The latest collection of artifacts donated to the Western New Mexico University Museum comes to the university from just up the road.
The materials are from La Gila Encantada, a Late Pithouse era Mimbres site located in Little Walnut Canyon on property owned by the Archaeological Conservancy. Archaeologists consider the Late Pithouse period to be approximately AD 550-1,000.
According to WNMU Museum Director Dr. Danielle Romero, the site was excavated in 2004 and 2005 as part of an archaeological field school run by Dr. Barbara Roth of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The site is a small one, said Romero, with nineteen pithouses and a small two-room field house. A pithouse is a mostly subterranean structure that Mimbres people inhabited before the Classic Era, when they began building larger above-ground pueblos.
“We think they are all autonomous pithouses,” Romero said of Gila Encantada. “At some of the larger pithouse sites, we see evidence of extended households, but here they all seem to be independent families.”
The collection is especially welcome because no gravesites were found at La Gila Encantada, meaning that the Museum’s ability to display the collection is not affected by the North American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This Federal law provides for the protection and return of Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony.
The items in the collection are primarily household vessels and utensils. There are also two small vessels that seem to be made by children learning to work with ceramics, said Romero. “Execution-wise, we can tell this was made by someone that was not too confident with forming the vessel,” she said, indicating one of the small vessels. “And the lines are messy, so it is definitely by someone who was in that learning process.”
The two rudimentary bowls were excavated in different pithouses, Romero explained, indicating that more than one child was learning the craft.
When Roth excavated the site in 2004 and 2005, she came across another interesting and unusual find: a room that had burned in prehistoric times. “When she was excavating it,” said Romero, “they could actually trace where the fire started and how it spread in the house.” Some of the vessels in the collection show marks from the fire.
Romero said that the items from La Gila Encantada will help WNMU Museum fill in some gaps in its collection of Mimbres materials. “We do not have a lot of items from this early period,” she said. “Most of our collection is from the later Classic period.”
“This is our only academic collection that is all Pithouse era,” said Romero, referring to the fact that the items were collected by trained archaeologists, not by early looters. “And because it is an academic collection, all the notes and photos [of the archaeological site] are also here.”
Items from the collection are now on display and can be viewed Monday through Friday 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM and Saturday and Sunday 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM. The WNMU Museum is closed on university holidays and other campus-wide closures.
Additional information about how the museum is working to comply with NAGPRA can be found here.