• CHANGE.ORG: Protect the Lower Pecos Canyonlands
  CHANGE.ORG: Protect the Lower Pecos Canyonlands

The Big Bend Project 5 barrier includes construction activities that would permanently alter one of North America’s most significant archaeological landscapes. While border security is an important national priority, Shumla believes protecting cultural heritage and securing our borders are not mutually exclusive goals. We advocate for an alternative approach that meets border security objectives while reducing impacts.

For that reason, the Board of Directors of the Shumla Archaeological Research & Education Center has unanimously adopted a resolution calling for thoughtful stewardship, sound science, meaningful consultation with Tribal communities and affected landowners, and careful consideration of the irreplaceable cultural resources of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands.

Almost 4,000 years ago, in southwest Texas (USA) and Coahuila (Mexico), hunter-gatherer artists painted some of the most complex murals in the world. They wove together layers of black, red, yellow, and white paint to create visual narratives. In Indigenous realities, images such as these are not passive decorations. They are reservoirs of power actively engaged in creation-past, present, and future. This exhibit explores how form, color, materiality of the paint, and the image-making process infused the murals with meaning and activated the characters in the stories they relate.

The Lower Pecos is a dramatic landscape incised by deep and narrow canyons holding hundreds of dry rockshelters. Within these rockshelters archaeologists have excavated a rich record of hunting and gathering lifeways that began around 13,000 years ago and endured until European contact. Above the deposits, painted along rough limestone walls, is a rich record of mural art that began around 1700 BCE and remained in production for more than 3,000 years.

Archaeologists have reported more than 300 prehistoric murals in the region. New rock art sites are discovered every year. The murals range considerably in size and complexity. Some are small, less than a meter in length and height, and have only a few figures. Others hold thousands of figures and are as much as 150 meters long and 15 meters high. While some may see these as a random collection of images painted over long periods of time, trained artists have shown that many of the murals are planned compositions.

THE IMAGERY

Artists arranged the imagery into complex visual narratives to document myths and rituals associated with the creation and maintenance of the world and the cosmos. They used graphic symbols to represent divine and mortal beings, things, places, sensations, and experiences.

ANTHROPOMORPHS

Anthropomorphic or humanlike figures dominate the paintings both in number and meaning. Most range in size between 1 m to 1.5 m, however, some are monumental, towering more than 6 m in height. Others are pocket-sized, standing no more than 10 cm. These finely executed human-like figures are often an elaborate combination of physical attributes, such as color, shape, body adornments, paraphernalia, and weaponry.

ZOOMORPHS

The most common animals portrayed in the murals are deer, felines, and snake-like figures. Birds and insects are also widespread, but smaller in size and usually surrounding anthropomorphic figures.

ENIGMATIC FIGURES

Other figures lack characteristics of either anthropomorphs or zoomorphs. These enigmatic figures range significantly in size, shape, and complexity. Sometimes they vaguely resemble plants, other times they are amorphous shapes having no analog in the physical world.

• CHANGE.ORG: Protect the Lower Pecos Canyonlands

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