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Mimbres bowls, produced by people living in the Southwest

from the late 10th to early 12th century A.D., are renowned

for the unique imagery found on their interiors. The black-

on-white ceramics were often decorated with geometric

patterns (right). Others featured portraits of everyday

scenes, local wildlife, and even mythical creatures. These, all

found at a site called Swarts Ranch, depict (clockwise from

below) a hunter returning home with a deer, an unknown

figure sometimes interpreted as a tadpole or frog, a woman

giving birth, and a rabbit shown with a sword-like stick.

ARCHAEOLOGY May/June 201336

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SINCEFIRSTBEINGUNEARTHEDin New Mexico in thelate nineteenth century, the striking ceramic bowls

made a millennium earlier by people living in theMimbres River Valley of the American Southwesthave inspired countless counterfeiters, a clay artfestival, a burglary at the University of Minnesotas

anthropology department, and even a line of railroad dinnerware.While their undecorated outsides appear unremarkable in

technique and form, their insides are magic, a canvas for haunt humans, as well as intricate geometric designs. The black formson a white background create an arresting contrast.

Archaeologists are tracking the disappearance of

a remarkable type of pottery to rewrite the story

of a cultures decline

byJI

For more than a century, beginning in the late tenth centuryA.D.

with distinctive designs more spectacular and elaborate thanthose of any other culture in the Southwest. It was strikinglyunique, says Steve LeBlanc, an archaeologist at the PeabodyMuseum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University,who has studied the pottery makers since the 1970 from that of neighboring cultures, where geometric shapesdominated. Then, in 1130, according to the archaeologicalrecord, the manufacture of the bowls stopped.

On theTrail of

the Mimbres

www.archaeology.org 37

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