Our long-term collaboration has focused on the technical art history of hundreds of large-scale polychrome open-air murals located in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands archaeological region of Texas. To build a chronological model for Pecos River style pictographs, we have selected ten murals for study that are geographically distributed throughout the region. Our research design involves: (1) conducting a formal analysis of the art to document and describe diagnostic Pecos River style pictographs selected for dating; (2) examining mural stratigraphy using digital microscopy on the panel and the construction of Harris matrices for superimposed figures; and (3) obtaining 60 radiocarbon dates for Pecos River style pictographs using plasma oxidation and accelerator mass spectrometry. Preliminary results demonstrate that Pecos River style painting persisted for thousands of years during the Middle and Late Archaic Periods (5500 to 1300 cal BP). These results are significant as Pecos River style art has strong parallels with the religion and cosmology of later Mesoamerican agriculturalists, suggesting archaic origins of a pan-American core belief system.

Hearthstone project: Combining formal art analysis & analytical chemistry

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