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Trance and Transformation on the Northern Shores of the Chichimec Sea,

Coahuila, Mexico

Chapter · September 2014

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-8406-6_11

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Solveig A. Turpin Herbert H Eling Jr

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Trance and Transformation on the Northern Shores of
the Chichimec Sea, Coahuila, Mexico
Solveig A. Turpin
Herbert H. Eling, Jr.
Institute of Latin American Studies
University of Texas at Austin.

Abstract

Throughout prehistory, the arid lands of northern Coahuila and

southwestern Texas were home to mobile hunters and gatherers who exploited
the varied environmental zones equipped only with an elementary tool kit.
Their economic emphasis changed depending on the availability of essential
resources but their social organization remained egalitarian and loosely
structured. The common thread that transcends time and space is their
intimate relationship with the supernatural universe, expressed in pictographs,
petroglyphs, painted and incised pebbles and painted bones. The monumental
art focuses on the oneness of nature and spirit by illustrating the ability of the
entranced religious practitioner to assume the form of his animal familiar and,
through the power of magical flight, ascend to the land of the spirits. The
portable art encodes the concepts of fertility and sacrifice in geometric forms
that assume ritualistic meaning from the redundancy of design and their
context. Each of these media demonstrates that their spiritual and
mythological beliefs were far more complex than implied by their simple
technologies and economies.

Key Words: Pictographs, petroglyphs, Coahuila archaeology, trance and

transformation, sacred places

Paper presented at the World Archeology Congress, Dublin, Ireland 2008

1
 The huge arid land mass that makes up the Mexican state of Coahuila
and parts of adjacent Nuevo León and Texas contains a dense and varied body
of rock art, ranging from hundreds of elaborate polychrome pictographs in the
north to thousands of petroglyphs in the south (Fig. 1). the The two largest
assemblages – the Pecos River pictographs and the Desert Abstract petroglyphs
–differ in terms of the effect the physical landscape had upon iconography,
technique, distribution, and themes while elements of a shared belief system
conspire to create a sacred landscape that can be glimpsed through a
sometimes-bewildering array of glyphs.

Figure 1. Distribution of various rock art types in No. Mexico and SW. Texas.

2
 Throughout prehistory, the entire area was the domain of hunting and
gathering people whose basic subsistence economy relied upon an elementary
tool kit manufactured from readily available resources such as stone, wood,
fiber, bone, and hide. Presumably, society was egalitarian and status
meritorious. The basic social unit consisted of the extended family; population
remained sparsely distributed with seasonal or cyclical aggregations providing
opportunities for information exchange, mate selection, alli ance forging, and
ritual performances, including the production of rock art. Elsewhere, (Turpin
1990, 2004a) we have suggested that an emergent form of social complexity
was manifested by the rock art, but the local environment was not capable of
sustaining the “necessary and sufficient” conditions for the development of a
hierarchical social structure . Richard P. Schaedel described a model he called
cyclical nucleation in which the mobile populations met at specified locations at
specific times that in effect transformed these locations into sacred spaces that
were further defined by rock art. Both the pictographs and petroglyphs of the
region served the same function – focal points for the interaction with the
supernatural powers that inhabited these topographic features (Turpin 2004a).
Attempts to gain an understanding of the indigenous art are complicated
by a number of factors, not the least of which are the daunting terrain, the vast
waterless expanses (Turpin and Eling 2009), the distance between sites, and the
lack of systematic archeological research in Coahuila. Only recently has
attention turned to the basic tools of typology and chronology to create a
framework for analysis (Turpin 2010). Comparisons of the two largest
assemblages show that the various bodies of rock art are clearly conditioned by
the stark differences in physical landscapes while sharing threads of a belief
system that transcends space and time.

3
 Environmental Contrasts
In the far north, the cultural area known as the Lower Pecos region was
originally defined on the basis of polychrome monumental pictographs painted
in the dry rock shelters that line the three major rivers – the Rio Grande, the
Pecos, and the Devils – and their tributaries. The core of the area is the
confluence of the Pecos and the Rio Grande, now inundated by Amistad
Reservoir (see Fig.1). The karst topography is riddled with rock shelters that
provide protected environments for all manner of normally perishable items,
ranging from domestic products to portable art (Fig. 2). The excellent
preservation of organic material has provided the basis for hundreds of
radiocarbon dates that contribute to a detailed chronology of prehistoric
occupation (Table 1). The traditional sequence of Paleoindian, Late Paleoindian,
Early, Middle and Late Archaic, Late Prehistoric and Historic periods has been
somewhat refined by compilation of relevant radiocarbon dates that Dibble, in
unpublished notes, used to isolate 11 sub-periods (Turpin 1991, Turpin and
Eling 2017).

Figure 2. Quatralba, a huge shelter in the Mexican mountains devoid of living debris.

4
 Table 1. Chronology and Rock Art Styles in the Coahuila, Mexico Region (Turpin
1991).

Radiocarbon Radiocarbon Art Styles (relative

Period Years (BP) Subperiod Years (BP) sequences)*
Paleoindian <12,000-9,800
14,500-
Aurora 11,900
10,700-
Bonfire 9,800
Late
Paleoindian 9,400-9,000
Oriente 9,400-8,800
Early Archaic 9,000-6,000 Painted Pebbles
Viejo 8,900-6,500
Middle
Archaic 6,000-3,000
Eagle Coconos Incised
Nest 5,500-4,100 Pebbles
San Felipe 4,100-3,200 Pecos River Style
Late Archaic 3,000-1,000
Red Linear
pictographs
San Pedro Incised
Cibola 3,150-2,300 Pebbles
Flanders 2,300??
Blue Hills 2,300-1,300
Late Bold Line
Prehistoric 1,000-350 Geometrics
Flecha 1,320-450 Red Monochrome
Infierno
(phase) 450-250
Historic 350-0 Historic
* The ages of painted pebbles and the Pecos River pictographs are supported by
C14 dates; the Red Monochrome and Historic pictographs by stylistic time
markers.
The key to the sustainability of human populations in arid lands is water.
North of the Rio Grande, the three rivers are augmented by springs and casual
water retained in pools in the solid limestone of the canyon floors. Broad
access to water permitted wide-ranging economic strategies based on the

5
exploitation of floral and faunal resources. The first people were big game
hunters who pursued elephant, camels, horses, and other now-extinct species
at the end of the Pleistocene era (Dibble and Lorrain 1968). A trend to aridity
that began about 9000 years ago dried up many of the casual water sources
and forced the people to adapt to a changing environment. Desert succulents
became the staples of an Archaic lifeway where plants were converted into
food, clothing, tools, and even shelter (Bryant 1966). Thus began the 8,000-
year-long Archaic Period . The aridity reached its peak about 5000 B.P.; then
relented for a brief mesic interlude about 3000 B.P. The climate cycled in this
way up to modern times, alternating between hot/dry and cooler/moister
conditions. The practice of painting on smooth stream-rolled pebbles began
early in the Archaic period, with specimens recovered from dry rock shelter
deposits that date at least 7000 to 8500 years ago (Mock 2011; Turpin and
Middleton 1998). Incised pebbles appear on open camp sites in Coahuila
somewhat later (Turpin et al. 1996); more radiocarbon dates may push back the
beginning of that tradition. Counterintuitively, the explosion of polychrome
monumental art now called the Pecos River style seems to have taken place
during one of the most xeric climatic episodes - the Middle Archaic period, ca.
3000 to 4000 years ago.
The Texas side of the Rio Grande has been the subject of intensive study
for decades, especially in advance of the impoundment of Amistad reservoir
(Gebhard 1965; Jackson 1938; Kirkland and Newcomb 1967). Five pictograph
styles have been defined and sequenced (see Table). The Pecos River style is
followed by the Red Linear miniature monochrome pictographs whose
characters are engaged in animated group activities, including battles, hunts
and sexual intercourse. Curiously, the only large petroglyph site in the region,
Lewis Canyon, includes warriors identical to some of the Red Linear men. The
Red Monochrome and Bold Line Geometric styles are the latest prehistoric art
forms. The former is peopled by lifelike men and animals that are very similar
to panels in the Big Bend area of the Rio Grande. Bold Line Geometrics are a

6
variation on Chihuahua Desert Abstracts rendered in dense glossy paint. The
Historic art is not a type but rather an accumulation of sites that reflect
European influences. Of these five groups, only the oldest, the Pecos River
style, and the most recent, the Historic art, extend south into Coahuila. The
Pecos River artists were the most prolific, painting their multi-colored vision of
a supernatural universe on hundreds of shelter walls. The ritual nature of the
art is evident in its complexity, its redundancy, and the esoteric knowledge
encapsulated in mythic forms (Conkey 1985).
For 50 years, the consensus was that the Pecos River style paintings
stopped just a short distance south of the river where the canyon country gives
way to the broad, flat and barren Rio Grande Plain beyond which rise the
Serranías del Burro, an outlier of the Sierra Madre Oriental (Gonzáles Rul 1990;
Taylor and Gonzáles Rul 1958). However, surveys during the 1990s and 2000s
identified a number of Pecos River style sites in the Serranías (Sayther 1999;
Sayther and Stuart 1998), adding yet another ecozone to the mix and extending
the boundaries of the culture area 150 km into Coahuila (see Fig. 1), The
mountains present a formidable barrier, looming on the southern horizon as
seen by the canyon dwellers. There are no permanent rivers; water is found in
isolated springs that flow from the mountain sides, leading Taylor (1964) to
propose a settlement pattern he called “tethered nomadism” in which
populations were tied to water while exploiting the food resources of the
surrounding slopes. Rock shelters are less common in the sierra and show
fewer signs of concentrated occupation. Nevertheless, the pictographs clearly
belong to the Pecos River style, sharing themes, techniques, and esoteric
knowledge. Thus, the unified belief system expressed by this monumental
religious art encompassed three environmental zones within a relatively
restricted area – the canyon country in the north, the riverine plain in the
middle, and the mountains on the south. Each presents a different set of
challenges and each apparently contributed to the construction of the mythic
universe portrayed in the rock art.

7
 Technically, most of Coahuila is in the Mexican Basin and Range Province,
which consists of alternating bands of mountains separated by desert valleys.
One famous explorer-geologist, Clarence Dutton, colorfully described the many
narrow parallel mountain ranges of the Basin and Range province as looking
like an "army of caterpillars marching toward Mexico.". His description, often
unattributed, has been repeated in books and on-line, but the original source is
not cited.
In addition to the Pecos River polychromes in the north, a few distinctive
pictograph styles have been recognized along the Rio Grande and the Coahuila-
Nueva León state line where a series of high overhangs shelter polychrome
geometric pictographs whose defining characteristic is the boxing or
containment of zigzag lines in rectangular or basket-forms. This style is called
Chiquihuitillos for the type site in Nuevo León (Fig. 3; Turpin et al. 1998). Other
provisional pictograph styles – Hundido and La Linda – are tentative since they
are found at so few sites (Turpin 2010).

Figure 3. Examples of the boxed geometrics characteristic of the Chiquihuitillos style at

Catujanos, Coahuila (photograph courtesy of Robert W. Parvin).

8
 Nevertheless, by far the majority of the rock art in southern Coahuila and
Nuevo León consists of petroglyphs pecked into huge boulders that litter the
valley floors. Thousands upon thousands of boulders are covered with circles,
zigzags, meanders, grids, and other abstract motifs (Fig. 4). All of them are
classified as entoptic phenomenon, or hard-wired images that reside within all
human brains represented in some form or another (Lewis-Williams and
Dowson 1982).

Figure 4. Geometric designs typical of the boulder art in the Chihuahuan Desert.
Again, the influence of water is evident in the distribution of sites. The
eastern front of the sierra is cut by canyons formed by a series of contiguous
basins, ringed by rocky ridges that flow ever downward toward the Rio Grande
Plain. The constricted mouths, or bocas, of the basins are natural dams that
retard runoff, forming pools that supported mesic vegetation, fauna, and the
people that relied upon them. A beneficial side effect for past humans and
present researchers is the soft, level alluvial fans created when the suspended
sediment load is dropped, forming ideal camping surfaces and gently burying
extant occupational debris. Giant boulders litter the alluvial fans at the base of

9
the rocky ridges, and these boulders are the features of the landscape that
provide a canvas for the glyphs. The upthrust rocky ridgelines form distinctive
V-shaped landforms that are highly visible from a distance, thus serving as
landmarks for potentially rich resources and as guides to the petroglyph fields.
Minimal systematic archeological research has been carried out in north-
central Mexico so the various rock art studies lack the secure context afforded
in the north by the numerous surveys and excavations in the Amistad district.
The radiocarbon sequence at the famous open site Boca de Potrerillos in Nuevo
León describes a 7800-year long climatic trajectory marked by alternating
periods of erosion and aggradation, mirroring the mesic-xeric cycles in the
north (Turpin et al. 1993, 1994). Although the petroglyphs have not been
dated, incised sandstone pebbles were recovered from at least two prehistoric
occupation areas (Fig. 5) – Coconos where charcoal preserved in buried hearths
was radiocarbon assayed to the range from 4800 to 5400 and San Pedro with
its simpler designs to 2800 to 3400 years ago (Table 1). The redundant
designs cut into these small platular rocks imply that ritual art was being
produced in the open desert camps at least 5000 years ago (Turpin and Eling
2003; Turpin et al. 1996). However, like the painted pebbles found in the dry
rock shelters in the north (Fig. 5c), the portable art employs a different
iconographic vocabulary than do the stationary glyphs.

Figure 5 a-b: Examples of

incised pebbles from
Coahuila and c: painted
pebble from the Lower
Pecos

Dr. W. Breen Murray has devoted decades to recording and interpreting

the petroglyphs of Nuevo Leon and Coahuila (e.g., Murray 1982, 1986, 1992;
Murray and Lascano 2001). Site analyses have proceeded from two fronts. One

10
approach has been to try to define style sets within the overall corpus; another
has targeted specific motifs or clusters of motifs in an attempt to define
function or meaning. The overwhelming amount of data resident in any one site
or area justifies the use of both.
The Pecos River Style
As early as 1967, Newcomb intuited that the Pecos River style
pictographs are the overt expression of an animistic belief system wherein the
central figures represent religious practitioners, commonly called shamans, in
an altered state of consciousness or trance (Kirkland and Newcomb 1967). His
interpretation remains the consensus and has been bolstered by other
individual studies (Turpin 1994a, 1994b.) Animal transformation or shape-
shifting is portrayed by human figures modified by the attributes of mountain
lions, deer, serpents, birds, and rabbits. The power of magical flight to the land
of the spirits is implied by the soaring, diving, or swooping posture of the
anthropomorph and by wings, feathers, and a geometric design that is a
schematized feather. Copious literature relates these perceptions to actual
physical symptoms experienced during altered states of consciousness whether
induced by stress, sensory deprivation, hallucinogenic substances, or any of the
other myriad ways of entering a trance state (Turpin 1994a, 1994b).
In the larger shelters, the paintings are monumental in size and extent,
the tallest reaching a height of 18 ft (5.5 m) above the shelter floor (Fig.6).
Red, black, yellow, and white anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and geometric
figures are often so densely superimposed that they melt into a dense blur of
color. The focal character is a frontally-posed, faceless anthropomorph who
stands with outstretched arms, often holding aloft an atlatl, darts, and fending
sticks. Animal characteristics that identify specific subsets include feline ears,
deer antlers, serpent snouts, rabbit ears, fur, and feathers. Variations include a
horizontal figure soaring through clouds of matter and, on rare occasions, the

11
 Figure 6. Pecos River style anthropomorphs, Abrigo Diego, Coahuila.
central character stands in profile. Duality between body and spirit is
demonstrated by the judicious use of color and shadow.
Sinuous power lines surround or extrude from the central figure, and that
figure is often accompanied by disembodied antlers, feathers, birds, darts, or
miniature self-replicas. The most prominent animal in the Pecos River bestiary

12
is the mountain lion, colloquially called panther. Deer and birds are numerically
superior but much smaller, as though of lesser stature. The compositions are
curiously static and solemn, the figures frozen, even when implying some form
of action, such as ascension or transmogrification. The paints are ground
mineral pigment – red, yellow, and orange are varying shades of hematite easily
found in the pebbled bottoms of the arroyos where they have eroded from the
Boquillas limestone formation. Heating ocher alters the color so it is possible to
obtain a wider range, including deep burgundy reds and purple. Calcite nodules
in the same gravel beds provide white paint, which is the least popular of the
colors. Manganese is so plentiful in some areas that there have been repeated
attempts to mine it, especially during wartime shortages (Turpin 2004b).
The physical landscape is reflected by differences between the paintings
in the canyons and those in the mountains. In the former, many panels are
over-painted with little regard for the extant images. In the latter, the
anthropomorphic figures are discrete and separate, looking out from the
heights aligned side-by-side but not touching (Fig. 7). They bear the
characteristic signs of magical flight and, to a lesser degree, animal
transformation, but they are not bristling with weapons like the militant figures
in the heartland. Strangely, the omni-present deer that accompany the riverine
shamans are absent, and other animals are represented only by the
transmogrifying mountain lion and a few depictions of bison that I believe were
painted at the end of the Middle Archaic period (Turpin 2010, 2011). Living
debris is also rare in the shelters of the sierras, which are sometimes high and
dry, remote from potable water.
The most likely explanation for these quantitative differences is that the
mountains were sacred places that drew initiates or pilgrims on their spiritual
quest. Mountains are often granted mystical powers; in arid lands, they are
often the source of rain and, by extrapolation, the home of the gods where
esoteric knowledge might be accessed through ritual deprivation. Vision
seekers find that elevation, expansive views, and isolation are conducive to

13
achieving the trance state, and it may be that the painted images of those who
came before adds to the sanctity of the rock art sites. In this scenario, the
physical and sacred landscapes were indistinguishable one from another.

Figure 7. Pecos River style anthropomorths, side by side at San Vicente, Coahuila.

Petroglyphs
So far, the spiritual or ritual intent of the Pecos River style pictographs
and the portable art has been fairly evident. However, the bewildering mass of
petroglyphs that densely populates the arid so-called Chichimec Sea is much
more confusing, forcing a reliance on much more tenuous inferences. A few
glyphs are informative, but they must be culled from the proportionately larger
mass of enigmatic designs.
An uncounted number of boulders are covered with circles, zigzags,
meanders, grids, and other abstract geometric motifs (Fig. 8). The tendency to
link glyphs to natural phenomena, such as comets, stars, suns, and rainfall, has
led to hypotheses about calendrics, astronomy, hunting magic, and control of

14
the elements (Murray 1986, 1992; Murray and Lascano 2001). Names have been
attached to many of the geometric designs that resemble familiar objects—such
as rakes or combs, ladders, suns, stars, or lightning, but they may have had an
entirely different meaning in prehistory. The inventory of abstract motifs
includes spirals, concentric circles, zigzags, circles, triangles, diamonds or
herringbone patterns, meandering lines, and various combinations thereof.
Clearly the glyph-makers were capable of reproducing natural phenomena, but
the redundancies in design imply more complex ideation underlies their
production.

Figure 8. A geometric panel dominated by circles, Coahuila.

A much-debated explanation for the repetition of these same motifs
around the world, wherever rock art is found, is based on the assumption that
the human brain is hard-wired to carry certain encoded symbols that appear
under various circumstances ranging from hallucinations to extreme stress.
This proposition was put forth by researchers in different parts of the world
who saw the universality of certain forms—Bednarik (1984) in Australia, Hedges
(1982) and Whitley (1992) in California, Reichel-Dolmatoff (1978) in the
Amazon, and Lewis-Williams (1981, 2001) with Thomas Dowson (1988) in South
Africa have all found evidence to support this idea although the elements

15
themselves have been variously called phosphenes, form constants, or entoptic
phenomena. Amazonian tribesmen, migraine sufferers, psychedelic drug users,
hallucinating psychiatric patients, and Paleolithic painters all envision geometric
forms that have been classified into anywhere from seven to fifteen
categories—grids, parallel lines, dots and flecks, zigzags, nested curves,
filigrees, and meanders; and vortices (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988)—all of
which appear individually or in composite in the rock art of Coahuila and Nuevo
Leon. This hypothesis explains that design similarities are innate products of
“humanism” but does not claim that they mean the same thing to everyone who
makes them. However, the redundancy of biologically fixed constants has been
taken by many to imply that the trance state was part of - or a precursor to –
their production.
The fact that so many of these motifs are ubiquitous in petroglyph
assemblages around the world implies that their meaning ensues from and is
specific to their local context. For example, the cross in the circle has been
related to the Mesoamerican concern for cardinal directions, but this motif is so
widely distributed worldwide that it is known as Odin’s cross in northern
European mythology. The embedded oval cross is also considered the symbol
for Venus and is thus equated to the Mexican culture hero deity Quetzalcoatl
who is the morning and the evening star. This interpretation presumes that the
ancient people had already identified specific members of the Mesoamerican
pantheon that was recorded at the time of European contact.
A cluster of more representative glyphs has been considered evidence of
a hunting cult that revolved around deer. The core motifs are antlers, spear
throwers, projectile points, hafted knives, slings, and an enigmatic paddle
shape seen in the pictographs of the north. Murray and Lascano (2001) carried
out a functional analysis of atlatls or spear throwers in which they noted the
diversity of forms and correlated their distribution with prime hunting
locations. As the most effective weapon in the Archaic arsenal, spear throwers
were undoubtedly prized for their role in hunting and warfare, but they are also

16
one of the realistic motifs that is easily endowed with supernatural power. As is
often the case, the weight or banner stone is exaggerated well beyond any
reasonable size, thus implying some special importance that is as yet
enigmatic. In one rare scene, a cloud of winged atlatls appear to be morphing
into birds, flying towards the vortices that are the entrance to the supernatural
world (Fig. 9), and in others the missile shafts are jagged like lightning, denying
them a functional reality.

Figure 9. Atlatls morphing into birds, Coahuila.

Deer antlers are also considered part of the functionally oriented hunting
complex, associated with different kinds of weaponry. Deer were of course an
important component of the diet, but their spiritual role is ethnographically and
archeologically documented. Antler headdresses, painted deer scapulae, racks
as mortuary goods, and hundreds of petroglyphs testify to their role in active
and passive rituals. The cyclical growth and loss of antlers provide an apt
metaphor for regeneration, death and rebirth, and an accurate calendar of the
seasons. Although the prehistoric artists were perfectly capable of rendering
antlers accurately, most of the glyph racks are malformed (Fig. 10). Some may
reflect aberrations seen in nature, but the preponderance of asymmetrical
antlers suggests that they are purposefully made imperfect, perhaps to inform

17
the audience that they are in the presence of spirit deer. Such a hypothesis also
accounts for the numerous deer track glyphs left by his ghostly passage.

Figure 10. Antler variations, Coahuila

Human foot and hand prints – like the deer antlers – are most often
malformed or mutilated (Fig. 11). Four to six toes are common and fingers lost
or broken. One of the few recorded myths from this area explains the footprints
in the rock (León 1961). The magical setting is a tinaja or water hole that never
emptied surrounded by vegetation that never diminished no matter how often it
was cut. A pleasant young man appeared and told the people good things, then
vanished. An ugly man then materialized and told the same people that his
predecessor should not be believed. The good man returned, but when the
people failed to listen to him, he disappeared, leaving his foot prints in the
rock. Despite the tinges of Christian morality interjected, possibly by the
Spanish recorder, this myth correlates the foot glyphs with supernatural beings.
A structural analysis of this myth by Ramírez Almaraz (2007) carries the

18
metaphor even further, relating the mutilated or malformed feet to classic
culture heroes such as Oedipus and Tezcatlipoca.

Figure 11. Mutilated hands and feet, Coahuila.

The process of transformation is also subtly illustrated by glyphs that
show human feet morphing into paw prints, either in a single action or in a
series that starts as feet and ends as tracks (Fig. 12). Nowhere, however, is the
altered state of being clearer than in a scene at Pelillal, north of Saltillo, which
clearly shows the metamorphosis from human to deer, arms into antlers, feet
into cloven hoofs, and the silent presence of the spirit animal marked by his
tracks (Fig. 13).
DISCUSSION
The dominant rock art forms in Coahuila – the polychrome pictographs of
the north and the petroglyphs of the south – spring from widely disparate
physical environments, and these differences are reflected in technique,
iconography, and distribution. Nevertheless, the people of both the northern
canyon country and the southern basin-and range province created a

19
supernatural landscape that incorporated many of the same beliefs and
patterns. Although the two areas are strikingly different, each is internally
cohesive, thus defining the territory from which the pool of participants was
drawn. In both cases, aggregation is evidenced by dense concentrations of
elaborate rock art that, by virtue of sheer size and complexity, imply group
participation in the rituals that produced them (Turpin 2004a). The aggregation
sites are littered with domestic debris that proclaims that the rock art was on
public display; ergo it may have been sacred, but it was not secret. In fact, the
huge numbers of petroglyphs and the over-painting that reduces some
pictograph panels to a blur, suggest that making art was a performance that
may have been more important than the images that resulted.
Clearly, the pictographs only exist today because they were painted in
sheltered environments. Although the petroglyphs have not been dated, the
rapid rate of deterioration seen in many open and unprotected sites suggests
that they are much younger than the Pecos River style paintings. However, both
were products of very different natural environments that greatly influenced the
form and content of the rock art within the same rubric. In the north, mineral
paints are readily available in veins of ocher, manganese, and calcite, and these
vivid colors show up well against the light background of the native limestone
bedrock. Their fluidity is well suited to the painting of nuanced and complex
compositions on hard two-dimensional vertical surfaces. The petroglyph makers
were faced with manipulating raw material that requires a different approach –
removing the outer “skin” of the softer siltstone boulders by percussion so that
the desired design was revealed by contrast between shades of the same color.
The boulder surfaces are often curved or fissured; the truly proficient designer
incorporated those features into the layout of some of the more complex
groupings. However, the medium conditioned the range of meaning, resulting
in more angular, asymmetrical, and monochromatic forms. In addition, unlike
painting, which is additive and can be corrected, percussive dinting is
subtractive and more difficult to restore except by enlarging or changing the

20
shape of the glyph. Thus, although it is still difficult to say why any of the
indigenous people chose to create rock art in the first place, the different forms
that emerged were strongly influenced by the natural resources that provided
the background canvas, the palette, and the tools.

Figure 12. Human foot morphing into a bear paw

The physical context is also expressed in the preference for certain
themes and motifs both between and within the different areas. The
transformational metaphors for magical flight exhibited in the pictographs by
soaring, ascending, flying, and diving anthropomorphs and to a less obvious
degree, by the clouds of feathers and miniature avatars, are correlated to rock
shelters with broad vistas and direct contact with the sky. Many figures appear
to be leaping into space, their outstretched arms winging them skyward; others
emerge from cracks or natural faults in the bedrock, soaring horizontally while
others are penetrating the hole in the universe that leads to the land of the
spirits. Thus, not only are the heights conducive to communion with the
supernatural, the rock art is illustrating how to burst the physical bounds and
enter the celestial realm that is so clearly visible from the heights.
Flight metaphors are rare in the petroglyph assemblage, with the
exception of the scenes where atlatls appear to be morphing into birds (Fig. 6).
In fact, depictions of human/anthropomorphic figures taking any kind of action
are rare until the historic period. Whereas the quasi-humans of the pictographs
of the north are endowed with all manner of magical powers, the artists of the

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south were far more interested in the supernatural potency of inanimate objects
or some of the more mundane body parts. The repeated depiction of human
foot prints and tracks – absent in the pictographs – ties those motifs to the
earth, in keeping with the grounded nature of their context.
Despite the differences in media, technique, and context, both bodies of
art hold clues to their common commitment to some of the same principles of
an animistic belief system whose tenets included transmogrification – that is
the ability to assume the form of an animal familiar – and communication with
the spirit world through the vehicle of the trance state. Both are public displays,
intended to inform the people about the structure of their natural and
supernatural worlds through ritualized visual art, but the petroglyphs are much
more elusive, in part because of the static thrown up by the thousands of
enigmatic abstract geometrics that show no action at all. Nevertheless, within
that huge assemblage, humans and animals are exposed as spirit incarnations
by reducing them to body parts that are malformed or damaged, paws become
feet, feet become paws, atlatls become birds, and, in the most dramatic
illustration of transmogrification, a man deer emerges from a boulder.
The rock art and its context are synergistic. The sacred nature of
mountains and caves in general was enhanced by the veneer of ritual art
painted on the walls by seekers, pilgrims, or mystics. The goal was oneness
with the spirit world, either by assuming the form of an animal familiar or flying
to the dangerous supernatural universe above or below. Some hint of their
enduring spiritual potency is the reluctance of later prehistoric artists to molest
the murals. The scratching that mars many of the more dramatic characters
may be an attempt to acquire some of the power of the ancients rather than
destroy it.
The persistence of sacred beliefs is in some way connected to the
massing of similar petroglyphs motifs, perhaps in an attempt to maximize their
impact on their spiritual audience. Some may be prosaic – Murray (1982)
noticed a cluster of circular glyphs on a small rise at Boca de Potrerillos that he

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 Figure 13. Human-deer composite, Coahuila.
thought had astronomical implications. However, in others the seemingly
excessive repetition of objects appears to be another way of achieving ritual
redundancy. At Cerro Bola, the sheer faces of large rectangular boulders
arecovered with representations of hafted knives, such as those taken from the
famous Coahuila mortuary cave, Cueva Candelaria (Aveleyra et al. 1956). The
boulders stand erect on the peyote-covered slopes of the hill, which is capped
by a Christian shrine. Every Lent, flagellants emerge from the nearby town to
reenact the Crucifixion, dragging their crosses to the hilltop in a supreme act of
atonement. Supplicants write messages on slips of paper that are burned atop
the hill, transmitting their requests to the spirits above. The holy mantle that
envelopes Cerro Bola was cast hundreds to thousands of years ago and now
every ritual act – whether sacrifice, contrition, or offering – perpetuates its
landmark status. A map of the sacred landscape of Coahuila would range from
the mountaintops to the canyon floors, their distinctive natural features

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enhanced by rock art that may have been the pathway to the land of the spirits,
whether above or below the ground, trod by humankind.

Selected Bibliography

Aveleyra Arroyo de Anda, Luis, Manuel Maldonado-Koerdall, Pablo Martínez del

Río
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Bednarik, Robert G.
1984 On the Nature of Psychograms. The Artefact 8: 27-32.
Bryant, Vaughn
1966 Pollen Analysis: Its Environmental and Cultural Implications in the
Amistad Reservoir Area. Master’s thesis, The University of Texas at
Austin.
Conkey, Margaret J.
1985 Ritual Communication, Social Elaboration, and the Variable
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Brown, Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers: The Emergence of Social
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Dibble, David S. and Dessamae Lorrain
1968 Bonfire Shelter: A Stratified Bison Kill Site, Val Verde County, Texas.
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at Austin.
Gebhard, David
1965 Prehistoric Rock Paintings of the Seminole Canyon Area, Val Verde
County, Texas. A report to the National Park Service, Southwest
Region (on file at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory,
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González Rul, Francisco
1990 Reconocimiento arqueológico en la parte mexicana de la Presa de la
Amistad. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México.
Hedges, Ken
1982 Phosphenes in the Context of Native American Rock Art. American
Indian Rock Art 7, 8:1-10. American Rock Art Research Association.
Jackson, A.T.
1938 Picture-Writing of Texas Indians. Anthropological Papers, Vol. II and
Bureau of Research in the Social Sciences Study No. 27. University of
Texas, Austin.

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Kirkland, Forrest and W.W. Newcomb, Jr.
1967 The Rock Art of Texas Indians. University of Texas Press, Austin.
Lewis-Williams, David
1981 Believing and Seeing: Symbolic Meanings in Southern San Rock
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Lewis-Williams, J. David and Thomas A. Dowson
1982 Signs of the Times, Current Anthropology 29(2):201-245.
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Murray, W. Breen
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Sayther, Terry and Deborah Stuart
1999 Rock Art of Northeastern Mexico: Petroglyphs of Coahuila and Nuevo
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Taylor, Walter W.
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Taylor, Walter W. and Francisco González Rul
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Mexico. Bulletin of the Texas Archeological Society 31:153-165.
Turpin, Solveig A.
1990 Speculations on the Age and Origin of the Pecos River Style. American
Indian Rock Art 16:99-122.
1994a On a Wing and a Prayer: Flight Metaphors in Pecos River Pictographs.
In Solveig A. Turpin, Shamanism and Rock Art in North American, pp.
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Texas.
1994b The Were-Cougar Theme in Pecos River Style Art and its Implications
for Traditional Archeology. In David S. Whitley and Lawrence L.
Loendorf, New Light on Old Art: Recent Advances in Hunter-Gatherer
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Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles.
2004a Cyclical Nucleation and Sacred Space: Rock Art at the Center. In
Gunter Berghaus, New Perspectives on Prehistoric Art, pp. 51-64.
Praeger, Westport, Conn.
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Saltillo.
2011 Size Matters: The Transition from Religious to Secular Art in the Lower
Pecos River Region. American Indian Rock Art 37:1-15.
Turpin, Solveig A. and Joel Bass
1997 The Lewis Canyon Petroglyphs. Rock Art Foundation, Inc. Special
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Turpin, Solveig A. and Herbert H. Eling, Jr.
2003 More Mobiliary Art from Northern Mexico: The Pelillal Collection.
Plains Anthropologist 48(187):255-261.

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View publication stats

2009 Dust, Smoke & Tracks. Two Accounts of Nineteenth-Century Mexican

Military Expeditions to Northern Coahuila and Chihuahua : Colonel
Emilio Langberg, 1851, Major Blas Flores, 1880-1881. Center for Big
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Photo Credits: Robert W. Parvin (3); Christina Martinez (8-9); Rufino Rodriguez
(4, 10-13)

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