Carolyn E. Boyd, Ph.D.

Carolyn E. Boyd, Ph.D.

Dr. Boyd, an 8^th generation Texan, is the Shumla Endowed Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Texas State University. She earned her Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 1998. That same year, she founded a nonprofit organization, Shumla Archaeological Research & Education Center, to preserve through documentation and education the rock art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas. She is an artist and an archaeologist specializing in iconographic analysis. Her primary interest is the documentation and interpretation of Pecos River Style pictographs in southwest Texas and Coahuila, Mexico. Boyd’s current projects include Origins and Tenacity of Myth in Archaic Period Rock Art of Southwest Texas and Northern Mexico, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Layers of Meaning: Chronological Modeling & Pictograph Stratigraphy, funded by the National Science Foundation. Boyd teaches Field Methods in Rock Art Research at Texas State and is the author of numerous publications, including two books: Rock Art of the Lower Pecos (2003) and The White Shaman Mural: An Enduring Creation Narrative in the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos (2016).  Boyd lectures widely at state, national, and international events and conferences.