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Prehistoric Texas Main

Patterns of the Past

Explore this interactive scene to see examples of artifacts and features excavated at Firecracker Pueblo at El Paso, on which this scene is based, and other nearby sites. Painting by George Nelson, courtesy of the Institute for Texan Cultures, University of Texas at San Antonio.

People of the Jornada Mogollon culture began building multi-room adobe pueblos in the Trans-Pecos region after about A. D. 1200. An increasingly sedentary people with extensive trade connections, they grew corn, beans, and squash in small plots near their villages but also continued the hunting and gathering traditions of their ancestors. In this scene, based on Firecracker Pueblo at El Paso in the early 1400s, puebloan families go about their daily work: making and painting colorful pottery vessels for cooking and storage, knapping stone tools, processing foods such as corn and beans or, in the case of one elder, just sitting and soaking in the desert sunlight.