ABSTRACT
This chapter explains ethnographic analogy to elucidate further the motivations for the production and consumption of and the meanings of rock art in the Trans-Pecos, which, in turn, can be used to help elucidate the boundaries of rock art regions. Fortunately, reference to the ethnographic literature on shamanistic and animistic hunter-gatherer cultures within the Greater Southwest and farther afield the Plains, Mesoamerica, even worldwide reveal several potentially analogous groups, both prehistoric and historic. From around 1970, several researchers in the United States began to incorporate ethnographic information in their interpretations and to explicitly investigate the shamanistic nature of the art. The ethnography rarely explains' rock art in any direct sense and a nave use of ethnography is only marginally more effective than the gaze-and-guess' approach. There is ethnographic evidence that peyote has been used for centuries by many groups for curing, finding lost articles, foretelling the future, and, above all, to contact supernatural beings in the spirit world.
