Archaeology Magazine - May/June 1978 - 12

mode of pottery- making characteristic of the
prehistoric southwest. For the scholar, this
florescence in design represents an exciting new
means of organizing ceramic production.
At around a.d. 1000 the American southwest
seems to have become part of a vast
Mesoamerican trade network which directly
affected the growth and development of
Mimbres ware. Mesoamerican traders were
particularly interested in acquiring turquoise
from the Southwest and exchanged copper bells,
parrots (and presumably parrot feathers) for it.
Various goods including cotton blankets, salt as
well as slaves may have also been involved in the
trade system. The great center of Chaco Canyon
in northern New Mexico probably developed as
a consequence of this trade network. Since the
Mimbres area lay along this turquoise trade
route, it is not surprising to see a sharp increase
in the amount of turquoise at this time.
Apparently, Mesoamerican iconography was
also adopted on some of the Mimbres vessels,
including the use of bats, rabbit ears and
decapitation scenes. Less directly evident but
perhaps more significant is that the trade system
may have been a catalyst for the development of
the Mimbres pottery style itself. As wealth from
the turquoise trade began to flow through the
Mimbres area, it may have provided the
opportunity for the support of craft specialists.
Such artisans probably produced pottery for an
incipient elite and both high artistic quality
and innovation may have been rewarded.
Competition among these elite, and consequently
among their craft specialists, may well have
accelerated the evolution of designs. Such
specialists, however, could have produced only a
small portion of all Mimbres bowls; the rest were
still being produced by family units primarily for
their own use. But these specialists probably
produced the most spectacular vessels, and most
likely served as models for the rest of the
potters.
The Mimbres Foundation is presently
studying the ceramics using a number of
different physical techniques in an attempt to
determine the production site of particular pots.
Some of the methods include pétrographie
thin-section analysis, neutron activation and
electron micro-probe studies. This will enable us
to tell whether there was any trade in painted
ceramics within the valley itself, a fact which
seems likely if craft specialists were at work. The
most successful effort in studying the production
12

of Mimbres pottery has been with the textured
cooking and utilitarian ware. Pétrographie
thin-section analysis, where the cross section
of a sherd is carefully scrutinized under a
microscope, had demonstrated that there was a
major intra-valley trade network whereby large
five gallon jars were commonly transported over
twenty miles from their places of production. In
fact, over twenty per cent of all utility jars so far
uncovered were traded twenty miles from their
center of production.
The Classic Mimbres Period lasted for over a
century, coming to a height at about a.d. 1100.
At the peak of their artistic florescence and at
the height of their numbers, the Mimbres people
suddenly disappeared. The pueblos, which all
seem to have been abandoned at about the same
time, were not destroyed by catastrophe and
most of the goods were removed when the
villages were abandoned. This complete
disappearance of the Mimbres culture is
enigmatic. There is no subsequent culture or
pottery style in either the Mimbres region or in
adjacent areas which shows close ties with the
Classic Mimbres. This is surprising since all of
these areas remained occupied well after the
disappearance of the Mimbres. While other
"disappearances" have occurred in the
Southwest, most notably that of the Mesa Verde
and Chaco Canyon peoples, there are various
reasonable theories and potential descendant
populations to account for them. But the
vanishing of the Mimbres people has long stood
as a big question mark.

T he problem of the Mimbres abandonment is
further accentuated by the lack of reliable
dates - early archaeologists were only able to date
the cultural remains by the indirect cross-dating
of ceramic types. They guessed that the
disappearance took place between a.d.
1200-1250 and that thereafter the area was for
the most part uninhabited. However, excavations
carried out by the Mimbres Foundation at the
Mattocks Ruin, one of the major sites in the
upper end of the Mimbres Valley, has produced
232 tree-ring dates. This pueblo is a very typical
village in terms of its architecture and artifacts
and it was most likely occupied as late as the
other Mimbres pueblos in the valley.
Surprisingly, there are no dates from this site
later than a.d. 1117 and all evidence now points
Archaeology Magazine - May/June 1978

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