DESIGNS ON PREHISTORIC POTTERY FROM THE MIMBRES VALLEY,

Some of the earlier writers stated that there is no evidence of a prehistoric sedentary population occupying the area between Deming, New Mexico and the Mexican border. The water of the Mimbres sometimes finds its way to the former, but is generally lost in the sand before it reaches that point. 6 DESIGN ON MIMBRES POTTERY FEWKES 3 Grandes and tributary streams that He flows northward in the basin south of the national border and finally empties into Lake Guzman.

The forms of pottery found in the Mimbres Valley differ very.. little from those of the pueblo areas. 6 DESIGNS ON MIMBRES POTTERY FEWKES 5 . placed on one side of the head as is so often the case with bird figures from ancient pottery. While the majority of the designs are depicted on the inside of Mimbres food bowls, similar geometric figures appear on the outside of Casas Grandes vases, ladles, spoons, cups and other shapes.

The designs of Sikyatki pottery are mainly conventional animals, while those of the Mimbres are realistic. The figures are apparently duplicates; the only difference is in the shapes of the geometric figures depicted on the animals' bodies.

NO. 6 DESIGNS ON MIMBRES POTTERY—FEWKES 9 Two nicely balanced human figures shown in figure 8 are represented

ANLMALS

The head is short and resembles a carnivorous animal; there is a white band around the neck; the tip of the tail is white. In Figure 16, two menaras are dragging an animal with a rope tied around the neck of the trapped animal. The food container shown in Figure 25 has thirteen clusters of feathers, each cluster consisting of four feathers forming a decorative border.

Although the two figures have the features of a rabbit, the feet are quite different from that animal's; the legs end in sickle-like appendages. The body of the quadruped, shown in Figure 26, appears to have been pierced by four arrows, but the central part of the socket is broken or "killed" and identification of the figure is impossible. The animal represented in Figure 27 is probably less so; in no other representation is a realistic zoic figure so closely related to the geometric design.

The tail, which does not contain pictures of frogs, is here well developed, and the eyes and legs differ from those of frogs. The two animals in figure 33 appear to be lizards outlined in white on a black ground; a kind of negative picture in which the body is filled with black.

12 SMITHSONIAX MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 74 The two reptilian figures shown in figure 35 have all the charac-

There is, however, a great difference between the forms of birds, conventional and realistic, from different areas of the South-West, and nowhere is the contrast greater than between those on the fine work of Sikyatki and that of the Mimbres. The conventional bird and sky band, so characteristic of the Hopi ruin, is absent from both the Little Colorado and Mimbres pottery. The birds (fig. 51), one of the simplest figures in the collection, have angular wings, the feathers being represented by serrations or dents.

The bodies of the four birds represented in Figure 54 are oval, without wings or legs. The tips of the birds' tails shown in figure 55 are like those of a turkey, but it is hardly possible to prove that this is a correct identification. Every Hopi priest in early times had a feather case, made from the underground branch of the Cottonwood, in which he had his feathers ready for use.

The forms and decorations of the jMimbres pottery seem to indicate that feathers played a conspicuous part in the symbolic designs on prehistoric pottery. A few of these different forms of bird feathers from ^Mimbres are shown in the immediately following figures (59-92). Several forms of feather designs that appear fairly consistently in the decoration of Sikyatkiware are not found on Mimbresceramics and vice versa.

In the Sikyatki ware, the relative number of feathers, free from attachment to birds, used in decoration is greater than in the Mimbres pottery. The shape of the wing is somewhat changed in figure 71, but the feathers appear asdentations, while the figure of the feathers has become semicircular, each with a black dot. One of the essential characteristics of these wings, as shown in the four figures mentioned, is their division into two regions distinguished by the shapes of feathers in each case.

Their identification is doubtful, which may also be said from figures 87 and 88, where the latter two are a very simple form of the feather symbol. Insects.- The people of the ancient Mimbres probably did not recognize a sharp line of demarcation between birds and insects. There are several images of the locust or grasshopper, and the bee, the dragonfly and the butterfly are recognisable.

COMPOSITE ANIMALS

GEOMETRIC FIGURES

This pottery is in other respects so similar to that of the Gila, and so different from that of most of the neighboring ruins at Mimbres, that we may suppose that those who settled there came from the valley of the Gila. Although knowledge of the distribution of the broken encircling line in the pottery from the southwestern ruins is not very extensive, those in which it is preserved lie in adjacent areas. In the plan represented in Fig. 103 we have what appears to be a symbol of the sun, or a circle with a checkerboard covered, and four projecting appendages resembling the tails of birds, arranged in pairs, the markings of the opposite members of each pair being practically the same.

The geometric designs on the periphery of the bowl consist of six units in which pure black and hachure are each combined. The extreme points of the cross (fig. in) are rounded; its arms .. arising from a central inner circle with figures in white on a black background. Two of the arms are decorated with terrace borders and two have diamond figures separated by parallel zigzag lines forming bands in white on a black background.

There are quatrefoils, two pairs of which have ornamented borders and two without, but alternating with a pair of stout needle-like black-tipped extensions reaching from the rim of the bowl on the inside. In Figure 123, the most prominent parts are the five white circles, one centered and four equidistant near the periphery. The main part of the bowl is covered with figures composed of straight lines and spirals.

The centrally placed design shown in figure 125 is a quadruped with an upward-curving tail, reminiscent of a conventional motmtain lion. One of the most beautiful geometric designs from Mimbres pottery is shown in figure 133, where a combination of curved and linear figures, black, white, and hatch work, all combine to produce an artistic effect. The design on the food bowl shown in figure 134 is highly ornate and uncharacteristic of Mimbres vessels.

In Fig. 135 is an artistic combination of a double ring of terraced triangular figures surrounding a central area in white, and. In figure 138 there is a square with white in the middle, around which are placed eight free figs of two kinds, interchanged with each other: four of each kind. In Fig. 138 we have two sets of patterns of similar units, four in each set, consisting of triangular blocks placed on one side and crossed by parallel lines.

CONCLUSION

6 DESIGNS ON MJA[1!RES POTTERY FACES 25 SO combined to give a striking effect and attractive harmony. 74tain/ The demarcation line between the two in the west is tain/ The demarcation line between the two in the west is clearly marked with specific signs. Mimbres pottery is most similar to that of the Casas Grandes mounds in Mexico to the south, but it is not clear that the center of its distribution can be traced southward.

The mounds near the Casas Grandes River are located on the same continental plateau, and although the pottery of Casas Grandes surpasses the Mimbres. It is not known whether it overlies a substratum consisting of corrugated, rolled, or black and white ware, as commonly found in pueblo and cliff areas. Very often the animal is recognized by comparisons, as we can reconstruct a string ranging from a symbol made with a few lines to a well-drawn picture.

The broken decorative lines around pueblo food bowls and other forms of pottery are absent in specimens from the Mimbres. Many of the old decorated wares found in the area between the ]\Iimbres Valley and the upper San Juan also broke encircling lines.

30 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 74

NO. 6 DESIGNS ON MIMBKES POTTERY—FEWKES 2)7

3^ SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 74

NO. 6 DESIGNS ON MIMBRES POTTERY — FEWKES 39

ABERRANT WINGS AND TAILS OF BIRDS

NO, 6 DESIGNS ON MIMBRES POTTERY—FEWKES 41

42 SMITHSONIAX MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 74

NO. 6 DESIGNS ON MIMBRES POTTERY — FEWKES 43

44 MITHSOXIAX MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 74