More about Mortuary Practices in the Lower Pecos River Region of Southwest Texas

The use of small, inaccessible solution cavities and horizontal shaft caves as mortuary sites, a variation on the better-known practice of bundled burial in dry rock shelter deposits, is eminently practical in the rugged karst topography of the Lower Pecos River region. In the smaller sites, however, complete burial was not feasible and it appears that bundled bodies were placed in these caves or shafts with only a covering of rocks to deter scavengers. The mortuary population recovered from these sites is often fragmented and dispersed by natural forces and reuse of the site for additional interments. Grave goods recovered from the eight sites of this type span Early Archaic through Late Prehistoric or proto-historic times, ca. 6000 to 400 B.P. It is suggested that mortuary use of shaft caves had a synergistic effect on the sacred or ritual importance of both funerary behavior and natural features

Archaeology · Cave · Geography · Karst · Natural (archaeology · Population · Prehistory · Archaeology and Natural History · Geology · Latin American and Latino Studies · Rangeland and Wildlife Management

• Mobility and the Locomotor Skeleton at the Foraging to Farming Transition

  Marsha D Ogilvie•From Biped to Strider•2004

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• Brucellosis in an adult female from Fate Bell Rock Shelter, Lower Pecos, Texas (4000–1300 BP)

  Open Access•Christine Jones•International Journal of…•2019

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• Hunter-Gatherer Mortuary Practices during the Central Texas Archaic

  Leland C Bement•Hunter-Gatherer Mortuary…•1995

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• The Temporal Range of Bundled Burials in the Lower Pecos Region of Southwest Texas

  Solveig A Turpin•Plains Anthropologist•2012

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• Late archaic Mortuary practices Of the Lower pecos River region, Southwest texas

  David H Riskind, M Henneberg et al.•Plains Anthropologist•1986

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