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 pictographs. The primary Pecos River
Style sites discussed herein are
south of the Rio Grande in the
Serranas del Burro. The Red
Linear sites are north of the river,
clustered around the mouth of the
Pecos and along the Devils River.

A Model of Scalar Stress

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, appeared 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 demise of the Pecos River Style, the end of the
Middle Archaic period, and the concomitant dissolution 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.
2

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 attendant hunters, the Paleoindians. The onset of a
trend toward aridity altered the floral and faunal communities, culminating in a period of severe drought about 5000 years ago that Bryant
(1969) called the Ozona Erosional. A return to
cooler, moister conditions ca. 3000 years ago re-

Solveig A. Turpin

stored the plains-like habitat and permitted the

expansion of migratory bison herds into the region (Dibble and Lorrain 1968). This short-lived
period ended with a resurgence of drier conditions 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-documented 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 diminishing casual water sources in the uplands was
to concentrate the bulk of the population along
one of the three major rivers in what are commonly 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 increase 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. 50003000 B.P.
In this model, the pressures of increased
population density led to what the anthropologist Gregory Johnson (1982) called scalar stress,
a form of information overload1 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 environmental or social conscription, another
method of alleviating such stress is reducing the
number of decision makers through the development of sequential or expedient hierarchies,
which were inherently unstable and impermanent (Conkey 1985:306). Examples are the mescal 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 elements of Lower Pecos social organization during the Archaic. Population density, information
overload, and situational or sequential hierarchies are accompanied by increased ritual activity (Figure 2), which is often intended publicly

Figure 2. Gregory Johnsons (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 included music, dancing, story telling, and magical 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 overall 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.
3

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 consensus placed the Pecos River Style on the early end
of the scale, followed by Red Linear, Red Monochrome/Bold Line Geometrics, and Historic, although the latter is clearly not a style. The mobiliary art and the petroglyphs stand outside this
sequence, although some attempts have been
made to generalize about their relative ages as
well.
Working from Kirklands watercolors,
Newcomb recognized that the Red Linear Style
was distinctly different from the Pecos River
Style butbased 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 ponder (41VV74 and 41VV201), saw resemblances
to Southwestern art, specifically Kokopelli,
which dates about A.D. 9001400. However,
what Gebhard thought were hump-backed men
walking upstream were really pregnant women
walking downstream (Figure 3). Thinking he

saw bows and arrows in the hands of two faded

and deteriorated figures at Fate Bell Shelter
(41VV74), Gebhard favored a later but still prehistoric date. His observation has not been confirmed; all of the armed men in the now available much larger sample carry spears, spearthrowers, 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 depictions of bows and arrows (Kirkland and
Newcomb 1967). Some affinities to northern
Mexican paintings led me to suggest a Late Prehistoric 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 fullblown Plains Biographic Style. It is most important to note that all of the post-Pecos River styles,
including the petroglyphs and excluding the
mobiliary art, appear to be intrusive, with affinities for western, southern, and northern styles.
Thus, the art demonstrates the shift from insularity, 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 figures, thus inverting some part of the relative se-

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.
4

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 confuse 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 1500year hiatus between the two styles (see also
Rowe 2009:Figure 5). Either the radiocarbon
dates are wrong or there can be no inverse overlap between the styles. Regardless of the absolute 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 polychrome dagger at Fate Bell Shelter. Furthermore,
impressionistic as it may be, the two styles seem

to represent such radically different worldviews

(as do the other styles yet to come) that it is difficult to see them emerging from the same cultural context.
Contrast Between Styles
The contrast between the Pecos River and Red
Linear styles permeates the whole range of defining variables: sizelarge vs. small, color
polychrome vs. monochrome, tonestatic vs.
active, intentformal vs. narrative, focussacred vs. mundane, moresspiritual vs. sexual,
and lastly spatial distribution. There are hundreds 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 Serranas 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 clustersone
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 panels that are overtly sexualthat 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

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.

The sites in the Serranas del Burro clearly

belong to the Pecos River Style, but some differences 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
5

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

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.

are separated by the broad and barren Rio

Grande Plain.4 The classic were-cougar in Panther 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 Serranas 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
Serranas 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 replicate some of the same dramatic characters from
the Rattlesnake Canyon shelter.
A third example of the unity of the belief system 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
6

and La Mulata in the Serranas del Burro. Although 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. Sometimes 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 characteristics and its distinguishing attributes are
not found in nature, yet it is probably the numerically dominant character in the iconographic repertoire of the Pecos River Style.
Despite these parallel constructs, there are
differences that may contribute to a better understanding 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 sweeping vistas sought by mystics and vision seekers
hoping to attain spiritual grace. Some are far
from water, reached only by arduous climbs up

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 Serranas 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. Individual 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-proportioned, 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 powers 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-cougar (see Figure 5), and the ubiquitous bird imagery is reduced to possible feather headdresses
or abstract feather symbolsa vertical line
crossed by two or more bars.
7

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

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

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 characters, 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. Unlike the innumerable wounded deer in classic
Pecos River Style panels along the Rio Grande,
where the running animals carry spears embedded in their sides (or in one case at Panther Cave,
in its heel), these quadrupeds are skewered like
shish-kabobs.
8

All pictographs in the three sites with impalement 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 central 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 impaled 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-

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 antlers 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
9

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.

apparently driving at least six bison toward a

linear obstacle, again probably a trap. The yellow fringe above them is the side of a volador, a
typical Pecos River Style horizontal flying figure that is often drawn emerging from a crack
or hole in the bedrock (Turpin 1994b). The overlap and the relative condition of the two compositions imply that the hunt scene is more recent than the flying figure yet both are still Archaic, given the spear throwers held by the hunters. 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 prominent characteristic of the Red Linear Style.6
The Red Linear artists were partial to hunting 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 bison 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). Radiocarbon assay of a sample taken from one of the bison produced the first of the 1280 B.P. radiocarbon dates attributable to the Red Linear Style
(Ilger et al. 1994). At Mystic Shelter on the Devils 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 significantly different.
The chronological and environmental implications of these hunting scenes derive from the
well-documented bison presence/absence peri-

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.
10

Solveig A. Turpin

ods in the Lower Pecos region. All the hunters

carry Archaic weaponsatlatls 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 companion pieces were most likely painted at the
very end of the era of monumental religious art.
Such a restriction does not apply to an introduced style, such as the Red Linear pictographs,
since their images may have been carried in the
minds eye. Nevertheless, the climatic wave that
brought the bison to the Lower Pecos carried
their attendant hunters as well, thus introducing 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 millenniamore
clement climatic interlude. Cooler, wetter conditions would have alleviated the environmental strictures that governed the distribution of
people and their economy, allowing more freedom 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 social pressures. The stringent conditions that led
to localized population density and its concomitant information overload were relaxed, reducing 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 probably 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 waystool types, settlement 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 historic times (Turpin 1987), so there might be reason 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 shelter walls, perhaps in imitation of the Pecos River
artists.
Within the Lower Pecos region, there are curious similarities between Red Linear warriors/
hunters and some figures at the unique petroglyph site at Lewis Canyon on the Pecos River
(Turpin 2005). The only bedrock petroglyph site
for miles in any direction, Lewis Canyon contains 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 recent group is comprised of discrete geometric
designs of undetermined age. Despite the constraints 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 (Figure 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 onstone. Little more can be said
given the singularity of the site, the vast number 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
11

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 equilibrium at the same time that the old sources of scalar stress were erased by the relaxation of constraints. How the resident population reacted to
the intrusive people is a question yet to be addressed, 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 retreated, the region was again occupied by people
moving north from Mexico.
12

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

people responsible for the Pecos River pictographs 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 example 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 proportions and is not intended to mirror reality. The

Solveig A. Turpin

Red Linear action scenes are narratives of everyday 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 mobility, 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 created as part of a complex system of cyclical
nucleation, aggregation, quasi-sedentism, sequential hierarchies, communal participation,
and ritual art as information pathway. When one
or more of these necessary and sufficient conditions 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 hostility, and cultural traditions is most clearly manifested in the archeological record by changes in
technology, settlement patterns, and art. These
processes continued to affect the cultural trajectory of the region until well into the 19th 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 commentary 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 societies, the threshold for reaching consensus was limited to six people; beyond that conflicts interfered
with the decision making process (Johnson 1982).
2

Rowe (2009:17321733) 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 deteriorated 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 identified the central anthropomorphic figures in Pecos
River Style art as shamans, long before that interpretation became widely applied throughout the world.
His terminology has been retained by most subsequent 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 detail in Turpin 1994a and 1994b; see also Greer and
Greer 2004.
5

There are exceptions. The site Mil Chamanes (Thousand 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 phallic 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 complexity as well, as seen in the Red Linear and Red Monochrome styles, or a tendency for abstraction reflected
in the Bold Line Geometrics.
13

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

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