Mimbres Life Ways Prehistoric Pottery of the Southwest

I've been researching prehistoric southwest pottery for many decades. And the one pottery type I always come back to, and you just fall in love with, are the membrane pottery vessels, the bowls, because they illustrate life ways and mythologies and the stories and the legends of their time. And I've had the privilege, the extreme privilege, of being in the back rooms of the museums where all this stuff is stashed away. And I've examined not dozens of these vessels, but hundreds of them, and I've recorded the images. And we have everything from Coco Paley to Spider Grandmother and the Warrior Twins. And we have hundreds of them to show you, and I can't wait to get started. It's gonna be a lot of fun, so hold on to your seat. Okay, our first image today is a gentleman, and he is snaring birds. He's setting up bird snares. It's a male person, you see the little hair cue, and he's blessing the snare. He's holding three snares in his hand, and he's blessing them with a little feather. And it's obviously a male person, has a penis. Two birds are captured, three birds are captured in the little fence he set up. You can see where the birds have tracked across, and there's two birds sneaking away. You'll often see this humor in these, in the Mean Brays depictions. It's really a lot of fun. There's a snare that hasn't caught a bird yet, and this little object here is his canteen. This is a gourd canteen. Now, this center thing here, this is a hole, this is a kill hole, where the bowl has been broken, supposedly to release the spirit of the vessel. You see these deliberate breakage, could be a rim kill, could be a punch in the bottom. With Mean Brays material, it's usually a hole in the bottom. Very nice life ways, life activity, man snaring birds, and you get all these extra goodies. You get the canteen, here's some more snares he hasn't set up yet, and he's blessing them. And you'll see this a lot. You'll see this when they take an animal from the field, kill a deer or whatever. You'll see them blessing, saying a little prayer. Wonderful life ways depictions, wonderful bowl. Our next image is pottery making. There's a woman. You can tell it's a woman because she has, she's wearing a sash. Her assistant is tying her sash, probably because her hands are all paint or clay. Young assistant. These are pottery making tools. This is probably a pookie. We talked about a pookie in another video. Another life ways, life activities bowl. Pottery maker. Again, all these little elements bleed into these depictions. That's why we really get a wonderful little window into the life ways of the Mean Brays. Our third image today. Oh, this is fun. Now, this is a garden. You can see the bean plants, and you notice they are planted in rows. It's very important. One of the other icons that we've discovered in the southwest from our research is that the symbol for earth land is our parallel lines, often with rain dots, watered earth, and it's very important. They planted in rows, and they planted in rows because they irrigated, and any of you who have ever actually irrigated realize why you have to do that. The crops have to be in rows if you irrigate, unless you're using some spray system, and these men are working in the garden, and they're chasing off a mountain lion out of the garden. They're obviously male people. They've got the little hair cue, and the penis is evident. Gardening scene. That's the kill hole again. Don't forget what that big weird thing is in the middle. Our fourth image of life activities. Ah, this is a fun one. This is gambling for arrows for young gentlemen, and they are gambling for arrows, and they're placing their hand on their arrow, the one they're going to bet, and this guy's got the cup with the dice in it, and these dice are usually broken pottery pieces, a little sherd that has been ground into shape, and of course it's painted on one side and plain on the other. They'll use multiple pieces and throw the dice or sherd pieces and determine how many you get, you know, what the number is, just like we would use a sided dice. These little dots, this is the gaming blanket. I'm not sure what these central images are. We see these a lot though. I'm not sure what this is. This, these are the game pieces. These are also little pottery pieces that have been ground into a circle disc, and we find these gaming pieces quite frequently in our excavations. In fact, in another video I've shown you some. These are gaming pieces, and there are four gentlemen. It's always four in the Membrance mythology. It's all the number system. They've got a very specific numerology system. It's north, south, east, west, center, up, and down, but you see this number four, north, south, east, west, basically, all the time. You'll always see four, four turkeys, four whatever they're depicting. Very, very common number in Membrance mythology. Wonderful bowl, and this is a rabbit hunt. I love this one. A lot going on here. This is a net or fence that they would set up to drive the rabbits into, and we found these nets in dry caves, and some of these nets, these rabbit nets, are a mile long, and they're made out of human hair. Amazing. Wonderful humor going on. Again, here's a gentleman that's fallen down. There's a rabbit that's hiding, and again, just like the bird snares, you see the tracks of the rabbit tracking around, and this little object in his hand, that is a rabbit throwing stick. It's a lot like a boomerang, probably very, very much like a boomerang, and they would dispatch the rabbits with these. They would throw these rabbit sticks and kill the rabbits, and another object that is really important in this depiction is this little crooked staff. You see this very, very often. This is the mantle of authority. That means this guy's in charge. It's sort of like a scepter, and I'll show you one that Garrick Mallory drew in a minute. Let me see. Well, it's not in this set, but okay, this is a weaver at the loom, a male person. You see the little hair cue. Men did the weaving. Women made the pottery. This is the loom. There's a little bench that you sit on. There's the skein of probably cotton material, and there's the shuttle, the weaver at the loom. Oh, this is fun. Now, these are young people gathering locusts, grasshoppers, locusts. When the Anglo settlers came to the southwest, and they'd plant their crops, and the locusts would come in and destroy the crops, the settlers would get all upset. Oh, we don't have anything to eat. Well, the Indians didn't have that problem. If the locusts came, the Indians went out, and they'd string them up on like shish kebab and roast them and eat the locusts rather than the beans that year. Locusts have a lot more nutrition than beans do, so they would just have a party if a locust came, and there again, four figures. You'll see this all the time. It's always four. That's the magic number in Mimbrese mythology. It's four gathering locusts. This is the bowmaker. He's stretching a bow. It could be a skein. Look at this. These are male people. This could be a skein. We saw that the weaver had an object like this. This is often interpreted as the bowmaker stringing a bow for the young man. That's obviously not an arrow. These are cut feathers, and they indicate how they are cut. They look like fish skeletons, but they're not. They're cut feathers, and they indicate sort of status, whoever's wearing what one. That's probably a skein for weaving. Male figures. I want to point out one thing about this depiction. That fifth leg on that bench, that is a mistake. That is not the way that vessel is. It's a four-footed bench, not a five-footed. What it is, there's a crack in the vessel, and when this was drawn, that little missing piece that was interpreted as another leg, that's wrong. Ignore that. That should be whited out. That's probably a skein of material for weaving, not a bowmaker. This has been misinterpreted, I think. This is a healing ceremony. This is a very good vessel. A male person, a female person. Obviously, she has a little sash. She's holding a baby. This is the kill hole. Ignore that. The baby has a white face, meaning that very sick or near death. You'll see that in later depictions. I'll show you about that. Or not born yet. That's another one. You'll see that. Usually death. Here's his little medicine bag. He's got a rattle, and he's doing a little healing ceremony to help cure the baby. This thing they're sitting on has been interpreted as a rug, but very important. You see this curlicue thing here on the end of this? This is probably a symbol of Quetzalcoatl, the plume serpent. I'll show you how we know that. I'll show you other examples of that. Kind of keep that in mind. That curlicue is very large, usually. I'll show you that in many, many other depictions. Maybe I'll group some slides so you can see them all together. That's probably Quetzalcoatl. Okay, here are four women and a baby holding the baby, and they have a little sash. Obviously, female. I noticed two of them are depicted in black, which means good health. Two of them are not. They have the white head. Now, this means something, and you see variations of this all the time. These two are looking forward. These two are looking back. Obviously, four figures again, and here we have these little bar things in the middle. There probably were four of those also before the killhole wiped one of them out. We really don't know what these are. You saw those on the gaming blanket also, and I'll show you some of them. We'll see them as we go along. I'm not sure what those are, but two women looking this way with a baby, all very healthy and alive, two looking back with white faces. This could be an ancestral thing where these are actually ancestors who've passed, and they're looking back, possibly. I don't know what these other these could be. They look like sashes or diapers, maybe. Okay, gathering firewood. Any of you who've ever camped in the same spot for a week realize how important gathering firewood is because you run out of it pretty quickly. They bring wood in from quite far away. There's a young male person carrying a bit of firewood. There is an elderly female person with her sash carrying firewood in a basket. Now she's carrying this mantle of authority again, this crypt staff, and I'll show you that later on. That means she's an important person or in charge. This is probably a little dog following along, gathering firewood. There's more going on here. This is not just gathering firewood. There's more going on. This is probably an illustration of one of the legends or one of the mythologies. Ah, bear hunting. This hunter, he's got his arrows there. He's got a few extras over here or maybe a broken one, so you get a couple broken arrows already. The bear are in this enclosure, probably a cave. He has already shot one of the bear, mama bear, and his two babies, and his face is white, notice, because he's doing something dangerous. He's not dead, but he's doing something. He could die in this bear hunt. It's a very dangerous situation for the hunter. We have another bear hunter. Yeah, another bear hunter. This guy has tracked the bear, tracked the bear for a long time. See all those footprints. He's actually throwing down his bow and arrow and is going one-on-one with the bear, and this is a very important person. He's got this cut feather. Now he's depicted entirely in black and very realistic profile. He's probably doing pretty well against that bear. The Membray's images we saw today were painted between 1000 AD and 1280 AD, and if you want, there's a lot more of them, and we're going to have other videos you can see, but if you want to get a copy of the book, Membray's Mythology, there's a lot of these images we're going to be showing. Just email me, and the address is in the description in this video. It's just kunkle at hotmail.com, c-u-n-k-l-e, and just email me and I'll sign a copy and make sure you get it. Thanks for watching today. Give me a like, if you like.