Chiquihuitillos

Chiquihuitillos is an archeological site located in the municipality of Mina in Nuevo León, Mexico. The site is notable for its petroglyphs, and is considered an important part of the region's history.

Located in a desert area near the towns of Mina, Villaldama and Bustamante, it has one of the highest concentrations of cave paintings in Mexico. The site consists of several hills containing a series of rock shelters where ancient tribes painted drawings on the rocks and inscribed elements of their cosmological view.

The area was formerly inhabited by native Alzapas that spoke the Coahuilteco language. It is not certain how many people lived at the site, since it does not seem to be a residential area but a place for visitors, as currently there is no water in the vicinity to sustain a population. While the tribes left no traces of pyramids, as in the case of other mesoamerican cultures, the importance and the monumental nature of the paintings on ravines and cliffs is significant.

Specialists conclude that northeastern Mexico has a different but equally significant archaeological heritage as the rest of the country. According to anthropologist Roberto Rebolloso, there is a mistaken belief that there is nothing in the north, which is why archaeological study of the cultural processes there has been dismissed.

Site

Researchers say that the area was where ceremonies were performed and the stars were observed, but with a unique referential style among anthropologists.

According to William Breen Murray, archaeologist and University of Monterrey professor, Chiquihuitillos represents one of the most important cave art sites in the region. "Firstly, it is an important concentration of cave paintings and secondly, the manifestations show similarities with a series of other sites that are in a contiguous region, so we can speak of an entire tradition".

The painting zone is very large and dominates much of the landscape of the site. The bottom part of the hill has thousands of rocks with petroglyphs. There are petroglyphs at the base and the top of the plateau. There is no similarity between the paintings and the older petroglyphs, which may belong to completely separate traditions. The paintings resemble cave paintings located on the Rio Grande at the mouth of the Pecos River. The Pecos style is dated to about four thousand years ago, the approximate age of the site's paintings.

Art style

The art style, named after the site, is widely distributed in a region extending about 60 kilometers to the north, including the municipalities of Villa Aldama, Bustamante and Lampazos, and reaching as far as Candela, Coahuila. The area to the southwest includes Mina, García and part of Ramos Arizpe Municipality.

The art style at Chiquihuitillos is distinctive because the paintings are multicolored, with red, white, black, orange and yellow colors. Murray considers some of the paintings to be astronomical motifs, but as a whole the site is not defined by astronomy.

Rock art analysis

The prehistory of northeastern Mexico has remained surrounded by unknowns up to the 21st century, in part due to a political and cultural barrier that was only defined in the 19th century. Both settlers and archaeologists found the remains of Native American sites without value and of little or no interest. Today it is known that the cave images offer insight into the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that prevailed for most of prehistory. The paintings and carvings help to appreciate the knowledge generated by the direct dependence of nature and its use by means of simple but effective technology.

Northeastern rock art includes two types of art: rock engravings, also called petroglyphs, and cave paintings (pictograms or pictographs). A third type of cave art, geoglyphs, thus far have not been detected in the region. Petroglyphs are by far the most common. Various techniques such as picking and scraping were used to make the figures, which are representative images, abstract symbols, and simple marks on the rocks. In contrast, cave painting uses natural pigments applied directly on rock surfaces and survives in areas protected from destructive natural elements. Instruments used for the work ranged from pointed stones to feathers or fingers, but the use of these instruments is transient and rarely recognizable in archaeological records. In spite of different techniques, engraving and painting are often found in the same places and patterns are repeated in both techniques. They correspond to related traditions or cultural activities that allow them both to be grouped into northeastern rock art.

Rock art occurs throughout the Americas and can be traced back to the first settlers. In northeastern Mexico, human occupation is confirmed at least by the end of the last ice age, approximately 10,500 years Before Present (BP). Some sites were occupied earlier, radiocarbon dated to the early Archaic period, as is the case in Boca de Potrerillos, in Mina, dating to 7600 BP, and Cueva Ahumada in García, from 6000 BP. The cave art in Chiquihuitillos may be as old.

Researcher Solveig A. Turpin found several cave sites of the same style in northern Coahuila, establishing its diffusion to the south, on the Mexican side of the border. The Chiquihuitillos style has differences from Nuevo León cave painting, but there are similarities resulting from shamanist practices associated with peyote use in both areas.

See also

* Boca de Potrerillos
* Cueva Ahumada
*List of caves in Mexico

Notes

External links

Hacia la definición de un estilo: Las pictografías de Chiquihutillos en el noreste Mexicano. Solveig A. Turpin, Herbert H. Eling y Moisés Valadez Moreno.
The Chiquihuitillos Style, William Breen Murray. {{in lang, es

Archaeological sites in Nuevo León
Petroglyphs in Mexico
Caves of Mexico