On the trail in Southern New Mexico on Private and Public Lands: Mogollon Rock Art Styles and Apache Rock Art. An Overview for Friends Around the World.

Dear Rock Art Friends:

The last time we "talked", Rick Coleman and I were leaving the Sonora district of Mexico, driving through the border crossing at Nogales, Mexico heading into Southern New Mexico.  We went through many sites that our host had set up for us, including some on private land.  Most of these sites were small, but the Jornada style is remarkable nevertheless [see below].  However, there is one public site that anyone can see for 5$ and it contains several thousand petroglyphs in a few square miles and a beautiful, sparkling clean campground right next to the rock art area at Three Rivers Petroglyph Site.  All of this is just a few miles off of a modern freeway and a few miles north of the town of Alamogordo, New Mexico.  A little further away is the incomparable White Sands National Mounument, the Mescalaro Apache Indian Reservation and the beautiful town of Las Cruces that provides gourmet Sonoran food that can only be found in certain areas of New Mexico. If you are not driving and camping, you may fly into either El Paso, Texas, which is closer to all of the above, or secondarily, fly into Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is further northwest of all of these features.  Flying in and driving to Three Rivers would be about 2 hours from either entry point.  While it is difficult to beat Las Cruces for amenities, Alamogordo is closer to both White Sands and Three Rivers and has plenty of facilities.  OK, enough of the practicalities.  The bottom line is do not miss out on this world class Sonoran cuisine.

Southern New Mexico Rock Art. 

Three exceptional sources of overview material for the Rock Art of New Mexico are [1] Rock Art of New Mexico or [2] Indian Rock Art of the Southwest by Polly Schaafsma and [3] Signs of Life: Rock Art of the Upper Rio Grande by Dennis Slifer.

In Southern New Mexico the primary prehistoric culture Culture is Mogollon [pronounced Muggie Yone].   The Mogollon Culture of Southern New Mexico extends into Southeastern Arizona, Western Texas and into the northern reaches of Mexico's Chihuahua and Sonora regions.  Its origins are derived from the earlier Cochise Archaic culture in the Western highlands of New Mexico [Mountain Mogollon or MM],  and henceforth it spread into the Eastern desert regions of New Mexico [Desert Mogollon or DM].  The Mogollon culture extended from about 300 B.C. to about 1400 A.D.  From around 1000 A.D. there was increasing influences from the Anasazi to the North upon the [MM].  Rock art styles attributable to the MM include Mogollon Red [500 A.D. to about 1300 A.D.] in the San Simon and the Pine Lawn areas of southwest Arizona and the  Pine Lawn area of New Mexico in the Mogollon mountains.  In this later region the Reserve Style of Petroglyphs, named after the town of Reserve in the San Francisco-Tularosa river drainages may have been an Anasazi influence from around 1000-1300 A.D.

The Desert Mogollon [DM] area practiced their version of the Great Basin Abstract Style from about 1 A.D. to roughly 1000 A.D. followed in the  Jornada and Mimbres regions with the striking Jornada style [JS] from about 1000 A.D. to about 1400 A.D. when the region was abandoned.  The JS was adopted by the Peublos becoming known as Peublo or Ceremonial Art, then further adaptations in the last few hundred years by the Navajos and the Apaches.

Apart from their geographic range, the content of these four major styles can be differentiated as follows:

Mogollon Red [MG]: Generally small and simple sites consisting of stick figures, zig zags, dots or short lines/dashes, one pole ladders, bird tracks, and ovals or sunbursts.  Red pictographs of a more complex nature exist and belong to other types of non-MG styles.

Reserve Style: Often includes tracks of various animals especially the bear and images of a multitude of animals themselves.  Anthropomorphs have rectilinear or curilinear appendages often pointing upward or bent legged.  Often incorporated are curvilinear or rectilinear geometric or abstract element as well.  This style may have grown out of the MG under the influence of the Anasazi neighbors to the north after 1000 A.D.

Chihuahuan Desert component of the Great Basin Abstract Style which is widespread throughout the region and preceded the styles above through patination and superimposition.  While there is a prolific representation of abstract elements, realistic depictions of animals, animal tracks and anthropomorphs may be particular to the Mogollon region. 

Jornada Style: [JS] Beginning around 1050 A.D. in the Mimbres region, significant cultural influences began in the Casa Grandes area of Mexico to the south.  The culture there became strongly influenced by Mesoamerican cults of the Gods such as Tlaloc, Xipe Totec, Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli that each had its particular artistic elements.  Different elements of this predominant style can be found at Hueco Tanks, Alamo Mountain and Three Rivers Petroglyph site.  Masks and faces with almond eyes or google eyes are distinctive along with feathered or horned animals or anthropomorphs.  Flying or spread eagle birds, turtles, tadpoles, fish, corn, cloud terraces [stepped or stair like lines].  The style was carried over into Mimbres ceramics, into the Pueblo art after 1300 A.D., up to about 1600 A.D., and the Kachina Cult which seemingly borrowed heavily from the Tlaloc [Rain God] cult.  Without the existence of this art the massive influence of Central Mexico on the art of the Southwest region would be much less defined.  Even beyond the Pueblo and Kachina periods, the influence of the JS was keenly evident in the Navajo and Apache rock art that began about 1500 A.D.   As one travels from site to site in New Mexico, it is common to find JS sites in proximity to Pueblo art and in turn to Navajo and Apache art.  Since this was my first exposure to this progression, I often had difficulty attributing the rock art to the ethnography of the artist.

The discussion above is largely borrowed from Indian Rock Art of the Southwest by Pollly Schaafsma. School of American Research 1980.  This text is highly recommended to understand the material in more clarity and depth than the brief summary above.

Below are some slides taken from JS sites and Apache sites - I hope they help you clarify at least these two styles.  Keep your eyes peeled for one or two Reserve or Mogollon Red contributions.
As usual some of these photographs have been processed through either Adobe Photoshop or DStretch [thanks to Jon Harman as usual].
If you appreciate the rock art you see in this Blog, please get involved by volunteering to be a site steward with a local, state or federal park in your neighborhood or for the Bureau of Land Management.  If you need any ideas, email me and I can point you in a good direction.  We really need your help!  Thanks!
Don