Trip Report: Witte Museum, San Antonio
People of the Pecos Gallery
Carrie L and Marilyn F escorted Mary Ann B, Janis K, and Cindy S to the Witte Museum in San Antonio to gain deeper knowledge of the prehistoric People of the Pecos River in Texas. This gallery is complete with collections of found objects, including picture stones, baskets, rabbit leather vests, musical instruments (like flutes made from the leg bones of cranes!), and life-size models of families living in rockshelters.
The draw for us TOWNies is our members’ explorations of the West Texas region around Del Rio and Comstock; there the Shumla Archaeological School provides research opportunities for scientists around the world who are piecing together the culture and belief systems of our ancient Texans.
Our June TOWN meeting speaker will be a board member of the Shumla School, and you will get a glimpse of their techniques and interpretive insights into the mysterious iconography found at Seminole, Devils River, and tens of other sites in the Lower Pecos region, sites that are rapidly deteriorating due to inundation and weathering. By scientific analysis of pigments, layers, and creation stories, the Shumla School and archaeologists are uncovering the lifestyles of Texas’ First Peoples.
The People of the Pecos Gallery has an innovative digital exhibit of 5 Texas rock art sites projected onto a stone-like wall, with the figures explained and revealed.
Our June TOWN speaker, Lacy Finley, arranged for the Curator of Anthropology, Dr. Bryan Bayles, to meet us at the Witte and tell us about the exhibit and deepen our understanding. He pointed us toward some additional resources, as well.
We don’t want to “scoop” Lacy’s talk, so we won’t tell everything in this exhibit, but, in a nutshell, it’s a model of the universal experience of humans explaining and passing on essential stories to their descendants (like us): Where did we come from? Where are we going? How do we get there? [credit: Dan Brown]
Outstanding Museum! Three hours was not near long enough, but almost long enough for the one Pecos gallery.