Page 11 - Black Range Naturalist, Vol. 3, No. 1

Mimbres Natural History Art by Bob Barnes

The Mimbres left many depictions of the natural world in which they lived. Typically these depictions are found on pottery or as rock art. A few are shown here; in several cases the assumed identification to species may be problematic because the depictions are art, not snapshots. That the Mimbres depicted a creature in their art does not mean that the species was common in, or native to, the Mimbres Valley. All photographs in this article are by R. A. Barnes.
Elements of Montezuma Quail, Cyrtonyx montezumae; Scaled Quail, Callipepla squamata; and Gambel’s Quail, Callipepla gambelii. Above: Image on a bowl at the Luna Mimbres Museum in Deming New Mexico. Below: (L) Montezuma Quail at Lower Gallinas Campground, Black Range, and (R) Gambel’s Quail in Hillsboro.
Hills site. Hummingbirds were, probably, not sources of food. Other than corn, plants were not generally depicted, and it is not clear - to me - how often two graphic images are read together in Mimbres depictions.
Dr. Schollmeyer’s discussion (see previous article) about the relationship between the graphic depictions of animals (and in Mimbres art depictions of the natural world were nearly always animals), the use of those animals (almost always as a food source, but also in religious ceremonies and perhaps just as art), and the population of those animals is especially interesting. There are common themes and subjects and there are outliers. Consider, for instance, what I take to be a hummingbird coming to a flower in a glyph from the Pony
Hummingbird coming to a flower. Pony Hills site.

The Early Peoples website, www.earlypeople.org, has an extensive galley of glyphs from the Pony Hills and Frying Pan Canyon sites.
By heritage and training I am biased toward compartmentalization. This point was driven home to me by Christina Thompson’s, The Puzzle of Polynesia - Sea People. Perhaps a bit afield, but it is an excellent discussion of what happens when two cultures with significantly different concepts of the world try to understand each
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