NO. 10 ARCHEOLOGY OF MIMBRES VALLEY FEWKES 5 1 



in the Mimbres or the inland basin in which it Hes. In other words 

 the ruins of the Mimbres may be regarded as older than true pueblo 

 ruins, resembling- an earlier type of dwelling that antedated, in the 

 Rio Grande Valley, the terraced houses. 



The author does not find any architectural features in the remains 

 of the prehistoric habitations of the Mimbres Valley suggesting Casa 

 Grande compounds, or those massive buildings with encircling walls 

 which are characteristic of the plains of the Gila. Although the walls 

 of the Casas Grandes, in Chihuahua, are constructed in the same way 

 and out of material like those of Casa Grande on the Gila, the 

 architectural feature, an encircling wall of the latter, has not yet 

 been recognized on the Sierra Madre plateau.* Objects found in the 

 Gila ruins are somewhat different in form from those of Chihuahua, 

 while pottery from the Gila Valley ruins and that from the inland 

 plateau in northern Chihuahua is markedly different, with very 

 divergent symbolism. Not only do forms of stone implements of a 

 shape unknown in southern Arizona occur in southern New Mexico, 

 but also the methods of disposal of the dead differed among the two 

 people. The latter practised inhumation only, the other both crema- 

 tion and inhumation. The aborigines of the Mimbres Valley placed 

 a bowl over the head or face of the dead, a practice which, so far as 

 known, does not appear to have been so commonly in vogue in inhu- 

 mation of the prehistoric people of the Lower Gila pi, * ^.s. 



The conventional geometric symbols on prehistoric Mimbres pot- 

 tery are readily distinguished from those on ware from Tulerosa, a 

 tributary of the San Francisco. The most significant feature of the 

 Mimbres pottery is that fifty per cent of the figures on it represent men 

 or animals, while out of a hundred bowls from the Gila not more 

 than two or three are ornamented with zoic designs. As we know 

 comparatively nothing of the pottery of the sources of the Upper 

 Gila and that part of its course which lies between the Tulerosa and 

 the Mimbres, we can at present venture very little information on 

 ceramic relations, but similarities or mixtures would naturally be 

 expected, due to contact or overlapping, the type of the one valley 

 overlaying that of the other or mingling with it. 



The sources of the Upper Salt, the largest tributary of the Gila, lie 

 far from the Mimbres, and close relationship in the pottery of the 



^ This statement is made with reservation, as the true architectural form of 

 the Casas Grandes of Chihuahua is not yet known. The published plans show 

 no encircling wall like that of Casa Grande on the Gila ; probably the Casas 

 Grandes of Chihuahua belong to a highly specialized type different from others. 



