The October question is not did the people of the Lower Pecos play trick or treat although it is clear from their art that they understood the concept of flying felines and ghostly spirits. Instead, the discussion centers on the definition of Lower Pecos cultural area boundaries and how the people traveled within that area.

The concept of cultural areas is often a thorn in the side of archeological interpretation because the idea of boundaries seems somehow impermeable and fixed. Territoriality goes hand in hand with societal complexity so we end up with entities like the State of Texas, Val Verde County, the San Antonio ETJ, the Austin Independent School District, Seminole Canyon State Historic Park and my house lot, all of which have clearly defined boundaries. In prehistory (and during wars in Europe and Africa), cultural boundaries are constantly changing over time and often didn't really constitute a boundary at all. Theoretically, a cultural zone should reflect the distribution of like-minded people who participate in a common economic, technological, ideological, and organizational system, and often with genetic ties, i.e. the Caddo, the Incas, the Plains Indians, and so on. The modern equivalent might be ethnicity although a number of noted scholars claim that ethnicity can not be detected in prehistory (beg to disagree but that is another story). In fact, cultural zones are defined archeologically by the distribution of similar items of material culture and some vague notion of geography, i.e. Central Texas or South Texas, neither of which have a unique character or demonstrable cultural unity. Using any or all of these criteria, the only time that the Lower Pecos is a distinct cultural area is during the heyday of the Pecos River style artists. We presume that this is the Middle Archaic period, ca. 3000-4000 years ago, based on other regionalized traits and some idea of cultural processes that might have produced the art. Before that time and after it, the people who lived in the Lower Pecos region shared most of their archeologically visible traits with other folks, sometimes to the north, sometimes to the south, west, or east. The power of the Pecos River art as a cultural marker is evident in the fact that all of the guidebooks to Texas archeology continue to refer to the Lower Pecos as a cultural zone, long after its ethnicity was diluted and mingled with its neighbors. Keeping in mind that the Lower Pecos is a geographic area, a place, rather than a cultural area, a concept, it is possible to observe the many variations of nomadism that prevailed over time. Nomadism conjures up a vision of hooded Bedouins, riding in camel caravans and driving their flocks from oasis to oasis. In fact, Microsoft's thesaurus presents a number of alternatives to the word nomadic that imply purposeless wandering about, going so far as to equate nomadism to gypsies. In archeological parlance, however, nomadism simply means without a fixed permanent base. People can practice scheduled or seasonal rounds, revisiting the same places over and over, and still be nomadic. They can operate from base camps during specific times of the year, practicing what Binford described as logistically ordered subsistence strategies - foraging or collecting, depending upon how many of the social group moved at any given time. Walter Taylor devised the concept of tethered nomadism to explain site distributions in arid Coahuila where people were tied to isolated water sources but foraged at distance in other environmental zones. Over time, we see several manifestations of nomadism in the Lower Pecos geographical area. In the beginning, the Folsom and probably the Clovis people were in the Lower Pecos, practicing their traditional role as big game hunters as far as we can tell from the few sites of that age. The consensus is that the basic operational strategy was exploiting large herds of now-extinct mega-beasts, such as bison, horses, and camels although they certainly would not overlook other sources of food and medicine. Thus, their movements were predicated on the movements of the animals. Several studies of Folsom mobility patterns have been conducted on the Plains based on the presence of exotic flints and tools and on the degree of tool wear and refurbishing. All of these indicate that these people ranged over great distances, incomprehensible to modern people who rarely walk over a few feet to the parking lot. Although we have little evidence of their occupational sites, the dearth of Paleoindian material in rock shelters that have been dug to depth suggests that they preferred to camp in the open, another hallmark of a mobile population. You might think of their patterned movements as migratory nomadism after the habits of the animals they pursued. The Archaic people, both before and after the fluorescence of the Pecos River style, practiced an entirely different type of nomadism. They began to live in rock shelters as well as open camps and in fact seemed to prefer the naturally available housing afforded by caves and overhangs. They undoubtedly moved from site to site, for functional reasons, i.e. when natural resources were expended in the vicinity or the place became too dirty, as well as seasonal movements governed by the maturation of plants and animals. However, it is unlikely that they were free ranging like their Paleoindian predecessors. They were probably organized into family units, rather than logistical task forces, and moved the entire household - imagine carrying all of your domestic goods, implements, furnishings, and children without the help of horses or automobiles. This alone can account for small families and few possessions. At least once a year, and perhaps more often, the population coalesced, coming together at a preappointed place for social, political, and economic reasons. When they dispersed, they carried with them new ideas or information that was then spread from person to person and group to group. Within this overall mobility pattern, variations emerged depending upon specific circumstances. I personally believe that during the period of greatest rock art production that the general population was circumscribed by aridity and forced into residence along the major rivers and springs, while mobile task forces were sent out to obtain food and other resources in the arid uplands. This, to me, is the time of the Lower Pecos cultural area - the time when distinctive traits that can differentiate the people of the region from their neighbors developed and became institutionalized in the culture. Within either system, there would have been certain individuals that traveled from group to group - great healers or shaman for example may have made pilgrimages or been called to the farthest outpost to work their magic. Traders were also traditionally free to move about and were great sources of information about life outside the fringes of any given ethnic group. One of the major functions of the mitotes or celebrations that probably also produced much of the rock art was information exchange. People coming in to a central point and departing with new knowledge that they in turn passed on to their neighbors. The shelter-dwelling people of Early and Middle Archaic times probably experienced a rude shock when - due to environmental changes that expanded the Plains grasslands into the Lower Pecos - new folks arrived, once again trailing behind those migratory meat markets, the bison. The desert-adapted folks may have moved south for a while or they may have tolerated these newcomers who may have been a presence only during the cooler months. Nevertheless, this time sees the blurring of the cultural distinctiveness that is the hallmark of the Middle Archaic Lower Pecos. Although their lifestyles were very different, both the veggie-eaters and the meat-eaters were nomadic - they just moved in a different way for different reasons. With the retreat of the grasslands and the reinstitution of arid conditions, the shelter dwellers again gained priority in the archeological record and they stayed that way pretty much until proto-historic and historic times. Now however they share many of their diagnostic traits with other people, especially their neighbors in south and central Texas. There is some evidence that the Lower Pecos was again part of the Plains "sea of grass" at the time of contact and bison were again migrating into the region. But the big uproar came with the advent of the mounted Plains Indians. Initially, the native people figured out that the Spanish were bad news slavers and managed to stay clear of them as much as possible but the mounted Plains Indians were another story. They soon developed a variation on the theme of migratory nomadism - following the bison herds but this time on horseback so they were much more efficient. When the herds were decimated - in part to deprive the Indians of their major source of sustenance - these versatile economists adapted their migratory pattern to raiding the settled ranches and villages of Coahuila. Passing through a virtually depopulated Lower Pecos on their way from the Red River to the Rio Grande, they garnered their booty - including many Mexican slaves - and returned north to their villages. One group of young Kiowa warriors apparently rode all the way to the Yucatan just to see what was on the other side of the mountain. So, the Plains Indian raiding patterns were just a variation on scheduled or seasonal procurement rounds but one with severe consequences for the indigenous people and the new settlers. So we see that, over time, the Lower Pecos has seen several types of nomadism - the Paleoindian's pursuing the mega-beasts of the late Pleistocene, the seasonal or scheduled rounds of the Archaic people, the return to migratory nomadism in the Late Archaic, a reversion to the Archaic lifeways, and finally the movements of the "finest light cavalry in the world - the Plains Indians." In this age of modern communication and transportation, we tend to discount the rapidity with which information passed from hand to hand, mouth to mouth in prehistoric times. Just recall that the first news of the destruction of Fort St. Louis in East Texas by the Karankawas reached the Spanish at La Junta (near Presidio) via Juan Sabeata, a Jumano chief who had been to the Caddo trade fairs and returned with a momento of the French colony's destruction.