Ancient Rock Art in Texas Yields ‘Surprising’ New Finds

1/3. A researcher uses a portable x-ray fluorescence scanner to analyze the pigments of a Lower Pecos pictograph panel. (Courtesy Karen Steelman)

New technology is providing unexpected insights into some of the most distinctive rock art in the American West, archaeologists say.

The canyonlands of Texas’ Lower Pecos River are home to thousands of grand, colorful pictographs — depictions of people, animals, spirits, and often inscrutable symbols — painted in caves as much as 4,000 years ago.

But recent research is yielding new impressions of the ancient glyphs, revealing for example that prehistoric artists who painted in different styles used different ingredients for their pigments.

What’s more, new dating techniques suggest that a signature style of Lower Pecos rock art may have persisted thousands of years longer than had been thought.

Dr. Karen Steelman, a specialist in archaeological chemistry at the University of Central Arkansas, came upon these findings with her colleagues while studying the pictographs of Seminole Canyon State Park in southwest Texas.

Although many of the park’s images had been analyzed before, Steelman’s team brought a new technology to the task: portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF). [...]  westerndigs.org/