By Tamara Jager Stewart
Following a strenuous hike deep into a canyon that shelters the ancient painted mural, researchers carefully erect scaffolding to reach its imagery, where their hand-held microscopes—guided by high-resolution maps and extensive preliminary research, aim at specific intersections of paint layers.
Shumla Endowed Research Professor Carolyn Boyd, Ph.D., of Texas State University, visits the Red Elk pictograph site in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands. Photo Courtesy of Shumla Archaeological Research & Education Center
Determining the order of paint application in these Pecos River Style (PRS) pictographs is critical for understanding how Archaic peoples designed and executed the murals, something the Hearthstone Project is revealing, along with other stunning revelations obtained through a unique combination of archaeological science, formal art analysis, and Indigenous consultation. The Hearthstone Project is a collaboration between researchers Carolyn Boyd and Phil Dering at Texas State University and Karen Steelman at Shumla Archaeological Research and Education Center.
The rugged Lower Pecos Canyonlands contain cosmologically complex narratives. North America’s oldest “books” illustrate ancient lifeways and belief systems, painted over thousands of years by Archaic hunting, gathering, and fishing groups. Recently designated a National Historic Landmark, this archaeological district lies near the confluence of the Pecos, Rio Grande, and Devils Rivers in southwest Texas and northern Mexico, home to some of the world’s most compositionally intricate and visually stunning pictographs created by Middle and Late Archaic peoples who occupied the area for millennia.
Vibrantly painted murals stretch up to 495 feet long and 50 feet tall, depicting humanoid and animal-like figures in complex interactions, often wearing ornate headdresses and carrying atlatls, darts, or staff-like objects with spiny, enlarged distal ends. The figures are typically between three and seven feet tall, but some are monumental, towering more than 23 feet high and requiring scaffolding to paint. Others are only four inches tall.
“In many ways, the compositions extend beyond the wall of the rockshelter to include the landscape, soundscape, and skyscape,” said artist-turned-archaeologist Carolyn Boyd, who founded Shumla in 1998 to digitally preserve, study, steward, and share the unique and endangered ancient art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands. “More and more we find panels that have imagery interacting with light and shadow associated with the rising or setting of the sun or moon.”
Shumla archaeologists conduct digital microscopy to determine the order the paint was applied to an ancient mural at Jackrabbit Shelter. Photo courtesy of Shumla Archaeological Research & Education Center
More than 350 PRS rock art sites are known in the region, tucked into rock overhangs along narrow canyons cut into the gray and white limestone where deep, stratified archaeological deposits contain a rich record of Archaic and earlier Pleistocene lifeways spanning at least 13,000 years. Four rock art traditions have been identified in the region, and the most abundant and complex of these are PRS pictographs, painted in bold shades of red, yellow, black, and white.
This is an excerpt of ‘Time Unfolds in Ancient Paint Layers,’ in American Archaeology, Summer 2025, Vol. 29, and No. 2. Subscribe to read the full text.
FURTHER READING
- The Hearthstone Project: Applying Archaeological Science, Formal Art Analysis, and Indigenous Knowledge to Rock Art Research; Carolyn E. Boyd et al., American Indian Rock Art (2023)
- Implications for Rock Art Dating from the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, TX: A Review, Karen L. Steelman, et al., Quaternary Geochronology (2021)
- The White Shaman Mural: An Enduring Creation Narrative, Carolyn E. Boyd and Kim Cox, University of Texas Press (2016)
