Sumario: | "The famous and highly-sought-after Mimbres painted pottery in southwestern New Mexico has fascinated people since it first became known more than a century ago. In 1914 and following years, Jesse Walter Fewkes published his well-known book and subsequent papers on Mimbres pottery, setting off a flurry of professional research as well as looting that has waxed and waned in the decades since. The number of publications on Mimbres archaeology and pottery is substantial; and from the beginning, interest has focused on the painted pottery, especially the figurative vessels with animal or human imagery. There have been innumerable analyses of style, dating, iconography, meaning, identity, use wear, and trade and travel implications. There was, however, little interest in the actual production of Mimbres pottery until the professional investigations of the 1970s when petrographic analysis began. It was in the late 1980s and 1990s that Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) was first employed in the study of Mimbres pottery production and distribution, initiated during the analysis phase of the Mimbres Foundation's multi-year research project that focused on the Mimbres valley. This book represents an effort to assess a much-expanded INAA dataset and presents a new and more informed interpretation of ceramic production and distribution in the Mimbres region. Creel's project examines one of the largest ceramic chemical compositional datasets in the world to explore the production and distribution of Mimbres pottery in relation to context and style in ways that have not previously been possible. The book should be of great interest to researchers focused on Mimbres pottery as well as archaeologists interested in ceramic production, village specialization, and exchange broadly"--
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