Page 23 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

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interesting pottery ever produced.
Between A.D. 550 and A.D. 1000, the Mimbres
population was approximately 1,500 people, an eight- foldincreasefromtheirstatusaroundA.D.200. By A.D. 850 the differences in architecture and pottery between the Mimbrenos and their northern neighbors, which had been minor, became quite pronounced. By the end of the Mimbres phase, some villages consisted of as many as 50 houses and were spaced about every 3 miles along the Mimbres River and near other water sources such as Cooke’s Spring.
Foremost among these differences was the applica-
tion of a white slip to all pottery surfaces that were to
receive decoration. This feature provided a more bril-
liant contrast between the applied designs and the
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background.
ware that the ancient Mimbrenos reached an artistic
The Mimbres painted their pottery with linear abstract geometric designs and with figures of humans and animals in mythical and representational form. Theanimalsfrequentlydepictedincludedfish,insects, birds of all kinds, frogs, toads, turtles, and lizards. Most mammals other than man were shown in profile
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Many of the birds, animals, and insects drawn on their pottery were local- ly familiar, but some were purely phantoms of the
imagination.
Their drawings of fish, however, present a unique
question. The Mimbres River springs from high in the
mountains just east of the continental divide, about 15
miles north of the town of Mimbres, and dies out in the
desert sands just north of Deming. There were
probably few if any fish in the Mimbres, and strangely,
most of the drawings appear to have been of salt-water 20
It was in the field of Black-on-white
peak that has seldom, if ever,
medium of pottery (Figures 5a and 5b). As a conse- quence, this period, about A.D. 950 or 1000 to the end of the traceable culture, has been referred to as the
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Mimbres Classic Period.
Some argue that the designation for this most unusual
and beautiful pottery is misleading because the paint is frequently brown or red rather than black, and the
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background often gray or buff rather than white. Others, however, claim that when the pots were fired too long or too hot the carbon was burned out leaving a residue of iron oxide. The same fault, or perhaps too
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much oxygen, led to a discoloration of the white slip.
The Mimbres usually portrayed humans in either full profile or as seen head-on. Men were more frequent subjects than women and were usually shown in some sort of activity. There were narrative scenes that depicted such activities as men fighting bears, setting snares, dancing, and picking bugs from corn plants. Men were also shown wearing breech cloths while the women were depicted in fringed sashes and sandals or wearing blankets that extended below the waist. The women were shown wearing their hair in whorls on the
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Figure 5a. Mimbres Black-on-white bowl: turtle with masked face. Photo courtesy of the Museum of New Mexico, #743.
Figure 5b. Mimbres Black-on-white howl: rabbit and moon. Photo courtesy of the Museum of New Mexico, #41570.
been surpassed in the
It is more than 350 airline miles to the nearest 9
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but with all four legs visible.
fish.
brackish water in the Gulf of California."
side much as the unmarried Hopi girls of today.
1
Chapter 1