SECRETS OF CASAS GRANDES Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology of Northern Mexico [SOLD]

SECRETS OF CASAS GRANDES Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology of Northern Mexico

Edited by Melissa S. Powell

Publisher: Museum of New Mexico Press 2006 softcover, first edition, new

Contents

Foreword by Shelby J. Tisdale

Chapter 1 - Secrets of Casas Grandes by Melissa S. Powell

Chapter 2 - The Specialist Potters of Casas Grandes by Maria Sprehn

Plates 1 - 20 - Chihuahuan Utility and Decorated Wares

Chapter 3 - Casas Grandes Cosmology by Christine and Todd Vanpool 

Chapter 4 - The Casas Grandes Border by Timothy D. Maxwell

Plates 21 - 42 - Effigy Vessels

From the Jacket:

ON A BROAD TERRACE overlooking the Rio Casas Grandes, in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico, an ancient culture reached its apex in the creation of a sophisticated city unlike anything the ancient Southwest had known. Secrets of Casas Grandes explores the ceramic traditions of this pre-columbian culture of northern Mexico, a major regional center during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that uniquely blended elements of the Pueblo culture to the north and Mesoamerican civilizations to the south.

The prehispanic pottery of Casas Grandes is recognized as exceptional among the ceramic traditions of the greater Southwest, but it is what the pottery reveals about the human society that produced it that allows us rare insight into an ancient culture that is just beginning to receive the degree of archaeological attention paid to more famous sites such as Chaco Canyon.

Casas Grandes ceramics were woven into the fabric of everyday life and used in domestic and ritual contexts. The vibrant pottery of the Media period (AD 1200-1450) traces the development from plain utilitarian ware to objects of art that feature bold geometric polychrome designs and diverse forms and decoration. The representational imagery of the ceramics appears to narrate the complex human and mythic stories and symbols animating this ancient culture.

Of particular interest here are the sculptural effigy vessels representing animal, human, and supernatural forms in a rich iconography unsurpassed in ceramics throughout the region.

The rise of a ruling elite in thirteenth-century Casas Grandes coincided with the explosive production of colorful and symbolically charged pottery that some archaeologists argue reinforced the political, economic, and religious values and interests of a ruling class. The expanding influence and power of the elites enabled the emergence of specialist potters capable of creating vessels of spectacular artistry, many fine examples of which appear in this volume.