Archaic period hunter-gatherers of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and Coahuila, Mexico, created complex rock art murals containing elaborately painted anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures. These figures are frequently portrayed with dots or lines emanating out of or into their open mouths. In this article, we discuss patterns in shape, color, and arrangement of this pictographic element and propose that artists used this graphic device to denote speech, breath, and the soul. They communicated meaning through the image-making process, alternating brushstroke direction to indicate inhalation versus exhalation or using different paint application techniques to reflect measured versus forceful speech. The choices made by artists in the production of the imagery reflect their cosmology and the framework of ideas and beliefs through which they interpreted and interacted with the world. Bridging the iconographic data with ethnohistoric and ethnographic texts from Mesoamerica, we suggest that speech and breath expressed in the rock art of the Lower Pecos was tied to concepts of the soul, creation, and human origins.

德克萨斯州西南部下佩科斯峡谷地和墨西哥科阿韦拉的古代狩猎采集者创作了复杂的岩石艺术壁画，其中包含精心绘制的拟人化和动物形态的人物。这些人物经常被描绘成从或从他们张开的嘴里发出的点或线。在本文中，我们讨论了这种象形元素的形状、颜色和排列方式，并建议艺术家使用这种图形装置来表示言语、呼吸和灵魂。他们通过图像制作过程传达意义，交替笔触方向以指示吸气与呼气，或使用不同的油漆应用技术来反映测量与有力的言语。艺术家在图像制作中所做的选择反映了他们的宇宙观以及他们解释世界并与世界互动的思想和信仰框架。将图像数据与来自中美洲的民族历史和民族志文本联系起来，我们认为下佩科斯岩石艺术中表达的语言和呼吸与灵魂、创造和人类起源的概念有关。