Melissa and I had to drive to Boulder today to hand off the Bronco to Todd. We left a bit early to visit one of her favorite professors, Dr. Wade, at his home on the outskirts of Boulder.
A few days earlier, Melissa had shown me a strikingly designed homemade Christmas card from Dr. Wade that was attached to her refrigerator with a magnet. There were unique petroglyphs on the cover flap of the card and a personal note inside. Dr. Wade had been studying the Native American art in the Mimbres region of far southwestern New Mexico and commented that the Mimbrenos, as they are now called, were fascinating and unusual, first because so little was known about them, and second because their art seemed to display an ironic sense of humor that was rare in other Native American art. I was immediately fascinated, and Melissa set up a lunch for us.
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Dr. Wade prefers to teach only part time so he can pursue inquiries such as the origins and meaning of Mimbres art. He is nicknamed "The Wader," which is memorialized on his customized license plate. It is an appropriate name given his passion for wading into new areas of inquiry, then researching and exploring exhaustively as he pushes the boundaries of his worldview.
We had met briefly a few years earlier, and it was nice to see him again. The Wader has a rich sense of humor, perhaps partly explaining the attraction of Mimbreno art, and his carefully knowledgeable conversation is peppered with the characteristic use of the academic "we," as in we don't know, or we are just beginning to discover, etc.
I love this implicit sense of community in the academy. In their internecine debates, academics are some of the most merciless people on the planet, but even with the most critical among them, there is usually a sense of shared mission, a sense that humanity's collective knowledge is in the balance.
We spent about an hour at Dr. Wade's home looking at and photographing his collection of prints, reading excerpts from various archaeological journals and discussing Mimbres art, then finished the discussion over lunch at a local brew pub.
Dr. Wade discovered Mimbres art on a field trip several years ago and has been back numerous times since. The art is from rock etchings or often from bowls and other pottery. Although the Mimbres did use color pigmentation in their clay pottery, most of their art is in black and white. The colorization in the prints photographed here has been added by Dr. Wade in Photoshop. The art itself is unchanged except for the addition of color.
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The Mimbres unique culture emerged perhaps as long ago as 100 A.D. and lasted until the mid-12th century A.D., when they died out for unknown reasons. There were several hundred settlements in the Mimbres valley, most of which were quite small, averaging about 200 people. Archaeologists have only scattered evidence as a basis for understanding Mimbres life. Yet even with incomplete knowledge, many experts in the field nonetheless believe Mimbres potters are the most advanced among all Native American tribes!
Although the Mimbres region receives more than 20 inches of rain per year, high for the Southwestern U.S., there are no large bodies of water in the area except for a small river. Despite the absence of lakes or proximity to the ocean, fish are a recurring theme in Mimbres art. Insects such as mosquitos and dragonflies and various animals that must have been found nearby provide additional themes. There are also recurring geometric patterns that may have symbolic significance in this highly evolved culture.
Interestingly, Mimbrenos lived in above ground Pueblos and buried their dead in large clay pots under the floors of their homes. These burial pots had a hole broken out of the bottom that is believed to have been for the escape of the deceased's soul.
Thinking back to the child mummies in Salta, Argentina, I am again struck by the very different ways that our aboriginal forebears viewed death, spirituality and their place in the natural universe. We will continue to seek updates from Dr. Wade as Pan American Dreams proceeds.
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