1990b). A logical response to the dimin-

ishing casual water sources in the uplands was

to concentrate the bulk of the population along

one of the three major rivers in what are com-

monly called base camps. Using terms proposed

by Lewis Binford (1980), resource procurement

strategies changed from foraging to collecting.

Residential mobility (foraging), in which the

entire extended family moved in concert, would

be replaced by logistical mobility, wherein task

groups would emanate from the base camps,

going forth to collect food and raw material to

supply the resident population. In this way,

population density increased without an in-

crease in population numbers. Environmental

circumscription and the concomitant

regionalization of traits are evidenced by the

emergence of highly characteristic tool types and

distinctive localized rock art styles, in this case

the Pecos River Style. The Lower Pecos cultural

area was defined based on the distribution of

these traits, which reached their apogee during

the Middle Archaic period, ca. 5000–3000 B.P.

In this model, the pressures of increased

population density led to what the anthropolo-

gist Gregory Johnson (1982) called scalar stress,

a form of information overload

1

caused by an

increase in the number of people involved in the

decision-making process which in turn led to an

inability to reach consensus and an increase in

dispute frequency. Hunting and gathering

people normally respond to friction by fission,

using dispersal as a means of reducing conflict.

However, if fission is not possible due to envi-

ronmental or social conscription, another

method of alleviating such stress is reducing the

number of decision makers through the devel-

opment of sequential or expedient hierarchies,

which were inherently unstable and imperma-

nent (Conkey 1985:306). Examples are the mes-

cal bean or medicine societies of the Plains,

which have been cited by Thomas N. Campbell

(1958) and William W. Newcomb, Jr. (Kirkland

and Newcomb 1967) as possible analogs for ele-

ments of Lower Pecos social organization dur-

ing the Archaic. Population density, information

overload, and situational or sequential hierar-

chies are accompanied by increased ritual activ-

ity (Figure 2), which is often intended publicly

Figure 2. Gregory Johnson’s (1982) model of scalar

stress as applied to the Pecos River Style.

to reify the new social order (Brown and Price

1985; Conkey 1985; Johnson 1982). In the case of

the Lower Pecos, the remaining manifestation

of this ritual activity, which almost certainly in-

cluded music, dancing, story telling, and magi-

cal performances, is the art. Since a large body

of elaborate polychrome art was produced by

the Lower Pecos people, it is probably safe to

assume that this form of ritual communication

contributed to social solidarity and the rise of

ethnicity. Iconographic themes within the over-

all corpus may have incidentally served to mark

sites or areas that were under the influence of

specific kin or social groups. The demise of the

style then implies that monumental art, and the

ritual activity it represented, became obsolete

because they no longer functioned as balancing

factors.

4

SIZE MATTERS: The Transition From Religious to Secular Art in the Lower Pecos Region

The Relative Rock Art Sequence

in the Lower Pecos

The traditional sequence of pictograph styles

was established by Gebhard (1965) and

Newcomb (Kirkland and Newcomb 1967) over

40 years ago and modified over time when new

styles were defined (Turpin 1986a). The consen-

sus placed the Pecos River Style on the early end

of the scale, followed by Red Linear, Red Mono-

chrome/Bold Line Geometrics, and Historic, al-

though the latter is clearly not a style. The mo-

biliary art and the petroglyphs stand outside this

sequence, although some attempts have been

made to generalize about their relative ages as

well.

Working from Kirkland’s watercolors,

Newcomb recognized that the Red Linear Style

was distinctly different from the Pecos River

Style but—based on a sample of one site, the Red

Linear type site (41VV201)—he thought the two

styles might be related because the depictions

of atlatls imply an Archaic age (Kirkland and

Newcomb 1967:94). He recognized that the Red

Linear pictographs were in better condition, so

favored a more recent age with some possible

overlap. Gebhard (1965), with two sites to pon-

der (41VV74 and 41VV201), saw resemblances

to Southwestern art, specifically Kokopelli,

which dates about A.D. 900–1400. However,

what Gebhard thought were hump-backed men

walking upstream were really pregnant women

walking downstream (Figure 3). Thinking he

Figure 3. Two groups of Red Linear figures so high on the upstream wall of Fate Bell Shelter (41VV74) they can only

be seen with binoculars or telescopic camera lenses. Human reproduction, here evidenced by pregnant women, is a

major theme in this style.

saw bows and arrows in the hands of two faded

and deteriorated figures at Fate Bell Shelter

(41VV74), Gebhard favored a later but still pre-

historic date. His observation has not been con-

firmed; all of the armed men in the now avail-

able much larger sample carry spears, spear-

throwers, or enigmatic objects that are clearly

not bows.

2

Both Newcomb and Gebhard, and

Forrest Kirkland before them, attributed the Red

Monochrome Style to the Late Prehistoric period,

probably after about A.D. 900, based on the de-

pictions of bows and arrows (Kirkland and

Newcomb 1967). Some affinities to northern

Mexican paintings led me to suggest a Late Pre-

historic age for the Bold Line Geometric Style,

but that is far from definitive (Turpin 1986a). The

Historic art is self-explanatory, ranging from

sites with some European elements to the full-

blown Plains Biographic Style. It is most impor-

tant to note that all of the post-Pecos River styles,

including the petroglyphs and excluding the

mobiliary art, appear to be intrusive, with affini-

ties for western, southern, and northern styles.

Thus, the art demonstrates the shift from insu-

larity, as epitomized by the Pecos River Style, to

fluidity, wherein people moved in and out of the

Lower Pecos carrying their own fully developed

traditions.

Boyd and Rowe (2010) have recently claimed

that they have found instances where elements

in the Pecos River Style overlie Red Linear fig-

ures, thus inverting some part of the relative se-

5

Solveig A. Turpin

quence. To me, the examples they cite would

require redefinition of the Red Linear Style or

are ambiguous at best, but some minor overlap

would not contravene the model set forth in this

paper since the vast majority of the Pecos River

Style paintings are indisputably older than the

vast majority of the Red Linear panels (see

Kirkland and Newcomb 1967). In addition, it is

difficult to reconcile their observations with their

data. According to Boyd and Rowe (2010), only

two Red Linear radiocarbon dates are available

at this writing, but others are in process.

3

The

published dates agree on an age of 1280 B.P. or

about A.D. 670, which falls at the end of the Late

Archaic period, well after the presumed demise

of the Pecos River Style. These dates further con-

fuse the problem of temporal continuities since

Rowe (2001, 2009) reports that multiple samples

of the Pecos River genre rock paintings have

been radiocarbon dated to the range between

2750 and 4200 B.P., a range that implies a 1500-

year hiatus between the two styles (see also

Rowe 2009:Figure 5). Either the radiocarbon

dates are wrong or there can be no inverse over-

lap between the styles. Regardless of the abso-

lute dates, the Red Linear artists confirmed the

relative sequence by incorporating extant Pecos

River Style figures into their compositions, like

the four men in Figure 4 marching atop a poly-

chrome dagger at Fate Bell Shelter. Furthermore,

impressionistic as it may be, the two styles seem

Figure 4. Miniature Red Linear warriors seem to be

fighting while their leader steps along atop an earlier

Pecos River Style black and red dagger-form at Fate

Bell Shelter in Seminole Canyon.

to represent such radically different worldviews

(as do the other styles yet to come) that it is dif-

ficult to see them emerging from the same cul-

tural context.

Contrast Between Styles

The contrast between the Pecos River and Red

Linear styles permeates the whole range of de-

fining variables: size—large vs. small, color—

polychrome vs. monochrome, tone—static vs.

active, intent—formal vs. narrative, focus—sa-

cred vs. mundane, mores—spiritual vs. sexual,

and lastly spatial distribution. There are hun-

dreds of recorded Pecos River Style sites, and

that is surely only a percentage of what was

originally painted, compared to fewer than 25

sites with Red Linear figures. Pecos River Style

sites have been recorded some 90 miles south of

the Rio Grande, into the Serranías del Burro, the

outlier of the Sierra Madre Oriental visible from

the mouth of the Pecos (see Figure 1), but Red

Linear sites are restricted to two clusters—one

on the Devils River and one on the Pecos (Turpin

1990c). Obviously, the Pecos River artists were

in residence for a longer time over a broader area,

and the Red Linear occupation was briefer and

more focused. In addition, the Red Linear pan-

els that are overtly sexual—that is that show

copulation and birth as well as pregnancy

(Turpin 1990c)—are usually secluded in small

overhangs rather than blazoned across the walls

of long-occupied shelters, suggesting that within

the style some images, or the ceremonies that

produced them, were considered private while

others were open to public display, often in sites

with elaborate Pecos River Style panels.

The Pecos River Style in the Mexican

Mountains

The sites in the Serranías del Burro clearly

belong to the Pecos River Style, but some differ-

ences between them and the core group in the

heartland testify to their peripheral status. The

basic concepts of magical flight (Turpin 1994b),

animal transformation (Turpin 1994a), and the

multi-layered universe are embodied in various

forms in these two very different habitats, which

6

SIZE MATTERS: The Transition From Religious to Secular Art in the Lower Pecos Region

are separated by the broad and barren Rio

Grande Plain.

4

The classic were-cougar in Pan-

ther Cave on the Rio Grande (Figure 5, inset

drawing), a composite feline-human identified

by upright ears, blank face, and striped body

(Turpin 1994a), in the Serranías is foreshortened

on the walls of a rock shelter overlooking the

Arroyo de la Babia (Figure 5, photo). A complex

composite figure (Figure 6, photo) painted on

the walls of Los Galemes rock shelter in the

Serranías del Burro far south of the Rio Grande

seems to portray the same classic figure (Figure

6, inset) at Rattlesnake Canyon (41VV180) near

Langtry. Another towering snout-nosed figure

and its rabbit-eared companion at Abrigo Diego

just on the south side of the Rio Grande also rep-

licate some of the same dramatic characters from

the Rattlesnake Canyon shelter.

A third example of the unity of the belief sys-

tem expressed in the Pecos River Style is the

mythical creature called the dart-headed figure

(Harrison 2011; Turpin 1986b). This common

character in ornate sites north of the Rio Grande,

such as Rattlesnake Canyon and Cedar Springs,

swoops and dives across the walls at San Vicente

Figure 5. A foreshortened version of the were-cougar (photo) in a shelter on the north side of Arroyo de la Babia,

compared to the classic image (inset) at the Panther Cave (41VV83) type site on the Rio Grande.

and La Mulata in the Serranías del Burro. Al-

though some details may vary, this grotesque

image is generally characterized by a fuzzy body

and an elongated neck made of two parallel lines

crossed by one or more bars that may take the

form of the abstracted symbol for darts. Some-

times the creature seems to be swimming, other

times soaring or diving. This grotesque differs

from the anthropomorphs that are the focus of

most compositions in that it has no human char-

acteristics and its distinguishing attributes are

not found in nature, yet it is probably the nu-

merically dominant character in the icono-

graphic repertoire of the Pecos River Style.

Despite these parallel constructs, there are

differences that may contribute to a better un-

derstanding of the role the mountains played in

the mythology or worldview of the Lower Pecos

people at this time. Some of the variability can

be attributed to geology and topography. In the

mountains, most of the painted shelters are high

under the canyon rims, with the broad sweep-

ing vistas sought by mystics and vision seekers

hoping to attain spiritual grace. Some are far

from water, reached only by arduous climbs up

7

Solveig A. Turpin

Figure 6. The rabbit-eared pointy headed serpent figure (inset) at Rattlesnake Canyon (41VV180) near the Rio

Grande is reproduced at Los Galemes in the Serranías del Burro (photo).

steep scree slopes. These shelters are generally

devoid of occupational debris, yet the paintings

on their walls were obviously made by different

artists and probably on different occasions. In-

dividual figures are sometimes placed in niches

that frame the composition or aligned along the

wall with little to no overlap.

5

For example, a

whole cast of characters with different attributes

line the shelter wall at San Vicente, well-propor-

tioned, symmetrical but never touching (Figure

7). It seems then that these high remote shelters

were not aggregation sites, like the elaborate

nodes strung out along the Rio Grande. Instead,

they were retreats, destinations on a spiritual

journey, possibly in search of mythological pow-

ers attributed to mountains throughout the

world and more specifically in the sierras that

form the rugged spine of Mexico.

The Impalement Theme

The most notable differences between the

mountain sites and the core of the style are

subtle. First, the animals that provide a backdrop

for many classic Pecos River Style panels are

missing from the mountain sites. In the sample I

have seen to date, there are no deer, either in their

entirety or symbolized by tracks, antlers, or

headdresses, although in one form or another

deer are common in the petroglyphs to the south

and the paintings to the north. The king of the

Lower Pecos bestiary, the mountain lion, is seen

only in his transmogrified state as the were-cou-

gar (see Figure 5), and the ubiquitous bird im-

agery is reduced to possible feather headdresses

or abstract feather symbols—a vertical line

crossed by two or more bars.

8

SIZE MATTERS: The Transition From Religious to Secular Art in the Lower Pecos Region

Secondly, the mountain pictographs are much

less likely to show overt aggression through a

display of weaponry. The ascendant figures may

be surrounded by companion spears or lances,

but only rarely are they armed with hand-held

atlatls and darts. An exception to the pacific tone

is the impalement theme expressed in a series of

four scenes found in three sites. The central char-

acters, all anthropomorphs, range from 50 cm

tall at Cuatralba to 18 cm at El Rayo (Figure 8).

Invariably, anywhere from one to seven animals

are impaled on a lance or spear while others are

falling backwards, slain, or incapacitated. Un-

like the innumerable wounded deer in classic

Pecos River Style panels along the Rio Grande,

where the running animals carry spears embed-

ded in their sides (or in one case at Panther Cave,

in its heel), these quadrupeds are skewered like

shish-kabobs.

Figure 7. Different shamanic characters line the back wall at San Vicente, side-by-side but separate.

All pictographs in the three sites with impale-

ment scenes belong to the Pecos River Style;

there are no anomalous figures or scenes painted

by artists from a different tradition. Although in

three cases they are somewhat smaller, the cen-

tral impaler figures share many characteristics

of the classic Pecos River shamans. They face the

audience with upraised arms, one has a hairy

body and another is a mirror image. The largest

is finger-painted red and yellow, the others are

either red or yellow. Other than size, the most

obvious incongruity is the identity of the im-

paled animals. Bison have never been part of the

Pecos River bestiary, presumably because large

herd animals could not survive in the Lower

Pecos until a cooler, moister climatic interlude

encouraged the shift from desert to grasslands.

Yet, the transfixed animals can be identified as

bison by a combination of elimination and ex-

9

Solveig A. Turpin

Figure 8. Four impalement scenes. The largest (top)

at Cuatralba is 1.5 meters tall, followed by San

Vicente (center), and two at El Rayo (lower), the

smallest of which is 18 cm tall (lower right).

trapolation between scenes. They are clearly

four-legged game animals, but they lack the

plump bellies, thin legs, small heads, and ant-

lers of the classic Pecos River (or Red Linear)

deer. The impaled animal at San Vicente has a

thick body, those at the smaller of the scenes at

El Rayo have curved horns, and the eleven beasts

at the second El Rayo event constitute a herd.

Two other scenes at El Rayo add to the compos-

ite imagery and are immediately germane to the

point of this paper. In one, a line of five animals

is apparently stymied by a complex geometric

design that is probably a trap (Figure 9). Their

humped bodies, raised tails, and horns on the

lead animal indicate they too are bison. The

fourth and most conclusive El Rayo vignette is

a scene I call the Last Picture Show (Figure 10).

Eight miniature hunters armed with atlatls are

10

SIZE MATTERS: The Transition From Religious to Secular Art in the Lower Pecos Region

Figure 9. Five bison racing toward a geometric design,

presumably a trap, at El Rayo. The lead bison is 18

cm tall.

Figure 10. A group of small hunters appear to be driving a herd of bison into a trap. The yellow fringe at the top of the

frame is the remnant of a horizontal flying figure, a typical Pecos River Style theme.

apparently driving at least six bison toward a

linear obstacle, again probably a trap. The yel-

low fringe above them is the side of a volador, a

typical Pecos River Style horizontal flying fig-

ure that is often drawn emerging from a crack

or hole in the bedrock (Turpin 1994b). The over-

lap and the relative condition of the two com-

positions imply that the hunt scene is more re-

cent than the flying figure yet both are still Ar-

chaic, given the spear throwers held by the hunt-

ers. Despite their smaller size, the hairy bodies,

with their handheld atlatls and static posture,

as well as their context, are consistent with de-

sign parameters of the Pecos River Style. Above

all, they lack the vivacity that is the most promi-

nent characteristic of the Red Linear Style.

6

The Red Linear artists were partial to hunt-

ing scenes, and in two vignettes in two different

sites the prey is bison (Turpin 1984). In a much

deteriorated panel at Cueva Quebrada

(41VV162a) near the Rio Grande, a herd of bi-

son is racing toward a crack in the rock that bears

an uncanny resemblance to the cliff at the nearby

famous Paleoindian and Late Archaic drive site,

Bonfire Shelter (41VV218). The animals are now

pretty much reduced to blobs of red paint with

only a few remnant attributes that identify them

as bison (see Grieder 1966:Figure 4). Radiocar-

bon assay of a sample taken from one of the bi-

son produced the first of the 1280 B.P. radiocar-

bon dates attributable to the Red Linear Style

(Ilger et al. 1994). At Mystic Shelter on the Dev-

ils River, an angry bison is being driven into a

linear design that again appears to be a trap. In

essence, the stories are the same as those told in

El Rayo, but the methods of telling them are sig-

nificantly different.

The chronological and environmental impli-

cations of these hunting scenes derive from the

well-documented bison presence/absence peri-

11

Solveig A. Turpin

ods in the Lower Pecos region. All the hunters

carry Archaic weapons—atlatls or spears. The

only time that bison expanded into the Lower

Pecos in Archaic times was during the so-called

Late Archaic Cibola Period, between 2600 and

3000 years ago. Since the Pecos River Style is

autochthonous, the artists must have observed

the special characteristics of the animals they

painted. Thus, the Last Picture Show and its com-

panion pieces were most likely painted at the

very end of the era of monumental religious art.

Such a restriction does not apply to an intro-

duced style, such as the Red Linear pictographs,

since their images may have been carried in the

mind’s eye. Nevertheless, the climatic wave that

brought the bison to the Lower Pecos carried

their attendant hunters as well, thus introduc-

ing a whole new behavioral set that may or may

not have included rock art.

The Relaxation of Scalar Stress and the

Demise of the Pecos River Style

The expansion of the Great Plains habitat into

the Lower Pecos is attributed to a brief —in the

sense of centuries rather than millennia—more

clement climatic interlude. Cooler, wetter con-

ditions would have alleviated the environmen-

tal strictures that governed the distribution of

people and their economy, allowing more free-

dom of movement and fewer social controls. The

restoration of upland springs and water

catchments would have permitted a return to

wide-ranging procurement strategies and the

revival of fission as a means of dealing with so-

cial pressures. The stringent conditions that led

to localized population density and its concomi-

tant information overload were relaxed, reduc-

ing the reliance on ritual activity as a form of

pressure valve. Apparently, these more mobile

people were less likely to produce public art on

the grand scale evidenced by the Pecos River

Style. However, the greatest disjunction in the

cultural trajectory of the Lower Pecos was prob-

ably caused by the arrival on the scene of people

with very different life ways and worldviews.

The migratory herds were followed by their

human predators who affected the archeologi-

cal record in several ways—tool types, settle-

ment patterns, social organization, and art styles.

Migration from the north has been proposed

based on projectile point styles (Dibble and

Lorrain 1968), while iconographic and thematic

similarities have led other researchers to point

north and west (Mark and Billo 2009). Spanish

military accounts name groups from northern

Coahuila and Chihuahua who made seasonal

forays to the Lower Pecos to hunt bison in his-

toric times (Turpin 1987), so there might be rea-

son to believe they did so earlier as well. The

gap in the radiocarbon sequence suggests that

not all of these people necessarily painted on

rock; in fact I have long held the impression that

the Red Linear Style was developed elsewhere,

possibly in another medium, and applied to shel-

ter walls, perhaps in imitation of the Pecos River

artists.

Within the Lower Pecos region, there are cu-

rious similarities between Red Linear warriors/

hunters and some figures at the unique petro-

glyph site at Lewis Canyon on the Pecos River

(Turpin 2005). The only bedrock petroglyph site

for miles in any direction, Lewis Canyon con-

tains hundreds of glyphs pecked into the flat

surface surrounding a large tinaja. Two periods

of petroglyph production have been discerned

based on stylistic attributes and elevation within

the site: one set is dominated by sinuous lines,

atlatls, tracks, and human figures; the more re-

cent group is comprised of discrete geometric

designs of undetermined age. Despite the con-

straints imposed by a more intractable medium,

a group of petroglyphs mnemonically called the

Fight Club consists of phallic males holding

weapons, much like those in the paintings (Fig-

ure 11), and in one case wearing a flamboyant

headdress (see Figure 11c). These figures are also

Archaic in age and apparently were made by

intrusive people accustomed to working in—

rather than on—stone. Little more can be said

given the singularity of the site, the vast num-

ber of abstract glyphs that bear no resemblance

to any of the pictograph styles, and our inability

to date either media.

Regardless of their origin, the influx of new

12

SIZE MATTERS: The Transition From Religious to Secular Art in the Lower Pecos Region

Figure 11. Phallic male warrior petroglyphs at Lewis

Canyon carry weapons that greatly resemble Red Linear

armaments.

people inevitably disturbed the social equilib-

rium at the same time that the old sources of sca-

lar stress were erased by the relaxation of con-

straints. How the resident population reacted to

the intrusive people is a question yet to be ad-

dressed, but it is possible that some of them

moved south, avoiding conflict and retaining

their desert-adapted economy. One suggestion,

based on lithic assemblages, is that when the

trend to aridity resumed and the savannah re-

treated, the region was again occupied by people

moving north from Mexico.

The El Rayo scenes (Figure 8) tell us that the

people responsible for the Pecos River picto-

graphs were quick to learn about hunting bison.

They also illustrate how artists were adapting

their tried and true formula to new conditions.

Although many Pecos River panels illustrate an

action, that action is ritualized and formal. The

White Shaman is probably the most familiar ex-

ample of such a story, in his case, ascension to

the spirit world as an out-of-body experience.

This is a mythic adventure of Biblical propor-

tions and is not intended to mirror reality. The

13

Solveig A. Turpin

Red Linear action scenes are narratives of ev-

eryday life with some artistic license adding

verve to familiar subjects. The El Rayo bison

hunts are moving toward the middle ground,

introducing a narrative thread while retaining

elements of the traditional style. The reductions

in size go hand-in-hand with increased mobil-

ity, perhaps as a matter of expedience as well as

the increasing irrelevance of monumental art.

For example, it would no longer be feasible to

accumulate and lug about football-sized stores

of pigment in anticipation of the next ritual

event, especially in a hostile climate.

7

The monumental pictograph panels were cre-

ated as part of a complex system of cyclical

nucleation, aggregation, quasi-sedentism, se-

quential hierarchies, communal participation,

and ritual art as information pathway. When one

or more of these “necessary and sufficient con-

ditions” deviated, the system lost equilibrium

(R. P. Schaedel, cited in Turpin 2004).The search

for a new balance between habitat, mobility,

group size, leadership criteria, external hostil-

ity, and cultural traditions is most clearly mani-

fested in the archeological record by changes in

technology, settlement patterns, and art. These

processes continued to affect the cultural trajec-

tory of the region until well into the 19

th

century

as is evidenced by the Red Monochrome, Bold

Line, and historic rock art, but never again does

the Lower Pecos achieve the cohesion that waxed

and waned in concert with the rise and demise

of the Pecos River Style.

Acknowledgments. The photograph in Figure

4 was taken by Herbert H. Eling, Jr., in Figure 5

by Walter Wakefield, in Figure 6 by Terry

Sayther, and in Figure 7 by Glen Galloway.

Cristina Martinez produced the drawings with

the exception of Figure 3, which is credited to

David G. Robinson. Billy Turner drew the map.

Reviewers Polly Schaafsma, Linea Sundstrom,

and John Greer drew my attention to lapses in

the presentation of information, and I thank

them. John deserves special mention for his com-

mentary prior to reading the paper for me at the

ARARA meeting.

Notes

1

In modern parlance, information overload refers to

the massive input from myriad sources, such as the

Internet, e-mail, television, and social networks,

which adds to rather than ameliorates the difficulty

in making decisions (Toffler 1970). In simple societ-

ies, the threshold for reaching consensus was lim-

ited to six people; beyond that conflicts interfered

with the decision making process (Johnson 1982).

2

Rowe (2009:1732–1733) errs when he cites Turpin

1984 and 1990a for the presence of bows in the Red

Linear Style.

3

The first assay, from a miniature bison at Cueva

Quebrada, 41VV162a on the Rio Grande, is reported

in Ilger, et al. 1994. The second was a badly deterio-

rated deer at 41VV75 in Seminole Canyon (Rowe

2003). This latter figure was typed ex post facto as

Red Linear when the date coincided with the previous

assay.

4

Newcomb (Kirkland and Newcomb 1967) first iden-

tified the central anthropomorphic figures in Pecos

River Style art as shamans, long before that interpre-

tation became widely applied throughout the world.

His terminology has been retained by most subse-

quent researchers and refers specifically to the Pecos

River Style humanoids and not to figures in the other

styles. Support for his hypothesis is provided in de-

tail in Turpin 1994a and 1994b; see also Greer and

Greer 2004.

5

There are exceptions. The site Mil Chamanes (Thou-

sand Shamans) is so-named for the superimposition

that has rendered much of the site a dense blur of paint.

6

Kirkland copied an almost identical group of phal-

lic men but with deer and possibly dogs in Black

Cave, one of the more unusual Pecos River Style sites

in Seminole Canyon State Park (Kirkland and

Newcomb 1967:67).

7

The reduction in size also applies to many of the

historic pictographs, especially to those painted in

the Plains Biographic Style when horses accelerated

mobility. A correlate may be a reduction in complex-

ity as well, as seen in the Red Linear and Red Mono-

chrome styles, or a tendency for abstraction reflected

in the Bold Line Geometrics.

14

SIZE MATTERS: The Transition From Religious to Secular Art in the Lower Pecos Region

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