FEBRUARY 2016
  A heart-shaped pool of water in the canyon floor, reflecting the canyon wall above.
Happy Valentine's from the Canyonlands. Photo by: Mark Willis
A Note from the Director

Shumla's Vicky Roberts once said, " The chief export of the Lower Pecos is amazement." She was so right. Never in Shumla's 18 years has anyone visited and been underwhelmed. The landscape, the art -- it is awe-inspiring. 

What's more, the response we got from the January eNews let us know that amazement is not just confined to in-person visits. You were amazed by our paint stratigraphy discoveries and asked "Why? Why would the ancient people paint the murals in that way, one color at a time." In this issue, we will share some research and thoughts on the "Why." (Check out our January issue, if you have no idea what I'm talking about. )

Thank you for being curious. Thank you for sharing in our amazement. And t hank you for your support of our important work - preserving the oldest "books" in North America. 

All the best,
Jessica Lee, Director


P.S. Don't forget to turn your phone to the side to read the eNews more easily on your smart phone. 
Help us in our mission to preserve the oldest "books" in North America.
 
The Quest for the Best Gigapan 
Photo by: Mark Willis
Mark Willis, photographer extraordinaire, spent a week this February trekking the canyons capturing high-resolution photographs and gigapans of the rock art. (A gigapan is high-res panorama made up of millions of pixels. It's a perfect way to create a photograph of an entire mural.) 

Mark's photographs will be part of the interactive rock art exhibit Shumla is developing for the Witte Museum's " People of the Pecos"  Hall. 

Jerod Roberts, who went into the field with Mark said, "So far, we've collected over half a terabyte of image data just for the Witte exhibit and we're not finished yet!" We'll keep you posted on our progress and on the timeline for the opening of the exhibit. It's going to be an incredible virtual experience.

Jerod stops to capture an image of the canyon as they hike toward the next site.
Photo by: Jerod Roberts
Ancient Painter's Secrets Revealed, Leads to More Questions

In the last eNews, we showed microscopic evidence that the White Shaman mural was painted one color at a time. First black, then red, then yellow, and finally white. Considering how difficult it would be to paint an entire mural in this way, many readers have asked, "Why?" Excellent question, readers.

Shumla researchers believe there were both physical and spiritual reasons for the way the mural was painted. Carolyn Boyd talks a lot about this in her new book  The White Shaman Mural: An Enduring Creation Narrative  coming out in November. We'll hit the highlights here.

Reason 1: Conserve Important Resources
Carolyn Boyd and Phil Dering have rediscovered the way paint was made by ancient muralists. It was a mixture of pigment, water, deer bone marrow (the fat) and yucca juice (the "soap" to make the water and fat mix).
The pigment had to be located, carried to the mural site and ground to dust. Water had to be carried from the nearest source. Deer had to be hunted and butchered to access the bone marrow. Yucca had to be harvested and the juice squeezed from the roots. All this in high enough quantities to create enough paint for an entire mural.

Pretend you are an ancient hunter-gatherer. Deer meat and marrow are an important part of your diet. But rather than feed this marrow to your family, you mix it into paint. You must think the art is pretty important. So important that it contributes to the survival of your family as much or more than feeding them!

Continuing on this train of thought, how many hours of work goes into creating this paint? How many precious calories are expended to gather and mix these ingredients. You're not going to waste a drop!

If you gather ingredients for all colors and mix them all, by the time you're done mixing, paint will have started drying. Paint will continue to dry as you work on the mural - requiring more resources and time to get all those colors to the right consistency again. 

But what if you mix just one color. As you paint the black, for example, you can make more as you need it until you are finished with all the black. You haven't wasted a drop. You've conserved your energy, time and resources. Now you're ready to move to the next color.

This explains why it's a good idea to paint one color at a time, but why would they choose to paint black first, then red, yellow and white? If it were only about resources, they could have chosen any color first.

Reason 2: Color Carries Meaning
Archaic hunter-gatherers of the Lower Pecos assigned meaning to all things in their environment. Stars, plants, animals, stones, sounds, color - everything carried meaning.

It's not that different than the way we assign meaning in our culture. Think about the color blue in the context of a baby. It means a baby bo y, right? What about the color blue in the context of feelings. It means sadness. Re d = Lov e. But red can also mean stop or hot. F our-leaf clover = Luck. It's also associated with the Irish and St. Patrick's Day. A pumpkin may signify the A utumn, but a pumpkin with eyes, a nose and a mouth carved out signifies Halloween. You get my drift. We just  know this stuff. These meanings are part of our culture.

Carolyn Boyd has studied the meanings behind all aspects of the White Shaman mural. She determined that it is a visual narrative -- the telling of their story of creation.  Here's just a taste of what she discovered about the meaning of color in this ancient creation myth.  See if you can determine the reason for the painter's color sequence.  
They chose to paint black first because it literally represented the beginning. The dark before creation. The time before time began. Time then begins with the birth of the sun. So, the red must come next. Followed by the yellow of the sun's rays triumphing over the darkness of night and the red glow of sunrise. Finally, the white is painted and creation is bathed in the white light of the midday sun.

If you think this is fascinating, there is so much more to come! Carolyn's book will be out in November and you won't believe what she's discovered. Her book is the culmination of 20 years of research on one single mural in the Lower Pecos. Imagine what we'll learn as we continue to document and research the other two hundred... Mind. Blown.
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Spotlight on Keith Mann

You may wonder, particularly if you've visited Comstock, how we can possibly be as technologically advanced as we are -- managing and storing terabytes of images and data, transferring enormous files, and all around hanging off the cutting edge of high-tech science. 

The answer is this man... Keith Mann. Apart from being an awesome musician, Keith, is a highly skilled IT technician who spent the greater part of his career working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeping US satellites running and secure. With Top Secret clearance, he can't even tell us everything he was doing or he'd have to kill us. We're just glad that he "retired" to Langtry and is willing to keep our servers and IT running smoothly. Maybe someday we'll need a satellite! ...Probably not.

Thank you, Keith! 
Sul Ross State Students Experience the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos

Andrew Tegarden brought his graduate level Art History of Texas class to the Lower Pecos to see the oldest "books" in North America. The students were impressed by the sophistication of the narrative murals. As artists and art historians, they viewed the murals through a different lens than most and asked astute questions about how these complex and compositional murals would have been planned and executed.

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Shumla Archaeological Research & Education Center 
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Questions and comments can be sent to:  jlee@shumla.org