Fig. 11.—Braided handle. ½ nat. size.
Fig. 12.—Small bowl. Diam. 3½″.
Coarse, undecorated vessels showing coils, indentations, superficial protuberances, and other rude decorations like those so well known in Southwestern ruins, are well represented. Some of these were used as cooking vessels, as shown by the soot still adhering to their outer surface. While the majority of bowls were broken in fragments when found, a few were simply pierced through the bottom; one or two were unbroken or simply notched at the edge.
The colors of Mimbres ware are uniform and often striking. There are good specimens of black and white ware; also red, black, and yellow with brown decorations are numerous. Some of the best pieces are colored a light orange. Many of the fragments are made of the finest paste identical in color and finish with ware from Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, which furnishes the best prehistoric pottery from the Southwest. No effigy jar, or animal formed vase, however, exists in any collections from the Mimbres examined by the author.
Ruins in the Lower Mimbres have thus far yielded a larger variety and a finer type of pottery than ruins on the banks of the river among the hills, which is in part due to the extent of excavations. The Oldtown potters developed a kind of pottery with characteristic ornamentation found both in ruins in the plain to the south and along the narrow valley of the Mimbres to the north.
The Mimbres pottery, like all other ancient ware from the Southwest, frequently shows evidences of having been mended. Holes were drilled near the breaks and fibers formerly united the parts thus holding the bowl together even though broken. As one goes south, following the course of the river, the character of the pottery changes very slightly, but if anything is a little better.
The food bowls generally have a rounded base, but one specimen is flat on the bottom. The edges of the bowls from the ruin at Black Mountain are curved outward, an exceptional feature in ancient Pueblo vessels but common in modern forms.