J. J. Brody: An Address to a group at the Deming-Luna Mimbres Museum
By Jim Stacy
Dr. Jerry Brody, who has been widely published, was a professor at the University of New Mexico in the Art History department for over 30 years. He was also the Director of the Maxwell Museum. His book, “Mimbres Painted Pottery” published in 1977 by the School of American Research, Santa Fe, is a classic on the Mimbres people and their ceramics. He and his wife Jean have been longtime members of the Albuquerque Archeological Society and the Archeological Society of New Mexico, the state organization. They helped the Grant County Archeological Society (GCAS) in starting our rock art recording of the Dragonfly Site on the Ft. Bayard Game Reserve a few years back.
Mary Alice and John King, long time GCAS members, had a magnificent collection which is now on display at the Deming Luna Mimbres Museum. Dr. Brody used bowls from the collection to explain the artistic skills of the painter; as he spoke the frog jumped, the fish swam, the quail moved, the bowls came alive.
Question: Who made the pots, the men or the women?
Answer: We don’t know, but we observe a certain division of labor consistent throughout the world: women stay close to the house while men do the outside things; in the pueblo world today, pottery is made by the women. A 16th century Spaniard said “women made pottery and painted it almost as well as men.” But did that mean that women painted the pottery as well as the men painted something else? Or did it mean that the women painted pottery as well as men painted pottery? We asked a modern potter is she had made a certain pot; she replied that she had. We knew her husband had painted the pot. We asked again, but she insisted that she had made the pot. When we asked if she painted the pot she replied that she had not. We have to ask the right question.
Question: What was the range of the Mimbres?
Answer: North to the Gila Cliff Dwellings, TJ Ruin; west to Tyrone, Santa Cruz, AZ; east to the Rio Grande Valley, Black Range; south to Casas Grandes (Paquime); trade items to Reserve and Roswell.
Question: How were pots made? Coil construction?
Answer: Yes, and then smoothed and slipped. The exteriors were typically rough but the interiors were smoothed to make a canvas for a picture.
Question: Did they make effigies?
Answer: Yes, some whole effigies were found at Swartz Ruin. What’s called a bighorn sheep has a body so fat that you can’t tell what it is until you look at the horns… is it a sheep or maybe another compound animal?
Question: Were the Mimbres the only ones to paint figures?
Answer: No, the Hohokam and Mogollon did also; 15-20% of Mimbres pots depict animals/man.
Question: What about pictographs; are they Apache or Mimbres?
Answer: We see four sources; Mimbres, Mogollon, older Archaic, and foreign (visitors passing through).
Question: I saw a supposed Mimbres picture of an elaborate headdress that looked exactly like some Mayan headdresses; Mayan or Mimbres?
Answer: No, that’s 1500 miles away… there are elaborate headdresses in Mimbres art.
Question: What’s Mogollon?
Answer: The Mimbres are a branch of the Mogollon, a term that covers a multitude of sins!
The discussion then touched on the following topics.
-Symbolism of killed pots: The Mimbres often placed a pot over the head of the dead with a hole punched in the bottom; a “killed“ pot. In death one looks up through the hole in the killed pot while most of one’s life is spent looking down toward the ground. A duality is implied by this.
-There are 7,000 pictures of pots in the WNMU file; as to style, 3,000 are listed “ not known”.
-Picture pots are mostly of animals and show inherent movement or mobility; round bottoms show wear from hard floors which enhanced the illusion of movement as the bowl was handled, continuing as the bowl was placed on the floor.
-The Hero Twins as discussed in the Mayan Popol Vuh ranged from South America to the pueblos’ “Monster Slayer” and “Born for Water”. The Twins were about to be destroyed by an underground monster (possibly Zipacna) but escaped by jumping into the river and turning into fish. The theme of man turning into fish occurs on many Mimbres pots; maybe two fish tails are all that show but they may signify the Hero Twins.
The Deming-Luna Mimbres Museum makes a great field trip and even has a museum store. GCAS helped catalogue the King Collection; the Inmon Collection is also on display. In addition to probably the finest Mimbres Pottery collection in the world, the museum has artifacts such as shell and bone jewelry, arrowheads, sandals, metates and manos and an incredible collection of historic artifacts. Hours are 9:00 am to 4:00 pm Monday through Saturday and 1:30 to 4:00 pm on Sunday. Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day and Easter. (505) 546-2382