The people who made these bowls lived about one thousand years ago.
They lived in several small villages along the Mimbres River in what
is now southwestern New Mexico. Mimbres is the Spanish word
for willow. The Mimbres River was named by the Spanish when they arrived
in New Mexico in the 16th century, for the willow trees that lined
its banks. At the time these pots were made, about 300 people lived
in each Mimbres village, for a total of 3,000 people in the Mimbres
River valley. The river formed an oasis surrounded by mountains on
three sides with the Sonoran desert opening out to the south.
The Mimbres people were farmers. Maize, or corn, was their most
important crop, but they also gathered wild food from the desert
and mountains. We do not know what language they spoke. What little
we know about the Mimbres people comes by way of interpretations
and analysis by archaeologists and cultural historians who have
studied the materials excavated from ancient sites. The Pueblo Indian
people, who are among their descendants, have provided deeper knowledge
about the Mimbres.
The Mimbres people abandoned their villages about A.D. 1150, probably
due to overpopulation and drought. We do not know where they went.
Their villages were soon reoccupied by people whose styles of pottery
and architecture were quite different from that of the Mimbres.
The villages in the Mimbres River valley were permanently abandoned
in about 1400.
universe regarded as an orderly, harmonious whole.
of Native Americans in southern Mexico and Central America whose
civilization reached its height around 1000 A.D.
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