Moisés Valadez Moreno

21 All Routes, All DiRections The Prehistoric Landscape of Nuevo León Moisés Valadez Moreno The first humans to occupy the diverse territories of Nuevo León encountered an environment in the process of change. They coexisted with the last Pleistocene species in northeastern Mexico, including the bison and mammoth. Much later, the marked climatic changes of the initial Holocene led to a considerable reduction in plant species. This impacted the population of herbivores, whose numbers had already declined before the reduction in forage, and even more dramatically the carnivores, including humans, who depended on the former for their subsistence. The human ability to adapt to an omnivorous diet, however, proved so successful that from the arrival of indigenous peoples to Nuevo León around 12,000 years ago until their historic disappearance, they were able to sustain a lifeway based on the procurement of raw materials and the hunting, fishing, and gathering of various species. At no time did these societies find it necessary to implement artificial tech- niques to accelerate the biological cycle of plants and animals. In Nuevo León the development of agriculture and the domestication of animals were never require- ments for survival, as occurred in areas farther south. This condition of maintaining the same resource base through time permitted these indigenous societies to navigate their lives and the natural world through 365 Moisés Valadez Moreno myths, rituals, and ceremonies that structured their social relationships. These patterns persisted for generations until their voices were silenced by immigrants speak- ing a strange tongue who proclaimed themselves—without permission or consider- ation—masters of all lands, plants, animals, and people in the region and the places inhabited by their ancestors. Hispanic colonists never understood the indigenous forms of organization in the region. Instead, they imposed their way of life on the local population and opted for violent seclusion in missions, encomiendas (grants of Indian land and la- bor), and prisons, where indigenous people were sometimes sold as slaves for work in the mines as far away as the booming city of Zacatecas (Del Hoyo 1979, 1985). In contrast to other parts of Mexico, the lack of an indigenous population in Nuevo León for more than a century led to the gradual negation of the native culture at a regional level. Numerous arguments justifying this ethnic genocide still appear in contemporary history textbooks (De León 1961:40). Nevertheless, the cultural complexity achieved by the indigenous societies of Nuevo León over 12,000 years is recorded in some documentary references, and the significance of their cultural tradition can be inferred from the material remains described in various archaeological studies. To date, archaeological investigations have verified the existence of almost a thousand temporary occupation sites in caves, rockshelters, and open-air locations, ranging in size from a few meters to several kilometers. These have been recorded in all ecosystems, including valleys, plains, and alluvial fans, hilltops and slopes, canyons and ravines, and the margins and banks of rivers and intermittent streams (Rivera Estrada 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001; Valadez Moreno 1993a, 1994, 1995, 1997a, 1998, 1999a, 1999b, 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c, 2002a). These investigations have resulted in the recording of over 25,000 archaeological remains, including materials of stone, bone, shell, wood, clay, and vegetal fiber. Morphotechnological and functional analyses of these materials have identified such artifacts as choppers, scrapers, projectile points, brushes, gouges, polishers, perforators, necklace beads, pendants, pipes, smoothers, incising plates, vessels, and grinding tools for the preparation of plant materials and pigments. Hundreds of hearths, fire pits, and human burials have also been found, as well as numerous cave paintings and thousands of rocks carved with petroglyphs. I discuss the rock art in greater detail in the next section. Chronologically, this abundance of cultural material is assigned to the follow- ing periods: • Period I (ca. 12,000–9000 B.P.): characterized by tools and expedient artifacts such as unifaces with reworked edges (flat scrapers), flat tabular bifaces, elongated knives, small gouges in a diamond form, and lightly retouched flakes. • Period II (ca. 9000–7500 B.P.): represented by disc-shaped bifaces, unifacial and bifacial gouges of the Clear Fork type, and pendunculate-shaped projectile points of the Lerma and Plainview-Golondrina types. 366 All Routes, All Directions • Period III (ca. 7500–5000 B.P.): notable for its scarcity of archaeological materials, with only a few unifacially and bifacially reworked flakes found; gouges continue, and elongated projectile points with a triangular and lanceolate form appear. • Period IV (ca. 5000–1000 B.P.): projectile points of triangular, amygdaloidal, and pendunculate forms of the Shumla, Matamoros, Tortugas, Abasolo, No- gales, Catán, NL 2 Rana, NL 4 Pinitos, NL 5 Cataara, NL 8 Icamole, NL 12 Anacua, and NL 15 Rinconada types are common. Also found are choppers, simple scrapers, and bifaces of diverse forms, scrapers of the Coahuila type, grinding instruments, gouges, necklace beads and shell pendants, bone strikers and spatulas, stone pipes, and plates incised like amulets. • Period V (ca. 1000 B.P. to time of Spanish contact): crude artifacts absent, scrapers of the Coahuila type and gouges continue, and arrow points of the Starr, Fresno, Harrel, and Toyah types and grinders proliferate. • Period VI (time of Spanish contact to the end of the nineteenth century): represented by projectile points and scrapers manufactured from metal and glass, shell buttons, and small, rough ceramic vases. ROCK ART Various studies have discussed these peoples’ settlement patterns, religion, sha- manism, burials, linguistic traits, and ethnicity (Reyes Trigos and Valadez Moreno 1996; Valadez Moreno 1993b, 1997b, 1999c, 1999d, 1999e, 2001d, 2002b; Valadez Moreno and Reyes Trigos 1997). What stands out is the large number of engraved and painted stone symbols and markings in the region. At first glance, the charac- teristics and distribution of this rock art appear abstract and without order. A closer look at the location, orientation, and types of elements at each site, however, reveals their intentional placement on prominent vertical and horizontal rock outcrops and an orientation toward geological forms or features on the landscape. This ordering of space, in which each symbol or group of symbols, each site or group of sites, has a predetermined position in relation to the surrounding landscape, denotes an omnidirectional sense reflected not only in the cave paintings but also in activities, behavior, and objects—including the types of dwellings, encampments, roasting features, and seasonal rounds. Rock art was used to define territories and delimit sites and to identify special places on the landscape, such as peaks, cardinal points and elevations, and points on the horizon that marked the rising and setting of the sun on predetermined dates, such as solstices and equinoxes. In reality, such observations did not demand complex calculations or a preci- sion characteristic of agricultural groups. Through the use of simple sums and mul- tiples of numbers, people could keep track of the passage of days, the moon’s cycle, the growth of plants, and animals’ gestational periods and identify the right time to move a seasonal camp or to celebrate important events and ceremonies. 367 Moisés Valadez Moreno The highest concentration of cave sites in Nuevo León is found in the east- central and northern parts of the state. The cave iconography of this region exhibits four principal themes: • Places devoted to special features on the landscape. Related images include angular, undulating, or curved lines resembling the tops, peaks, or profiles of hills or mountain ranges. • Sites dedicated to the recording of celestial events. Images at these sites include straight or crossed lines or lines intersecting circles that coincide with the cardinal directions, or simple circles, series of circles, and lines connecting or hanging from circles that represent the sun, moon, or stars or the passage of comets and shooting stars. These sites are usually on hilltops where the night sky can be observed or at locations where the rising and setting of the sun are marked by hills to the east and west. • Sites devoted to the veneration of water and hunting. Here are found series of straight, horizontal, and vertical lines, parallel lines, and sinuous or zigzag lines indicative of rain, lightning, or riverbeds and creek beds through which water flows. Such images are commonly found at the junctions between hills, along drainages and rivers, and at springs where the rocks come into contact with water. Also found are depictions of deer horns and tracks, atlatls, projectile points, and series of dots similar to numerical beads. The latter may have been used to keep track of the phases of the moon and the gestational periods of deer (Murray 1982, 1986, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1999). • Sites with representations of ritual objects and mythical people. Engraved images related to these themes include handled knifes, psychoactive plants such as peyote, anthropomorphic figures with the hands, feet, or bodies of mythical beings, and individuals with special attributes. Their presence suggests the observance of various kinds of rituals (cf. Valadez Moreno 1997b). The most frequent locations for these images are the slopes and tops of low hills or the walls of shelters and caves. Although the deer horns, numbered beads, and atlatls described earlier are associated with hunting, a connection with the veneration of water may also be assumed, symbolizing the veneration of life. The search for places located at the junctions of hills, where water runs, may symbolize the feminine part from whence fluid runs after the source is broken and life is born. The chronicles relate that when a boy was born, he was carried to a nearby creek to be washed as his first contact with the exterior world.

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