Lower Pecos Prehistory: The View From The Caves

Description

The Lower Pecos River region is one of the few areas of Texas where early history and prehistory are largely reconstructed from the archeology of caves and rock shelters. Prehistoric people lived in rock shelters, buried their dead in caves, and left an artistic record of their worldview in both. The region can claim one of the longest and most detailed records of human lifeways in Texas and, for that matter, North America, in part thanks to the arid climate and in part due to the environment afforded their remains by rock shelters and caves. The story begins with the Paleoindians, the first people to enter the region, ca. 12,000 years ago, and ends in the 20th century, when the last of the poor but ambitious settlers set up camp in the same sites their native predecessors had used for thousands of years.