Sat, 12/13/2025
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
El Paso Museum of Archaeology
4301 Transmountain, El Paso, Texas 79924
Join the El Paso Museum of Archaeology (EPMArch) for:
"Metamorphosis of the Mimbres Culture," a presentation by Thatcher Seltzer-Rogers.
Abstract:
The Mimbres culture of southwest New Mexico is renowned for finely decorated black-on-white pottery that display figurative designs of humans and animals in various scenery or store-like representations. Yet, by around the mid-twelfth century CE, this pottery ceased, and the entire area was extensively depopulated. Archaeologists predominately approach this shift by examining environmental factors including drought as a primary cause for cultural collapse. Recent investigations of the thirteenth century, both within the Mimbres valley and in adjacent regions, however, provide hints suggesting a more complex, socially-contingent cultural transformation. In this presentation, I provide an overview of the last half-century of Mimbres culture, what came after, and propose that instead of drought-stressed populations discarding their material icons, that the end of Mimbres can best be explained as an outcome of social reorganization and upheaval.
Bio:
Thatcher Seltzer-Rogers is a Senior Archaeologist and Principal Investigator at Chronicle Heritage, an internationally-operating cultural resource management firm. He earned his PhD with Distinction from the University of New Mexico in 2023, where he also earned his master's degree in 2019. His dissertation investigated patterns of late prehispanic macroregional interaction and political organization in the International Four Corners, where the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Chihuahua, and Sonora meet.
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