Collaborative Research: Chronological Modeling and Pictograph Stratigraphy

This project will study the chronology of painted murals in southwest Texas, one of the oldest and most complex art forms in the Americas. Strong parallels exist between the hunter-gatherer belief systems portrayed in these U.S.-based murals and the myths and cosmologies of later Mesoamerican agriculturalists. These parallels suggest deep prehistoric origins.

Although researchers maintain that complex concepts persisted across time and across cultural, linguistic, and geographical boundaries, they lack well-dated archaeological evidence to support their argument. This project will utilize radiocarbon dating to establish the age of Pecos River style production in the context of this hypothesized Archaic core system.

The investigators will examine changes over time in these murals, including iconography, mural production, and geographic distribution. This study will add significantly to an understanding of how past cultures managed social identity, territory, mobility, labor organization, and graphic communication. The project will train graduate students, college interns, and high school students in chemistry and new technologies used in archaeology, addressing a national need for providing students with experience in interdisciplinary research, STEM, and team-based projects.

Newly developed scientific dating methods can now provide the accuracy and precision to date the material and place it within the context of material culture, socioeconomic reorganization, climate change, fluctuating population densities, and extra-regional influences. The investigators will conduct a formal analysis to document and describe diagnostic pictographs, determine paint application order through a stratigraphic study using digital microscopy and the construction of Harris matrices, and examine spatial patterning using GIS.

Based on these data, they will collect 60 paint samples from 10 murals for plasma oxidation and accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating. Results will inform research into possible drivers for the emergence and decline of the style. The investigators will use the results to model the timing of the introduction and development of complex l concepts which also are present in later Mesoamerican traditions.

This will address a cognitive aspect of hunter-gatherer complexity often overlooked by studies focusing on social organization, technology, and subsistence.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.