The challenge for Casas Grandes artists was to create patterns that wrap around the vessels in an intelligible way. Through well-chosen comparisons the exhibition also gives pointers on distinguishing among Hohokam, Anasazi, Mimbres and Casas Grandes wares. Anasazi pottery is preoccupied with symmetry.
Mimbres wares use narrative figures to recount myths, cautionary tales and proverbs. Casas Grandes designs also incorporate figures, but the figures are iconic.
They are archetypes of certain offices: for example, the ball player, the smoker. Casas Grandes potters invent these figures in an entirely new geometric language.
The overall approach is very jazzy, very spontaneous, very unpredictable as you turn the vessel around. Collecting antiquities today, of course, is fraught with legal and ethical considerations.
It illustrates 90 outstanding examples of Casas Grandes pottery along with another 50 Hohokam, Mimbres and Anasazi pieces. Published in association with Yale University Press, the page catalog, edited by Townsend, includes essays by the curator Barbara L. Moulard and Ken Kokrda. Moulard, an authority on Southwestern ceramics who teaches atArizona State University, examines the underlying structuralaffinities between Casas Grandes vessels and other Southwesternpottery.
Kokrda, a retired teacher who traveled extensively overthe decades to create a Casas Grandes photographic archive, tells amore personal tale of his long fascination with the little-knownware. Times have changed since Bandelier created his first crude map of Paquime. The predominant building material is unfired clay adobe ; stone is used for specific purposes, such as the lining of pits, a technique from central Mexico.
The extensive remains, only part of which have been excavated, are clear evidence of the vitality of a culture which was perfectly adapted to its physical and economic environment but which suddenly vanished at the time of the Spanish Conquest. The archaeological zone is distinguished by its impressive buildings in earthen architecture, mostly residential building structures that originally must have been several stories high and the remains of ceremonial monuments which have earthen architecture with masonry coatings.
There are remains from hundreds of rooms, with doors in a "T" shape and the pre-Hispanic site still maintains its original planning on three axes: axis of housing units, the axis of squares, and the axis of ceremonial buildings. Its development took place in the years and it reached its apogee in the 14th and 15th centuries. Its architecture marked an epoch in the development of the architecture of the human settlement of a vast region in Mexico and illustrated an outstanding example of the organization of space in architecture.
Despite the fact that severe looting of ancient pottery for illegal sale on the international antiquities market had taken place, we were able to record much information on site location, site size, architectural variety, and the types and abundance of surface artifacts, mostly ceramics, chipped stone, and ground stone Figs.
These data reveal important trends that provide insights into the Paquime polity. Even though our project focused explicitly on the Medico period, we did record sites of other periods in our count of The low number of pre-Medio period sites is striking. No such sites were located on systematic survey, and we recorded only three on the targeted reconnaissance survey. The large sites we recorded may well have played this role within the Paquiman polity. We recorded similar stones at five sites, all within 30 kilometers of Casas Grandes.
However, we did find numerous I-shaped ball-courts, ballcourt-like structures, and stone circles. Two features were clearly classic H-shaped ballcourts Fig. All ballcourts and ballcourt-like structures were approximately the same size. We recorded four ballcourts or bahlcourt-like structures along the 9-kilometer Arroyo la Tinaja systematic survey area.
Two more were present in the El Alamito systematic survey area. These features are circles of stones usually 6 to 12 meters in diameter. We do not believe that they are roasting ovens, even though they appear to be quite similar on the surface. They are often located near ballcourts. Sites closer to Casas Grandes tend to be different in other ways also. Further, this area has a much higher than expected number of the largest mounds. Its splendor must have shone far beyond its borders.
We have only begun to understand some basic characteristics of the Paquiman polity and the prehistory of northwestern Chihuahua. Or were these sites always large communities and always subordinate to Casas Grandes? Clearly, only excavation will provide the datable material and the information necessary to evaluate such detailed interpretations.
Paul"Casas Grandes" Expedition Magazine Expedition Magazine. Penn Museum, Web.
0コメント