Amerind Quarterly Vol. 2,No. 1
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Amerind quarterly The Newsletter of the Amerind Foundation winter 2005 (vol. 2, no. 1) Plans for the fulton seminar House The center spread of this issue Fulton House, replacing the original 1930s MISSION of the Amerind Quarterly describes the wiring. When that work is completed we Established in 1937, the collaboration between Amerind founder will begin a capital campaign to raise money Amerind Foundation and William S. Fulton and Tucson architect to install an HVAC system and repair and Museum seeks to foster and promote knowledge Merritt Starkweather to create the distinctive insulate the roof. Our goal is a facility and understanding of buildings of the Amerind Foundation in that can be used year-round but retains the the Native Peoples of Texas Canyon. The article, written by long- architectural values of the original home. the Americas through research, education, and time volunteer and retired architect Jim Currently the Fulton House is used conservation. Kelly, describes the construction of the primarily for receptions and advanced Fulton residence in 1930, the growth of the seminars in anthropology and archaeology. Amerind Museum complex in the 1930s and Amerind’s seminar program, which began BOARD OF DIRECTORS 40s, and completion of the art gallery in the in the late 1980s with a seminar every two Peter L. Formo, Tucson (Emeritus) 1950s. Mr. Fulton had plans for additional years, is now up to two a year, and we Marilyn F. Fulton, San Diego buildings, but his death in 1964 was the are diversifying the range of sponsored Wm. Duncan Fulton, San Diego end of major construction on the Amerind seminars. In 2004 we started the SAA- George J. Gumerman, Santa Fe, campus. Amerind’s fi rst construction project, Amerind seminar series, which recognizes [email protected] an outstanding seminar at the annual Michael W. Hard, Tucson, the Fulton residence, is of particular concern [email protected] as we approach the Foundation’s 70th meeting of the Society for American Michael B. Husband, Pennsylvania, anniversary in two years. Archaeology. We hope next year to begin [email protected] The Fulton residence was completed sponsoring regular “collector seminars” Peter Johnson, Tucson, [email protected] in 1931 and served as the family’s winter in which collectors of Native American J. William Moore, Phoenix, home for the next three decades. Because art can come to the Amerind for intensive [email protected] the family routinely spent their summers three day seminars to learn more about Lawrence Schiever, Tucson, back east, the Amerind residence was their collection areas by using the superb (Emeritus) never equipped with central cooling, and resources of the Foundation. In two or three EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR the original radiant heating system has not years we plan to be hosting seminars for the John A. Ware, Dragoon, been maintained. In the 1980s the Fulton American Anthropological Association, on [email protected] residence was brought back to life after a the SAA model. Once building renovation is decade of neglect to serve as an advanced completed, the Fulton Seminar House would seminar facility but, without heating or also make an ideal corporate retreat center, Letters to the director and the board members can be sent cooling, the house is comfortable only for a providing revenue to support Amerind’s care of the Amerind, Box 400, few months in the fall and a month or two in research and education mission. Dragoon, AZ 85609. the spring. All of these plans are contingent In 2003 a small grant from the upon restoring and modernizing the Southwestern Foundation of Tucson funded Fulton House. Though much work needs The Amerind Quarterly is produced an architectural renovation study of the to be done, we appreciate the vision and seasonally by staff and volunteers of the Amerind. Barbara Hanson, Fulton House and Museum complex, resources that went into creating this editor/art; Maureen O’Neill, technical with the goal of installing architecturally splendid facility.The Fultons not only built editor; C. Charnley, design and compatible heating and air conditioning themselves a home of timeless beauty, but layout. systems in the complex. In 2005 a new left to us an enduring legacy to be used for www.amerind.org electrical system will be installed in the many years to come. from the collections �� �� � �� � �� � � � �� �� mimbres pottery �� �� � �� From tattoos to clip art, Walmart woven throws The earliest Mimbres pots to contemporary Native and non-Native pottery and even were coiled plain brown ware, � ������� a recent postage stamp issue, the images painted 1000 � some with surface decorations � �� years ago on pottery bowls by a group of � �� made by incising or corruga- � �� � �� people we call the Mimbres still have the � tion. Soon, the Mimbres began power to delight our sense of aesthetics painting on the surface of and amaze us by the technical skill seen in their pots with a red clay slip, the fi ne brush work. Many Mimbres bowls A.D. 200-1200 perhaps in imitation of their seem to exist primarily to hold, cradle, and Hohokam neighbors to the west. Later, they covered their show off these images, although many do pots with a white clay slip and painted geometric designs show evidence of use before they were and depictions of people and animals in a dark pigment placed in the graves of their owners. The images on the that would usually turn black and sometimes red/orange pots impress us with their use of negative and positive in the fi ring. The early black on white shapes playing against each other and achieving a dy- pottery of the Mimbres (called Bold- namic balance, sometimes almost exploding with tension. face) shows a connection with the They amuse us in the depictions of playfulness, enlighten pottery of the Ancestral Pueblo, us by offering a view of Mimbres life or Anasazi, people. Over the next and their natural world, and puzzle us several hundred years, Mimbres with their images of fantastic animals, potters reached their artistic apex as well as the transformations between in what archaeologists call Mim- animals and humans that are often bres Classic Black-on-White. After depicted—images that must surely have about 1150, Mimbres Classic pottery been important in Mimbres mythol- disappeared. A mere one hundred and fi fty years, or about ogy. And there is more – an intangible fi ve generations of potters, produced this fi ne art. feeling of connection with these people Even though the pottery that distinguished the of the past. Our lives are so different Mimbres ceased to be made, archaeologists surmise that from the Mimbres and yet the art they left their descendents settled in other areas adjacent to the river behind speaks so strongly to us. It has the power to tie us valleys before fi nally abandoning the region in the 1400s. together, to connect us with them on some basic level of According to noted Mimbres authority, J. J. Brody, “This humanness, regardless of time, place, diffuse history makes it certain that some Mimbres people and culture. were ancestors to some or even all of the modern pueblo Until around A.D. 1000, the communities, but is impossible to trace unambiguously a Mimbres were like other Mogollon direct Mimbres identity for any single one of them” (1996). groups—living by farming the There are over 7000 Mimbres pots curated in river valleys and hunting museums around the world and undoubtedly countless and gathering the diverse others in private collections or in the basements of pot- resources found from the hunters. On this page and the following one, you will see high mountains to the lower the photographs of some of the Mimbres pots in Amerind’s desert elevations of their collection. If we’ve piqued your interest, and you want to area. The Mimbres (“willow” see more, a trip to in Spanish) made their homes along the Luna Mimbres the rivers of southern New Mexico: the Gila, Mimbres, Museum in Dem- San Francisco, and Rio Grande. Around A.D. 1000, the ing, New Mexico, Mimbres began building large pueblo villages, some and the museum rivaling Chaco and Snaketown in size, to accommodate a at Western New growing population, but unfortunately their masonry walls Mexico Univer- of rounded river stones were not durable enough to last. sity in Silver City Instead of leaving behind impressive architecture, the should be on your Mimbres left their distinctive and very impressive pottery. agenda. 2 Amerind’s excavation from the collections at wind mountain This transitional Boldface - Classic sub-fl ooroor graves.graves. HumanHuman andand otherother Mimbres bowl (Accession WM-1162) artifacts that are crucial archaeological was recovered by the Amerind data, but which have no value to the Foundation in 1978 from Plaza 1 at the looter, are left scattered across the Wind Mountain site near Silver City, surface of the ravaged site. New Mexico. The Wind Mountain There are few legal remedies Site was occupied intermittently for this kind of destruction. from A.D. 250 to 1200, with pit house Archaeological resources located on remains representing an Early and Late public lands are protected, of course, Pit House period occupation, and surface but with so few federal law enforcement pueblo structures appearing after A.D. 950. agents on the ground in the Southwest, The WindWind Mountain excavations were the last the looting continues on public lands—often major research endeavor of Dr. Charles Di Peso, who surreptitiously at night, the work illuminated by died in 1982 before a fi nal report on the excavations could vehicle headlights. If the site is on private land, there be assembled. A fi nal report of the Wind Mountain site are few legal protections.