Archeology of the lower Mimbres valley, New Mexico

by Jesse Walter Fewkes

The human burials here found had knees flexed or drawn to the breast in the "contracted" position, sometimes with the face turned eastward. The skeletons were sometimes found in shallow graves, but often were buried deeply below the surface. Almost without exception the crania had bowls fitted over them like caps. The graves as a rule are limited to soft ground, the bowls resting on undisturbed sand devoid of human remains. In some instances there appears to have been a hardened crust of clay above the remains, possibly all that is left of the floor of a dwelling. The indications are that here, as elsewhere, the dead were buried under the floors of dwellings, as is commonly the case throughout the Mimbres Valley. While there is not enough of the walls above ground to show the former extent of the dwellings, the indications are that they were extensive and have been broken down and washed away.

OLDTOWN RUIN

Near where the Mimbres leaves the hills and, after spreading out, is lost in the sand, there was formerly a "station," on the mail route, called Mimbres, but now known as Oldtown. Since the founding of Deming, the railroad center, the stage route has been abandoned and Mimbres (Oldtown) has so declined in population that nothing remains of this settlement except a ranch-house, a school-house, and a number of deserted adobe dwellings.

Oldtown lies on the border of what must formerly have been a lake and later became a morass or cienega, but is now a level plain lined on one side with trees and covered with grass, affording excellent pasturage. From this point the water of the Mimbres River is lost, and its bed is but a dry channel or arroyo which meanders through the plain, filled with water only part of the year. In the dry months the river sinks below the surface of the plain near Oldtown reappearing at times where the subsoil comes to the surface, and at last forms Palomas Lake in northern Mexico.

In June, when the author visited Oldtown, the dry bed of the Mimbres throughout its course could be readily traced by a line of green vegetation along the whole length of the plain from the Oldtown site to the Florida Mountains.[14]

The locality of emergence of the Mimbres from the hills or where its waters sink below the surface is characteristic. The place is surrounded by low hills forming on the south a precipitous cliff, eighty feet high, which the prehistoric inhabitants chose as a site of one of their villages; from the character and abundance of pottery found, there is every reason to suppose this was an important village.

The Oldtown ruin is one of the most extensive seen by the author during his reconnaissance in the Deming Valley, although not so large as some of those in the Upper Mimbres, or on Whiskey Creek, near Central. Although it is quite difficult to determine the details of the general plan, the outlines of former rectangular rooms are indicated by stone walls that may be fairly well traced. There seem to have been several clusters of rooms arranged in rows, separated by square or rectangular plazas, unconnected, often with circular depressions between them.

There is considerable evidence of "pottery hunting" by amateurs in the mounds of Oldtown, and it is said that several highly decorated food bowls adorned with zoic figures have been taken from the rooms. It appears that the ancient inhabitants here, as elsewhere, practised house burial and that they deposited their dead in the contracted position, placing bowls over the crania ([fig. 1]).[15]

Fig. 1.—Urn burial. (Schematic.)