Promoting the Arts West of the Pecos

This is an earlier version of the conference paper that the Center for Big Bend Studies subsequently published in The Journal of Big Bend Studies, Volume 17, in 2005.  I expanded on this paper for the publication. If you have interest in the updated full paper, you can find it as a .pdf on their publications page.

Prehistoric Ritual Destruction of Some Lower Pecos River Style Pictographs: Making Meaning Out of What We Do Not See

While the colorful rock paintings that cover many of the limestone rockshelters and overhangs of the Lower Pecos region have drawn the attention of passersby since at least the mid-19^th century, and have been a source of interest to professional archeologists and rock imagery enthusiasts since at least the 1930s, the removal of pigment from some figures, apparently as a result of ritual destruction by prehistoric inhabitants, has drawn less attention. Within the Lower Pecos, with only one or two exceptions known to the author, such impact appears to occur only among Lower Pecos River style pictographs, and falls into one of two general types—the rubbing/abrading, scratching, or flaking of pigments from individual figures, and the widespread scratching or combined scratching and abrading of significant portions of pictograph panels or perhaps entire pictograph panels in at least one instance.

Drawing from other archeological and ethnographic examples of ritual obliteration of rock imagery or other symbolic features from around the world, this paper explores the possible meanings behind the prehistoric destruction of rock imagery in the Lower Pecos. The rubbing, scratching, or flaking of select images, most of which are anthropomorphic figures that are often described as shamans, may suggest a sharing or commemoration of a shamanistic experience, or perhaps a death, by other members of the same egalitarian group or ancestral group, while the large scale destruction of pictograph panels may reflect concerns by the parent group that outsiders might access the power of the painted images and turn that power against them, or, it may be an attempt by intruders to destroy the sacred space of the local inhabitants in an effort to claim the territory as their own. Regardless of the reason for the destruction, it is clear that the absence of pigment from some Lower Pecos River style figures does have meaning and is worthy of documenting.