Old Pueblo Archaeology Center’s "Third Thursday Food for Thought" Program “Mimbres in Context: Hohokam, Chaco, Casas Grandes”

Free Dinnertime Online via Zoom Presentation by (See link below) Archaeologist Thursday March 18, 2021 Stephen H. Lekson 7 to 8:30 p.m.

Of the four The smaller largest images here, image at left is a courtesy of Dr. Lekson, Hohokam red-on-buff the upper two and lower left bowl (Arizona State Museum, ones are from Classic Mimbres Tucson), the center one is a pottery bowls in the University of Chaco culture black-on-white bowl Colorado Museum of Natural History, (National Park Service), and the right and the lower right drawing is of a Mimbres one is a Casas Grandes culture polychrome jar bowl from the Saige-McFarland site. (Centennial Museum, El Paso)

The ancient Mimbres people of southwestern New Mexico were interesting not only for their famous pottery, but also as “players” in the larger history of the ancient Southwest. We consider Mimbres history in context of its times: Hohokam up to about 1000 CE, Chaco from 1000 to 1150, and the run-up to Paquimé/Casas Grandes from 1150 to 1250. Mimbres began as pithouse villages making red-on-brown pottery (much like Hohokam red-on- buff) and developing Hohokam-inspired canal irrigation systems in the Chihuahua Desert. Around 1000, Hohokam waned as Chaco waxed – the “Pueblo II Expansion” of old textbooks. Emil Haury, long ago, identified 1000 as approximately the time Mimbres was transformed into stone pueblos making black-on-white pottery; he insisted that Mimbres (a subset of the larger Mogollon region) essentially ceased being Mogollon and became much more Anasazi-like. Mimbres flourished while Chaco flourished, from 1000 to shortly before 1150. Political shifts after 1125 at Chaco were reflected at the same time by mass depopulation and social change in the Mimbres river valleys. Post-Mimbres people moved south into the desert and formed new communities in mud-walled-pueblo villages (some of considerable size) with little or no locally produced painted pottery. Those post-Mimbres societies almost certainly contributed substantially to the base population for Paquimé, the Casas Grandes regional center from 1300 to 1450.

To register for the Zoom program go to https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SX6CKc5dTxGpCHJEuhfc2g For more information contact Old Pueblo at 520-798-1201 or [email protected].

Mimbres in Context . . .

Old Pueblo Archaeology Center’s guest speaker Dr. Stephen H. Lekson was Curator of Archaeology at the Museum of Natural History, University of Colorado, Boulder. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of New Mexico in 1988, and held research, curatorial, or administrative positions with University of Tennessee, Eastern New Mexico University, National Park Service, Arizona State Museum, Museum of New Mexico, and Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. Dr. Lekson directed more than 20 archaeological projects throughout the Southwest and focused about half of his fifty-year career on Mimbres. His publications include a dozen books, chapters in many edited volumes, and articles in journals and magazines. His books include Mimbres Archaeology of the Upper Gila (1990, University of Arizona Press), Salado Archaeology of the Upper Gila (2002, University of Arizona Press), and Archaeology of the Mimbres Region (2006, British Archaeological Reports). He retired in 2018.

For more information contact Old Pueblo Archaeology Center at [email protected] or 520-798-1201