Steven A. LeBlanc, Director of Collections at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University
Tuesday, 8 November 2011, 4:15 pm
Lang Performing Arts Center Cinema, Swarthmore College
“Individuals, Specialization, and Prehistoric Pottery: Mimbres Painted Bowls from the American Southwest.”
Mimbres pottery is one of the great art traditions of ancient North America. Not only are these elegant bowls whimsical and sophisticated, most of them are extremely well executed. We now believe this was because their makers, most likely women, were part time specialists, and the Mimbres society was encouraging the best artists to be creative. Using a large corpus of bowl images, we believe we can recognize the work of the best of these artists. This finding has important implications for how specialization develops in traditional societies, and helps understand how this unique pottery came to exist.
For more information, please contact:
Michael W. Cothren
Scheuer Family Professor of Humanities &
Chair, Department of Art, Swarthmore College
Chair, Department of Art, Swarthmore College
