Together, in a previously unstudied part of the region, they have found where some of the Mimbres went, and the new culture they were in the process of becoming. The time is early June 1998. Her field crew has been working in the eastern part of the Mimbres region for the past three weeks, digging out several sites thought to have housed Mimbres families 800 years ago. Nelson chats about the features of the room that interest her, what they could have been used for and when they were made. The wall, she thinks, once supported a small field house that served as a temporary shelter for people from larger villages.
Archaeology is about making connections between people and what they left behind.
It usually involves a laborious process of excavation and interpretation one that has been much more difficult in the Mimbres region than in other areas. When Nelson began studying the Mimbres in the early 1970s, pot-hunting was the predominant form of digging being done in the region. People frequently ransacked the ruins with pickaxes, shovels, even backhoes, to get at the prehistoric art. Until recently, however, little was known about the people who had made the pots. A few studies had been conducted on Mimbres sites in the 1930s.