The symbols, icons, and motifs depicted in the rock art and ceramics of the Jornada and Mimbres regions are among the most prominent and widely studied iconographic traditions of the North American Southwest (hereafter the Southwest). Although their meanings, metaphors, and underlying religious and cosmological foundations have been widely studied and debated, the chronologies of many signature elements remain poorly defined. Except for the Mimbres Black-on-white stylistic sequence (Anyon et al. Reference Anyon, Gilman and LeBlanc1981; Shafer and Brewington Reference Shafer and Brewington1995), few signature elements—particularly those of the Jornada Style of rock art (Schaafsma Reference Schaafsma1992)—are securely associated with dates or well-dated contexts, limiting our understanding of historical trends in religious movements and their origins.
This article has three objectives: (1) establish chronologies of specific ritual paraphernalia and associated iconographic elements of the Jornada Style of rock art and their cross-media representation in perishables and ceramics, (2) correlate those chronologies with broader trends in the radiocarbon and archaeological records of the Jornada and Mimbres regions, and (3) explore reasons for the appearance and spread of religious beliefs and their iconographic expressions. We use 29 accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dates obtained on perishable artifacts from nine shrine caves in the Jornada and Mimbres Mogollon regions of south-central New Mexico and far west Texas (Figure 1). Dated artifacts include 11 fragments of painted panels, including segments of tablitas (a form of headdress worn during ritual dances) and other painted items.Footnote 1 Also dated were two effigies, two prayer sticks (pahos), six hafted projectile point foreshafts, and eight flat curved sticks (FCS). Artifact sampling for dating was approved by collections review committees and curators of museums and curatorial facilities, several of which consulted with representatives of Native American tribes.Footnote 2
Figure 1. The Jornada and Mimbres regions of southern New Mexico and far west Texas showing the shrine caves mentioned in the text. The locations of Goggle-eye images (Berrier Reference Berrier2013) and the boundary of the Jornada Style of rock art (Schaafsma Reference Schaafsma1992) are indicated (map prepared by Mark Willis).
We review three significant chronological trends revealed by the dates. First, the use of caves as shrines and locations of ritual performance has substantial time depth and duration. Second, significant changes in the items deposited in shrine caves occurred through time. Third, the Goggle-eye (GE) or “Tlaloc” entity, a signature motif of the Jornada Style of rock art, is significantly older than previously believed. We examine these chronological patterns in broader contexts, linking observed changes in ritual iconography and material culture to the manifestation and spread of religious beliefs that may have occurred during periods of climatic change, population movements, or increasing social complexity. Our study establishes a deep time presence of Indigenous cosmologies and beliefs in the southern Southwest.
All dated artifacts were deposited in what are recognized in the Jornada and Mimbres regions as shrine caves (Cosgrove Reference Cosgrove1947; Creel Reference Creel, Almarez and Leach1997; Miller Reference Miller, Harry and Herr2018a; Nicolay Reference Nicolay and Moyes2012; O'Laughlin Reference O'Laughlin, Wiseman, O'Laughlin and Snow2003), a particular form of ritual and sacralized landscape feature that is widespread across North America (Geib et al. Reference Geib2017; Webster Reference Webster, Gregory and Wilcox2007). Shrine caves are natural rockshelters and caves containing deposits or arrangements of specific types of artifacts, many of which are whole and nonutilitarian or esoteric with probable symbolic and religious connotations. Utilitarian artifacts—for example, weapons used for hunting and warfare—may also be present because of their symbolic associations and ritual and ceremonial relevance among many traditional societies. Shrine caves may also have distinctive features such as pictographs, small shrines near interior water seeps, and objects placed in niches or cracks. Some have dark subterranean chambers that were significant ritual spaces, even if lacking shrine deposits, whereas others have open viewsheds encompassing the surrounding landscape. Shrine caves are landscape features that served as metaphors for places of origin, in which beliefs of creation, emergence, and ancestral relationships to the land were reenacted (Miller Reference Miller, Stokes, Dungan and Sedig2023a, Reference Miller and Wright2023b; Nicolay Reference Nicolay and Moyes2012).
It is difficult to develop chronologies for the material culture left in these caves using traditional approaches. Conventional analyses of stratigraphy and association with dated layers have been rendered impossible because, in most cases, the archaeological deposits inside the caves were destroyed through combinations of bioturbation (especially by rodents), rampant looting, guano mining, and even dynamiting. Attempts to reconstruct the stratigraphic relationships of ritual features and deposits once present in the caves have proven futile in most cases (Cosgrove Reference Cosgrove1947; Creel Reference Creel, Almarez and Leach1997; O'Laughlin Reference O'Laughlin, Wiseman, O'Laughlin and Snow2003).
A larger issue is that the types of features and deposits in these caves were formed through practices of ritual deposition and shrine formation that differed quite markedly from deposits formed through habitation and other “normal” processes of site formation (see Miller et al. Reference Miller, Geib and Creel2024). The direct dating of perishable artifacts is one method of partially extracting significant information from heavily disturbed contexts: it provides a means of reconstructing a chronological sequence of perishable industries, technological styles, and iconographic elements that is independent of the arranged, rearranged, and disturbed contexts from which they were collected.
Sampled Perishables and Their Contexts
The 29 AMS radiocarbon determinations presented and discussed here were obtained from a variety of perishable artifacts placed in shrine caves. Brief descriptions of these shrine caves are provided in this section; for a more detailed review, see Miller and colleagues (Reference Miller, Geib and Creel2024). The ritual deposits and features of these caves were formed through the deposition of various combinations of tablitas and other forms of painted panels, dart foreshafts, pahos, FCS, reed cigarettes, ornaments, textiles, pipes, painted arrows, basketry, sandals, and miniature bows.
Twenty artifacts are from Ceremonial Cave (41EP19) in El Paso County, Texas. A large ritual deposit containing hundreds of items was situated near the boundary of the dark zone (Figure 2). Two partial tablitas dated in this study, including a fragment of a GE image, are from Hueco Cave 5 (FB6676) and Cave 7 (FB6678), both located within 0.5 km of Ceremonial Cave along the same limestone cliffs (Cosgrove Reference Cosgrove1947:38–39).
Figure 2. Upper left panel, Hattie and Burt Cosgrove and assistant Jacinto Campos excavating Ceremonial Cave in 1928; upper right panel, view of Ceremonial Cave in 1928 (Gift of Judge Burt Cosgrove, 2011. ©Judge Burt Cosgrove. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 2011.24.1.2.65.2 and 2011.24.1.2.63.2). Lower panel, Cosgrove's 1928 map of Ceremonial Cave and Caves 1, 2, and 3 (modified from Cosgrove Reference Cosgrove1947:35).
Chavez Cave (LA 5520) is located along the lower slopes of the Robledo Mountains about 300 m west of the Rio Grande River (Cosgrove Reference Cosgrove1947:31–33). O'Laughlin (Reference O'Laughlin, Wiseman, O'Laughlin and Snow2003) explored a dark zone area described as a shrine and recovered a painted limestone Goggle-eye or “Tlaloc” effigy.
One dated GE effigy is tentatively provenienced to Feather Cave (LA 37551) in Lincoln County, New Mexico (Ellis and Hammack Reference Ellis and Hammack1968). Feather Cave consists of an outer Main Grotto and a deeper solution cavity, the Arrow Grotto. The latter is a dark zone shrine with rock art and dozens of arrows placed in a crevice. Another dated GE effigy is from U-Bar Cave (LA 5689) in the Alamo Hueco Mountains of Hidalgo County in the New Mexico boot heel. An arrow shrine was present near the entrance of this 90.5 m deep cave, and the effigy and other ritual items were recovered nearby (Lambert and Ambler Reference Lambert and Richard Ambler1965).
Four tablitas are from Steamboat, Doolittle, and Mule Creek Caves in Grant County in southwest New Mexico (Cosgrove Reference Cosgrove1947). Doolittle Cave (LA 71696) is located on a tributary to the Mimbres River in the vicinity of several major Mimbres villages. Steamboat Cave (LA 73054) is located along the Gila River drainage and is also close to several major Classic Mimbres and Postclassic villages. Mule Creek Cave (LA 71914) is near the San Francisco River a few miles from the Arizona border.
Results of Radiocarbon Dating
AMS radiocarbon dates for the 29 perishable items are presented in Supplemental Table 1. The samples consisted of 14 specimens of yucca or sotol flowering stalks, 12 wood items, 2 yucca fibers, and 1 sinew fiber. We were able to extract microgram samples from the items without any loss of technological, stylistic, or functional information. All age estimates were corrected for isotopic fractionation. Dendrochronological calibrations were calculated using OxCal ver. 4.4.1. using the recent consensus international calibration dataset for terrestrial samples (IntCal20).
We monitored several issues—accession histories, stable isotope corrections, and potential contamination with chemical pesticides or preservatives—that could have affected or biased the radiocarbon measurements or resulted in age discrepancies (Miller et al. Reference Miller, Geib and Creel2024). This monitoring and the remarkable degree of consistency among the dates from Ceremonial Cave suggest that it is unlikely that the 29 dated samples were affected by contaminants or have errors in radiocarbon measurements. With one exception,Footnote 3 the accession histories of the artifacts are well documented, and their proveniences are secure.
The 29 age estimates range from 4350 ± 30 BP (cal 3025–2900 BC) to 410 ± 30 BP (cal AD 1430–1620), thus encompassing a significant portion of the Jornada and Mimbres archaeological records from the Middle Archaic period to the terminal centuries of the Ceramic era. The individual dates and the time intervals collectively represented by these groups of dates reflect several significant trends in the prehispanic history of the Jornada and Mimbres regions, with three of the more salient ones described here.
Time Depth of Cave Ritual in the Jornada Region
The 20 items from Ceremonial Cave range in age from 4350 ± 30 BP (cal 3025–2900 BC) to 1160 ± 30 BP (cal AD 775–970). The direct dating of perishable items establishes that the practice of ritual deposition in Ceremonial Cave had substantial antiquity, persisting over the course of approximately four millennia.
Weapons related to hunting or other activities, usually considered solely as utilitarian tools, were a significant component of the Ceremonial Cave ritual deposit. It is important to emphasize that labeling artifacts as utilitarian does not mean that such items lacked ritual salience in the cultures that created them. Supporting this argument is the presence of prayer sticks (pahos) having contemporaneous age estimates with the sample of FCS and foreshafts. Samples of Agavaceae fibers that form the bundles and wrappings of two Ceremonial Cave pahos (Figure 3) have calibrated age ranges of 20 BC–AD 130 and 160 BC–AD 20. The ages of the pahos confirms that ritual use of the shrine extended at least 2,000 years into the past and that the hafted projectile points, FCS, and other items of similar antiquity were deposited through similar ritual practices. In an analogous case, similar utilitarian items were deposited in the wahaniak shukuk shtuitauwa shrine (also known as the Correo Snake Pit; LA 46316), located southeast of Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico, and 360 km to the north of Ceremonial Cave. This cave had no domestic occupation, having served solely as a ritual shrine (Geib et al. Reference Geib2017).
Figure 3. Dated pahos (a, b) and painted panel (c) with zigzag design from Ceremonial Cave (41EP19), El Paso County, Texas; (d) FCS with engraved zigzag motif from Ventana Cave (AZ Z:12:5), Arizona. (a, b) images courtesy of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, University of Texas at Austin; (c) Image © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 28-3-10/96698.1; (d) Accession no. A-8840x, Arizona State Museum; from Geib Reference Geib2016:293). (Color online)
Three items of even greater age were identified among the Ceremonial Cave assemblage. One FCS yielded an age of cal 1195–1030 BC, and a foreshaft with a heavily reworked point dated to cal 1690–1530 BC. The oldest item is a partial panel of a flattened succulent stalk painted with alternating red and black zigzag or wavy lines (Figure 3). The age of this artifact, cal 3080–2900 BC, places it in the Middle Archaic period of southern New Mexico (Miller Reference Miller and Vierra2018b).
The zigzag or wavy-line element on the painted panel is one of the most common elements in prehispanic rock art of the Jornada region and has a substantial time depth and geographic distribution throughout the Southwest. An FCS with a similar engraved zigzag design from Ventana Cave in southern Arizona (Figure 3, bottom) is of comparable age, with a date of 4512 ± 40 BP (cal 3365–3090 BC; Geib Reference Geib2016:284). Plasma oxidation AMS dates from paint samples extracted from red zigzag pictographs (Loendorf et al. Reference Loendorf, Steelman, Willis and Miller2016; Miller et al. Reference Miller, Loendorf, Graves and Willis2019), place the earliest Jornada examples at cal 1540–1230 BC. The symbol undoubtedly conveyed religious concepts and meanings and was of sufficient importance to have been painted and pecked on rock surfaces of hundreds of caves, rockshelters, and petroglyph panels across the Jornada region (Loendorf et al. Reference Loendorf, Miller, Kemp, White, Willis and Kenmotsu2013; Miller et al. Reference Miller, Loendorf, Graves and Willis2019; Schaafsma Reference Schaafsma1972, Reference Schaafsma1992).
Given the antiquity, ubiquity, and symbolic significance of the zigzag/wavy-line motif, its presence on a painted panel dating from 5,030 to 4,850 years in age and deposited in Ceremonial Cave indicates that it may have functioned as a shrine cave as early as the Middle Archaic period. A similar time depth of ritual deposition has been identified for the wahaniak shukuk shtuitauwa shrine where direct dating of 22 perishable items, including FCS, atlatl darts, an atlatl, and arrows, revealed a span of use ranging from shortly after cal 2000 BC to as late as cal AD 1635 (Geib et al. Reference Geib2017); use of that shrine continues to this day. As at Ceremonial Cave, a large number (n = 908) of prayer sticks were placed in the wahaniak shukuk shtuitauwa shrine, and Geib and his coauthors (Reference Geib, Heitman and Fields2017:362–363) offer an intriguing interpretation that atlatl darts were an early manifestation of prayer sticks among Puebloans and their ancestors, who began using arrow shafts after the diffusion of bow-and-arrow technology. Parsons (Reference Parsons1918:390) interpreted the shrine as that of the war gods based on the presence of “feather-sticks analogous with the war god feather-sticks of Zuñi” and the abundant prehispanic weapons—arrows and atlatl darts—that she observed.
Given the similarities in material culture between Ceremonial Cave and the wahaniak shukuk shtuitauwa shrine, it is reasonable to infer that Ceremonial Cave was a similar shrine during the early periods of ritual deposition. However, there is a distinct change in the material culture of Ceremonial Cave during the latter centuries of use, as discussed next.
Changes in Artifacts Deposited
The preceding discussion established that four or more millennia of ritual deposition are reflected in the radiocarbon record of perishable items from Ceremonial Cave. However, the types of items left in the cave and the meanings ascribed to them were not uniform over the centuries. Figure 4 displays the calibrated age ranges for the 22 dated items from the complex of Ceremonial Cave and Hueco Caves 5 and 7. Four general classes of perishable items are coded by shading differences: tablitas, pahos, FCS, and dart foreshafts.
Figure 4. Calibrated 2-sigma age ranges for 22 dated items from Ceremonial Cave, Cave 5, and Cave 7. (Color online)
Absent an archaeological stratigraphic record, the dating of perishable items provides a critical reconstruction of the temporal sequence of artifact deposition. Most of the age estimates fall within two intervals: cal 350 BC–AD 250 and cal AD 650–1000. Dart foreshafts and FCS (Figure 5) comprise the majority of items dating to the interval of 350 BC–AD 250, a period known as the Late Archaic Hueco phase. The presence of pahos confirms the ritual nature of cave use during this period. There appears to have been a hiatus in artifact deposition and use of the cave during the terminal centuries of the Archaic period between AD 250 and 650.
Figure 5. Photographs of dated dart foreshafts from Ceremonial Cave and Chavez Cave (left) and FCS from Ceremonial Cave in the TARL collections (right; from Geib Reference Geib2016). Projectile point profiles were determined through high-resolution X-ray computed tomography. Photographs courtesy of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, University of Texas at Austin. (Color online)
A striking change in artifact types occurred around AD 650. The types of objects deposited in Ceremonial Cave and Caves 5 and 7 changed over time, and therefore the sample of dates we obtained from those different artifacts also changed. The foreshafts, pahos, and FCS of the Late Archaic period were no longer deposited in the shrines and were replaced by tablitasFootnote 4 and GE tablitas (Figure 6).
Figure 6. Photographs of dated tablitas and tablita fragments from Ceremonial Cave, Hueco Cave 5, and Doolittle, Steamboat, and Mule Creek caves. Photographs of TARL objects courtesy of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, University of Texas at Austin; photographs of CM objects courtesy of the Centennial Museum, University of Texas at El Paso; PMAE objects Image © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 28-3-10/96820, 29-20-10/97377, 26-7-10/95457, and 29-20-10/97379.1. (Color online)
This sequence has broader implications that may relate to historical trends of population movements and religious change. Ceremonial Cave evidently had sporadic use between 3000 and 1000 BC. The most intensive use of the cave began at 350 BC, contemporaneous with the ending of a period known as the Hallstatt oscillation, when referring to atmospheric radiocarbon production (Vasiliev and Dergachev Reference Vasiliev and Dergachev2002), or the Hallstatt plateau or interval, when referring to radiocarbon calibration curves or paleoclimatic events (Becker and Kromer Reference Becker and Kromer1993). The Hallstatt interval is an exceptionally flat section of the radiocarbon curve between cal 850 and 400 BC (Fahrni et al. Reference Fahrni, Southon, Fuller, Park, Friedrich, Muscheler, Wacker and Taylor2020). Paleoenvironmental and ecological researchers have examined the relationship between atmospheric radiocarbon production, past climates, and impacts on human environments during the Hallstatt interval (e.g., Van Geel et al. Reference Van Geel, Bas, Kilian, Klaver, Kouwenberg, Renssen, Reynaud-Farrera and Waterbolk1998). The period marks a major epoch of culture change across much of Europe and northern Asia (for a summary, see Jull et al. Reference Jull, Panyushkina, Miyake, Masuda, Nakamura, Mitsutani and Lange2018). The Hallstatt interval is conspicuously manifested in the Jornada region archaeological radiocarbon record and brackets the period designated as the Late Archaic Arenal phase of 850–350 BC (Miller Reference Miller and Vierra2018b). The Arenal phase is a distinctive and anomalous period in the Jornada sequence with a scant radiocarbon record for cave occupations and the use of maize, storage pits, agave baking pits, and other signature technologies and features: this indicates that some form of demographic hiatus or major shift in settlement, subsistence, and mobility took place then.
Similar phenomena have been observed in the radiocarbon records of surrounding regions, such as Cerro Juanaqueña, Chihuahua (Hard and Roney Reference Hard and Roney2020:80–82), and the northern Kayenta region (Geib and Spurr Reference Geib, Spurr and Schlanger2002:233). Of particular relevance with regard to Ceremonial Cave is that the Hallstatt interval seems to be manifested in the conspicuous gap in the series of age estimates from the wahaniak shukuk shtuitauwa shrine between 800 BC and 0 AD (Geib et al. Reference Geib2017:Figure 4). Before this gap, the dated FCS in the ritual deposit were S-shaped and exhibited three longitudinal grooves on their faces. After the gap, the dated FCS were of the single curve variety and exhibited four longitudinal grooves, rather than three. In addition to having potential inscrutable ritual meanings, Geib and coauthors (Reference Geib, Heitman and Fields2017:365) suggest that “the shift in groove count [may] reflect a change in the territorial boundaries between different ethno-linguistic groups and ‘ownership’ of the shrine.”
The technologies and subsistence practices, such as maize and agave baking pits, that seemingly vanish from the Jornada region during the Arenal phase reappear during the subsequent Hueco phase beginning around 350 BC. The Hueco phase is also marked by the appearance of several rock art styles and new forms of basal- and corner-notched points, indicating that new populations had moved into the region after the apparent population void of the Arenal phase. Most of the points attached to dated foreshafts displayed in Figure 5 were examined through computed tomography (CT) and are classified as the Carlsbad type that Miller and Graves (Reference Miller, Graves and Maloof2019) place in the general category of corner-notched darts appearing after the Hallstatt interval.
The causes of the apparent AD 250–650 hiatus are less clear. The gap might reflect a sampling bias, although this seems improbable given the consistency of the age estimates before and after the hiatus. There are no events in the radiocarbon or paleoclimatic records similar in origin or magnitude to the Hallstatt interval. The period of AD 500–600 coincides with a time of widespread change across Jornada and Mimbres regions marked by a dramatic increase in the numbers of radiocarbon dates and dated contexts across southern New Mexico and far west Texas (Anyon et al. Reference Anyon, Creel, Gilman, LeBlanc, Miller, Nash and Nelson2017; Miller Reference Miller, Nash and Baxter2023c). Similar patterns are observed on the Colorado Plateau and other regions of the northern Southwest (Kohler and Reese Reference Kohler and Reese2014). A change in iconography and associated religious beliefs that occurred during this period is the subject of the following discussion.
Antiquity of the Goggle-Eye Entity in Cross-Media Representations of Rock Art and Portable Objects
The change in ritual deposition at AD 650 observed among items deposited in Ceremonial Cave is contemporaneous with the appearance of GE motifs, establishing that one of the signature iconographic entities of the Jornada region appeared in rock art and other media at that time. The Jornada GE entity, often interpreted as a regional manifestation of the Mesoamerican rain deity Tlaloc (Mathiowetz Reference Mathiowetz2011; Schaafsma Reference Schaafsma2015), is one of the most prominent figures of the Jornada Style of rock art (Schaafsma Reference Schaafsma1980, Reference Schaafsma1992). More than 485 pictograph and petroglyph GE images are found at 93 rock art localities across the Jornada and Mimbres regions (Berrier Reference Berrier2013, personal communication 2023; see Figure 1), and additional representations were created in effigies of stone and succulent stalks. The GE entity also appears in rock art and ceramic art of the Mimbres region (Creel Reference Creel1989, Reference Creel2013).
The dating of GE figures and other Jornada Style elements, such as terraced and stepped designs, masks, serpents, animal tracks, and naturalistic figures, has been speculative. An age of around AD 1300 or perhaps as early as AD 1200 for GE iconography in the Jornada region was originally based on indirect associations of rock art with a few dates from adjacent villages, such as a single radiocarbon date from a pithouse village near the Hueco Tanks rock art localities (Schaafsma Reference Schaafsma1992). O'Laughlin (Reference O'Laughlin, Wiseman, O'Laughlin and Snow2003) noted the presence of Mogollon ceramics dating to AD 700–900 at Chavez Cave where a painted limestone GE effigy was found, suggesting a possible earlier age for GE figures. Creel (Reference Creel2013) noted the presence of GE figures on Mimbres Style II pottery dating before AD 1000 and first appearing on Style I vessels securely dated to the AD 800s (Figure 7); this led Schaafsma (Reference Schaafsma2015) to propose a possible earlier date of AD 900 for the appearance of GE imagery. However, Creel also noted that, because of the absence of any representational images on Mogollon Red-on-brown or Three Circle Red-on-white vessels, there could be no certain claim based on ceramic designs that GE imagery and ideology were not present during earlier times.
Figure 7. Mimbres Black-on-white Style I bowl from a cache of vessels near Silver City, New Mexico. Photograph courtesy of Darrell Creel.
Four dates were obtained on effigies and partial effigies or tablitas representing the GE entity (Figure 8a–d). Two of the new dates are contemporaneous with three dates previously obtained through plasma oxidation (PO) AMS dating of paint from two GE pictographs at Hueco Tanks (Hyman et al. Reference Hyman, Sutherland, Rowe, Armitage and Southon1999; Rowe Reference Rowe, Thompson, Jurgena and Jackson2005; Figure 8e–f; see Supplemental Table 1). A fourth PO AMS date was recently obtained from a GE pictograph at LA 72165 (Steelman Reference Steelman2023). The background of these studies and a revised chronology of GE imagery are reviewed in Miller and colleagues (Reference Miller, Geib and Creel2024). Using OxCal, Bayesian phase modeling of the eight age estimates obtained from effigies, tablitas, and pictographs provides probabilistic estimates of the temporal boundaries of beginning and ending “phases” of the dates, as summarized in Figure 9. The true boundary probably falls within the one-sigma distribution, indicating that GE imagery appeared sometime between AD 585 and 725.
Figure 8. Dated effigies, tablita fragments, and rock paintings with GE iconography: (a) GE effigy, probably from Feather Cave in Lincoln County, New Mexico; (b) GE effigy, U-Bar Cave, Hidalgo County, New Mexico; (c) tablita fragment with GE element, Hueco Cave 7, El Paso County, Texas; (d) tablita fragment with GE element, Steamboat Cave, Grant County, New Mexico; (e and f) GE rock paintings, Hueco Tanks, El Paso County, Texas. Figures a and b, drawings by Will Russell, collections of the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology, Santa Fe, Catalog nos. 43604/11 and 26554/11; Figures c and d, Image © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 28-3-10/96849 and 28-3-10/97167.1; Figures e and f, photograph and drawing by Margaret Berrier. (Color online)
Figure 9. Bayesian phase boundary estimates for radiocarbon dates on GE imagery. Upper panel, prior and posterior probability distributions for the eight dates and estimated phase boundaries; lower panel, Bayesian probability density function estimating the beginning of GE imagery based on the dated perishables and pictographs.
The newly obtained AMS dates on GE effigies corroborate the PO AMS dating of GE pictographs at Hueco Tanks and LA 72165, and the combined chronometric studies establish that GE imagery and its underlying religious and cosmological beliefs were present in the Jornada and Mimbres regions in the AD 700s and perhaps as early as AD 650.
Dated Tablitas from the Mimbres Mogollon
The last three items reviewed are from caves in the Mimbres Mogollon region (see Figure 6). Two are portions of tablitas with terrace icons. A polychrome tablita fragment from Doolittle Cave dates to cal AD 895–1020 and has a stylized terrace element commonly found on Mimbres Black-on-white Style III (AD 1000–1140) bowls. The second tablita is from Mule Creek Cave and has a classic terrace design formed through negative space. The calibrated age range of AD 1430–1620 from this item is the most recent of the 29 dates. This date indicates that shrine caves continued as prominent loci of ritual performance and pilgrimage during the final decades of the Postclassic period of the Mogollon region. Considered together, the age estimates from the two items establish that the terrace symbol had a long history of use in cave ritual in the Mimbres Mogollon region.
The final object is an unusual tablita from Mule Creek Cave that yielded an age estimate of cal AD 1025–1160. The date falls securely within the Mimbres Classic period, and the painted face on the tablita was executed in typical Classic Mimbres style with diamond-shaped eyes and a triangular nose. The item is of interest for establishing that Classic Mimbres representations of human faces were portrayed on other forms of portable art, in addition to ceramic vessels.
Discussion
The timing of the appearance and spread of religious movements, cosmologies, and their iconographic expressions, such as the katsina religion, the Southwest regional cult, and specific Mesoamerican beliefs, is widely debated in Southwest archaeology (Adams Reference Adams1991; Crown Reference Crown1994; Mathiowetz Reference Mathiowetz2011; McGuire Reference McGuire, Glowacki and Keuren2011; Schaafsma Reference Schaafsma1980, Reference Schaafsma1992; Schaafsma and Schaafsma Reference Schaafsma and Schaafsma1974; VanPool et al. Reference VanPool, VanPool, Phillips, VanPool, VanPool and Phillips2006; Wright Reference Wright2022). There are comparable debates on the chronology of iconographic motifs and associated beliefs in the Jornada and Mimbres regions. In this article, our data pertinent to the dating of the GE entity established a long history of ritual practice in the use of caves as shrines. By approaching these issues through direct AMS dating of perishables with iconographic elements or items deposited in shrine caves that reflect a specific form of ritual practice, we avoided the problems of indirect and relative dating of cave deposits and rock art. Our direct dating of GE effigies complements the radiocarbon dating of GE imagery in pictographs. Additionally, the direct dating of perishable artifacts allows the reconstruction of chronologies in the absence of archaeological stratigraphy.
One of the more significant conclusions is that a particular set of Indigenous ritual practices in the Jornada and Mimbres regions of the Southwest were of extraordinary temporal depth and continuity. The dates on pahos and items with zigzag designs span three to four millennia. These findings are complemented by recent dates from two other caves in southern New Mexico reported by Jolie (Reference Jolie2018): a basket with zigzag designs was dated to cal AD 139–382 and a paho to AD 898–1154. These dates demonstrate that the placement of pahos and items with zigzag elements in shrine caves persisted for centuries. Similar time spans for shrine cave use are documented for the eastern Pueblo region (Geib et al. Reference Geib2017), the western Mogollon (Webster Reference Webster, Gregory and Wilcox2007), and in southeastern New Mexico for complexes of rock art, caves, and shrines (Miller et al. Reference Miller, Loendorf, Graves and Willis2019).
Persistence of religious practice across several millennia, however, does not mean there was no change in the nature of the items deposited in shrine caves and the iconography expressed on those items. There was a shift in both between AD 600 and 700. A second period of change may have occurred around AD 1300, but the chronometric and material evidence for this event is less clear. Also noteworthy are two gaps in the sequence that may stem from population movements or periods of climate change. Both the hiatus in depositional continuity between AD 250 and 600 and the changes in items deposited in shrine caves before and after that hiatus may relate to larger issues of the appearance and spread of religious movements.
The Time Depth of the GE Entity and Its Cosmovision
Tlaloc is a Mesoamerican deity of earth, rain, clouds, fertility, ancestors, and perhaps warfare, with roots in Late Preclassic Olmec societies of Mesoamerica. The GE entity portrayed in rock art, ceramics, and effigies of the Jornada and Mimbres regions is interpreted as a manifestation of Tlaloc based on shared attributes such as Goggle-eyes and cloud or storm-related imagery (Schaafsma Reference Schaafsma1992, Reference Schaafsma, Schaafsma and Riley1999, Reference Schaafsma2015). Considering the dating of GE imagery reported here, if the entity is to be linked to a deity of Mesoamerican origin, the Classic period Teotihuacan Tlaloc or Storm God (Anderson and Helmke Reference Anderson and Helmke2013; Pasztory Reference Pasztory and Berrin1988; Turner Reference Turner, Faugère and Beekman2020) or an Epiclassic period expression from western Mexico (Jimenez Reference Jimenez2020) is a more appropriate candidate than the Tlaloc of the Late Postclassic Mexica. The specific iconographic attributes that may or may not constitute Tlaloc are debatable, which, as Turner (Reference Turner, Faugère and Beekman2020:211) notes, “reflects shifting attitudes toward the notion of cultural continuity in Mesoamerica and the depth of similarity between Classic and Late Postclassic rain gods.”
Similar problems of cultural continuity and time depth should be acknowledged when contemplating the nature of Tlaloc, Storm Gods, and other Mesoamerican deities in the Southwest. Our intent here is to explore the temporal depth of the foundational cosmology and religious beliefs underlying the Tlaloc cosmovision in the southern Southwest and not to argue whether the GE entity represented one or another specific deity. Arnold (Reference Arnold1999:35–39) offers a thorough review of the etymology of the Postclassic Nahuatl word Tlaloc. He notes the commonality of translations denoting relationships and origins with or qualities of the earth or pathways through the earth. Although often considered a rain god, Tlaloc is more accurately interpreted as a multivalent deity related to the earth, mountains, and caves that, in turn, are sources of water, ancestors, and other phenomena.
Accordingly, the Tlaloc entity embodied several interrelated concepts derived from a foundational cosmovision of mountains, caves, and a watery underworld, which in turn were related to the origins of water, ancestors, fertility, and emergence. Aspects of the Tlaloc complex were also associated with quadripartite directional colors, symbols, and mountain peaks. These concepts and their material manifestations in ritual landscapes of shrines associated with mountains, caves, and water sources certainly relate to the ancient and historic Southwest (Schaafsma Reference Schaafsma, Schaafsma and Riley1999; Schaafsma and Taube Reference Schaafsma, Taube, Quilter and Miller2006; Taube Reference Taube1986). Many GE entities are portrayed as emerging from terrace motifs from cracks and crevices, or they were painted inside caves (Berrier Reference Berrier2013; Schaafsma Reference Schaafsma, Schaafsma and Riley1999, Reference Schaafsma2015). Caves as sacred places of emergence of ancestors and deities are of particular relevance and reflect a shared tradition of emergence cosmology in Mesoamerica and the Southwest. As Taube (Reference Taube1986:77) suggests, “The Teotihuacan cave may mark an important stage not only in the development of Mesoamerican emergence mythology, but also that of the American Southwest.” Note that we suggest here that the Southwest cave and associated emergence beliefs were earlier than, and independent of, any direct transmission and influence from Teotihuacan and Classic period Mesoamerica.
The revised dating of GE/Tlaloc iconography establishes that certain foundational concepts of this shared Southwest and Mesoamerican cosmovision and theme of emergence appeared centuries earlier in the southern Southwest than previously known. We intentionally use the term appeared rather than arrived. The presence of the GE entity and shrine caves does not necessarily imply a Mesoamerican origin for Jornada and Mimbres cosmologies during the period in question. GE imagery was possibly a symbolic visual expression of a preexisting cosmology. This perspective is similar to what Wright (Reference Wright2022) proposed for Colonial period Hohokam iconography—that it was a visual manifestation of preexisting religious concepts with deep temporal roots, rather than of Mesoamerican religious concepts diffused northward.
Considering the time depth of shrine caves and GE imagery established in this study, certain religious tenets associated with themes of emergence, caves, and mountains were likely part of a broader foundational pan-Southwest, Mesoamerican, and perhaps even hemispheric North American cosmology. Wright (Reference Wright2022) and Boyd (Reference Boyd2016) propose that comparable expressions of pan-regional cosmologies were represented in the rock art of the neighboring Hohokam and Lower Pecos regions, and deep histories of Native American beliefs undoubtedly existed elsewhere throughout the Southwest. Their origins may be related to the movement during the Archaic period of agricultural peoples who brought maize and an accompanying complex of beliefs, or what Washburn (Reference Washburn2012) describes as the corn lifeway. Certain components of the corn lifeway may indeed have arrived in the Jornada and Mimbres regions along with early horticulturalists during the Archaic period.
However, the ultimate origins of such beliefs and origin cosmologies may have even deeper temporal roots associated with founding populations of the Americas before more recent demographic shuffling, such as the expansion of agricultural groups that perhaps took place after the Arenal phase (Hallstatt interval). In this sense, a vital component of beliefs associated with the GE/Tlaloc complex was emergence, a central theme in both Southwestern and Mesoamerican cosmologies and one that was fundamental to establishing and centering community identity by anchoring origins within surrounding landscapes. The materialization of such origin cosmologies throughout the Southwest is well known through the creation of directional shrines, landscape and village shrines, and other practices by which past and contemporary Native American communities oriented and centered their settlements in relation to landscape features associated with origins and ancestors (Anschuetz Reference Anschuetz, Hegmon and Sunday Eiselt2005; Duwe Reference Duwe2020; Fowles Reference Fowles2009; Snead Reference Snead2008).
Similar practices of shrine creation, most conspicuously exemplified by the shrine caves described here, were present in the southern Southwest and reflected similar material expressions of origin cosmologies associated with mountains, caves, and water sources. Direct linkages between villages and shrine caves have been identified, such as a 7 km long pathway of ceramic sherds and pot breaks leading to and from Sacramento shelter, a prominent shrine cave, to a plaza pueblo of 75–125 rooms (Miller Reference Miller, Stokes, Dungan and Sedig2023a). The chronologies described in this study reveal that such practices and imagery were present by at least AD 600 or 700 and that practices of shrine construction in caves were even older, extending into the Archaic period.
The Storm God/GE complex was expressed in different ways throughout Mesoamerica and the Southwest. How, when, and why certain components of the Storm God/GE complex were emphasized over others is a critical question that merits further inquiry. Depending on the specific nexus of social, political, economic, and environmental factors in which a society is embedded, certain components of a multilayered and multifaceted cosmology will be emphasized and more widely expressed in oral traditions and visual media than others. The components of a foundational Storm God/GE complex and cosmovision that were emphasized and accentuated among the inhabitants of desert villages in southern New Mexico undoubtedly differed from those among the complex, urbanized state societies of central Mexico. This does not imply that one was more sophisticated or elaborate than the other, but rather that certain components were differentially expressed by ritual practices and the material expressions of those practices in various media. Nor does it imply that Mesoamerican societies were always the source and that Southwest communities were the downstream recipients of beliefs and technologies (see Geib [Reference Geib2017] for an example of southward diffusion of FCS into Mesoamerican rather late in prehistory).
Additionally, the contingent historical processes underlying the development and evolution of beliefs, symbols, and metaphors must be factored into the equation. It is not surprising that different material and temporal expressions of GE iconography were present even between the closely related Jornada and Mimbres regions. The Jornada region was a reservoir of both Mimbres and Jornada beliefs and iconographic expressions, and many components of this deep time Mogollon tradition were maintained among Jornada communities for three centuries or more after the end of the Mimbres Classic period at AD 1140 (Miller Reference Miller, Harry and Herr2018a). Some of those beliefs and their symbolic representations undoubtedly underwent further changes and evolution during those centuries.
Our discussion to this point has focused on the appearance of GE imagery, but the estimated end phase boundary determined through Bayesian modeling (see Figure 9) is also worth considering, especially as it may relate to the appearance of katsina religion. The two-sigma boundary estimate is AD 1175–1600, and the one-sigma probability distribution is AD 1225–1365. Given that the latest date obtained on GE imagery is cal AD 1185–1275 from the U-Bar Cave effigy, the one-sigma estimate may best reflect the modeled phase boundary based on current evidence. This leads to the supposition that sometime during the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, GE imagery may have been supplanted by katsina imagery or perhaps was incorporated into katsina iconography and beliefs through a process of syncretism as proposed by Schaafsma (Reference Schaafsma, Schaafsma and Riley1999). In contrast to its common portrayal in Jornada rock art and Mimbres ceramics, GE imagery is conspicuously absent among El Paso Polychrome vessels painted with representational images and dating to AD 1300–1450. The apparent absence of GE imagery is even more remarkable considering the fluorescence of terrace motifs and other images portrayed in ceramics, stone, bone, shell, and rock art produced by pueblo communities of the time (Miller Reference Miller, Harry and Herr2018a; Stewart et al. Reference Stewart, Matousek and Kelly1990). We acknowledge that such musings are speculative until a larger sample of dates is obtained.
Shrine Caves and GE Cosmology in a Regional Chronometric Perspective
The chronologies of assemblages and objects deposited in shrine caves can be integrated with the study of regional datasets, linking temporal changes in iconography and ritual practice to phenomena such as climate change, technological change, migration, and social and religious movements. The Bayesian modeling presented in Figure 9 yielded estimated beginning and ending temporal boundaries for GE imagery. The same phase modeling procedure is applied to the two periods of dates obtained from the 22 items securely provenienced to Ceremonial Cave and Caves 5 and 7 to estimate the timing of the two major episodes of deposition in the shrine cave: the first period when dart foreshafts, FCS, and pahos were added and the second period when tablitas were placed. The Bayesian begin phase probability distributions from these analyses can be combined with summed probability distributions (SPDs) representing the cumulative calibrated age ranges of thousands of dates. The SPDs reveal broader geographic and temporal scales, thus providing a means to examine how the appearance of iconographic styles and changes in the types of items deposited in the shrine cave correlate with other archaeological patterns (Miller Reference Miller, Nash and Baxter2023c). Figure 10 displays the SPDs of 3,436 radiocarbon dates from features and 453 dates associated with maize from the Jornada region. Projected against these trends are the modeled Bayesian begin phase estimates for the early interval of ritual deposition (“dart/FCS/paho phase”), the latter interval of deposition (“tablita phase”), and the appearance of GE imagery.
Figure 10. Phase boundary probabilities (1-sigma) for the appearance of three primary periods of object placement in Ceremonial Cave superimposed on the summed probability distributions (SPDs) of all Jornada dates (modified from Miller Reference Miller, Nash and Baxter2023c).
The begin phase probability distribution for the deposition of darts, FCS, and pahos closely matches the end of the Arenal phase hiatus that reflects a regional manifestation of the Hallstatt interval. New projectile point forms, rock art styles, and other technologies appeared at this time. The period of AD 600–700 is equally noteworthy. Bayesian modeling established that GE imagery appeared between AD 575 and 725. Notably, the Bayesian modeling of the period of tablita deposition yields a nearly identical begin phase boundary estimate, establishing that the appearance of GE iconography was contemporaneous with the pronounced change in the types of materials deposited in shrine caves. As illustrated in Figure 10, these developments were also synchronous with the pronounced increase in radiocarbon date frequencies in the Jornada and elsewhere across southern New Mexico and Trans-Pecos Texas (see Anyon et al. Reference Anyon, Creel, Gilman, LeBlanc, Miller, Nash and Nelson2017). Space limits our presentation, but the chronological events identified in Figure 10 mirror similar peaks in SPDs for a variety of chronometrically dated social and settlement changes across the Jornada and Mimbres regions during the seventh and eighth centuries AD.
Correlation—or in this case contemporaneity—is not causation, and we caution against invoking facile structuralist arguments linking religious change and complex social movements to a singular event or process. The chronological patterns presented in Figure 10 do not imply that the appearance of religious beliefs and their symbolic expressions, or changes in ritual practice associated with those beliefs, were a result of increasing populations or more intensive use of landscapes or agricultural production. Returning to Figure 10, Freeman and coauthors (Reference Freeman, Byers, Robinson and Kelly2018) conclude that radiocarbon date frequencies more precisely serve as an estimate of the quantities of energy consumed by past populations, which in turn were proportional to the quantities of waste products produced (i.e., organic matter sampled for radiocarbon dating). In other words, the pronounced rise in radiocarbon date frequencies evident between AD 600 and 700 reflects complex changes in economic and social organization that resulted in greater levels of energy consumption that may or may not have exclusively been initiated or structured by univariate demographic trends. Another significant observation is that the appearance of neither the “dart/FCS/paho phase” nor the combined “tablita phase and GE entity phase” was contemporaneous with any appreciable increases in the frequencies of radiocarbon-dated maize. A slight increase in maize dates is evident between 50 BC and AD 50, a second rise is apparent at AD 1000, and the trend of maize dates peaks between AD 1250 and 1450. If the SPD of maize dates is considered an accurate proxy estimate of agricultural production and reliance, each increase occurred from two to four centuries after the dated changes in shrine cave deposition and iconography, which casts some doubt on essentialist interpretations linking the appearance or fluorescence of certain beliefs to agricultural intensification.
A comprehensive exploration of the underlying and interrelated causes of these and other regional developments is beyond the scope of this article. Potential avenues of inquiry include exploring relationships between social complexity, the restructuring of ritualism and identity leading to intensified expressions of existing cosmologies, and a resulting expansion in ritual density as defined by Bell (Reference Bell1997). Future research is required to unpack the relationships between radiocarbon date frequencies, demographics, and social complexity. Regardless of the causal factors, something in the social world of Jornada and Mimbres communities changed, and those changes led to religious vitalization and revitalization movements and shifts in ritual practice and artistic representation. Wright (Reference Wright2022:151) offers a similar conclusion for developments in Hohokam iconography during this period, suggesting that the new and elaborated iconographic expressions across the Hohokam world did not arrive from the south via diffusion:
This instead marks a change in artistic expression associated with a larger social movement that involved the reorganization of access to religious knowledge and participation in ritualism . . . , where possibly arcane concepts, beliefs, and convictions—entrenched and unquestioned—were finally illustrated for all to see.
To be clear, we do not entirely disregard the possibility that the Storm God/GE complex arrived in the southern Southwest via some process of diffusion. We wish to emphasize, however, that it is equally plausible that such changes were intrinsically related to a cosmovision of greater antiquity as materialized via shrine caves and symbolic representations. In either case, even if a Storm God/GE cosmology of Mesoamerican origin arrived rather than appeared, it would have been integrated with those preexisting beliefs and modified through whatever historical events and processes transpired afterward. Whichever scenario took place, there was a restructuring of ritualism and identity at AD 600–700 that continued to reference a more ancient cosmovision.
Conclusions
Through direct dating of perishable items from shrine caves, it is possible to define both specific events and long-term trends spanning millennia. Once the timing of a certain phenomenon, such as the appearance of an iconographic style, is established, we can begin to examine the various contemporaneous processes and causes related to that appearance, whether they be population movements, religious and ideological movements, social networks, or perhaps an increase in ritual density associated with preexisting Indigenous beliefs that became more widely expressed through multiple media ranging from rock art, ceramics, and perishables to carvings of bone, shell, and stone. Combined with other information, the direct dating of perishable artifacts from shrine caves reveals profound continuities in ritual practice related to specific landscape features that persisted from perhaps as early as the Middle Archaic period to the contemporary Pueblo societies of the Southwest. We can also isolate in time several changes in ritual practice and accompanying material expressions associated with those beliefs that may be of significance in broader social developments, noting that religious transformations took place throughout south-central New Mexico and Trans-Pecos Texas after 350 BC, between the seventh and eighth centuries AD, and perhaps during the fourteenth century AD.
We also view this deep time perspective as a counterbalance to the practice of projecting the ethnographic present onto the distant past. Interpretations of religious meanings among past Southwest societies are often derived from comparative analyses of historic and contemporary Puebloan ethnographies. Lightfoot (Reference Lightfoot1995:205; emphasis added) offers a perceptive comment on the matter: “Rather than viewing the ethnohistorical and ethnographic sources as simple analogs for directly reconstructing the past, they should be viewed as revealing of the time when they were recorded, as end sequences of long-term developments in Native societies.” Such long-term developments are the subject of interest, because the chronologies presented here provide new insights on earlier eras of religious expression that can complement the end sequences documented in archaeological research, ethnographies, and historical anthropology. The dating of shrine caves and iconographic motifs further clarifies both the time depth and the nature of foundational beliefs, allowing for interpretations of religious change and transmission to be more securely anchored in an empirical context.
By clarifying the deep time origins of particular cosmologies and cosmovisions, we can better understand their ancient beginnings and contemporary endpoints, as well as the historical pathways between them; this understanding can lead to more fully realized perspectives on the contingent historical processes of demographic and climatic changes, migration and movement, and integration and resistance that ultimately led to religious revitalization movements, hybridization, and syncretism. It is very likely that the chronologically defined origins of religious beliefs and their material expressions reflect the wellspring from which the religious cosmologies and ideological worlds of the later and more thoroughly studied “classic” Jornada and Mimbres communities of the southern Southwest were derived.
Acknowledgments
We thank Fort Bliss and Bruce Huckell, Dave Phillips, and Ann Ramenofsky at UNM for support and encouragement. We also thank these individuals and institutions for their cooperation and assistance in allowing sampling of artifacts in their collections and permission to use images of the items: Julia Clifton, C. L. Kieffer-Nail, and the Collections Committee of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture; Steven LeBlanc, Genevieve Fisher, and the Collections Review Committee of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology; the Deaccession Committee of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory; Scott Cutler of the Centennial Museum; and David Phillips of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. Jesse Maisano and Tim Rowe of the CT Laboratory, Department of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, deserve credit for the CT analysis of hafted points. Michael Stowe of the Directorate of Public Works, White Sands Missile Range, supported the dating of the GE pictograph at LA 72165. The authors acknowledge Roger Anyon, Margaret Berrier, Pat Gilman, Tim Graves, Nancy Kenmotsu, Larry Loendorf, Scott Nicolay, Marvin Rowe, and Marc Thompson for insights and discussions, as well as the thoughtful comments and suggestions of the reviewers. Mark Willis drafted Figure 1 and Margaret Berrier provided the photograph for Figure 8e and drafted Figure 8f. John Carpenter edited the Spanish abstract.
Funding Statement
The collection and dating of samples were funded by three research programs: Creel received a research grant for dating foreshafts; a dissertation research project by Geib focused on FCS was funded by the National Science Foundation (Award 1025643), the New Mexico Archaeological Council, and the University of New Mexico (UNM; Hibben Doctoral Research Award and grant from the Graduate and Professional Student Association); the dating of tablitas and pahos by Miller was funded through several rock art documentation projects sponsored by the Environmental Division of Fort Bliss Military Installation.
Data Availability Statement
Radiocarbon report forms and data are available on request from the authors.
Competing Interests
The authors declare none.
Supplemental Material
The supplemental material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1017/aaq.2023.84.
Supplemental Table 1. AMS Radiocarbon Dates for Jornada and Mimbres Region Perishables and Plasma Oxidation AMS Dates for Pictographs.
