Over the past three decades, neutron activation analysis (NAA; alternatively labeled instrumental neutron activation analysis, or INAA) has become cemented as the method of choice for ceramic compositional sourcing studies in the archaeology of the southwestern United States. The result is an expansive—and constantly expanding—body of data offering analytical potential far beyond that of any single sampling project. Darrell G. Creel's recent volume illustrates this in the context of the pottery of the greater Mimbres region of southwestern New Mexico and adjacent areas. The book's most robust data and strongest interpretations are those about Mimbres Black-on-white painted pottery dating to the Mimbres Classic period (AD 1000–1130)—a source of continuing fascination for archaeologists and the public alike—and for the archaeology of sites located within the Mimbres Valley itself, but the study also offers a substantial amount of information about earlier and later time periods and about outlying regions.
The total sample utilized for the volume includes almost 5,700 individual sherds or vessels from more than 180 sites. Creel's relatively recent sampling work, focused largely on whole vessels and reported primarily in this volume, accounts for about a third of the total sample. The remainder represents sampling projects by least a score of researchers over more than a quarter century. The majority of these were analyzed by the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) archaeometry program, and it is worth noting that the centralization of NAA at MURR and the work of MURR staff play a large part in making such large-scale analyses possible. The aggregate nature of the total sample reported in the volume necessarily produces some biases and uncertainty; for example, some probable production regions are represented by only limited numbers of sites and samples, whereas three well-studied sites in the Mimbres Valley (Swarts, NAN Ranch, and Old Town) account for almost a quarter of the total samples analyzed. Creel maintains an awareness of these limitations throughout the volume, keeping a sound conceptual distance between NAA compositional groups and their proposed production locations and acknowledging the differing levels of confidence among pottery types and geographic areas. One minor cavil is that the book contains little discussion or citation regarding methodology—in particular, I would have liked to have seen an outline of the statistical methods used to produce compositional groups.
The stated primary purpose of the volume is to serve as a handbook for the results of the analysis, and these are summarized by pottery type in the third chapter and by compositional group in the appendix. The later chapters are devoted to interpretation—of variability within sites (Chapter 4), of relationships of compositional groups with design and imagery (Chapter 5), and of Mimbres Black-on-white Style III (also called Mimbres Classic Black-on-white) specifically (Chapter 6). The last of these chapters is the strongest, although the design chapter offers some intriguing hints of patterning in design content, with imagery depicting humans or turtles possibly overrepresented in some production groups within the upper Mimbres Valley.
The picture of Classic period distribution that is offered in Chapter 6 and the concluding chapter is complex. Mimbres Black-on-white Style III pottery was frequently exchanged, even among settlements that produced it. Most exchange was among settlements near one another, however. Production was concentrated in the upper portion of the Mimbres Valley. Given the movement of population out of this part of the region at the end of the Classic period, the sourcing results offer a geographic dimension to the relationship between the end of the Mimbres Classic period and the cessation of production of Mimbres Black-on-white pottery. Creel offers a thoughtful discussion of the potential number of individuals producing pottery and the potential mechanisms by which it moved. Beyond the Mimbres Valley, the results presented in the volume offer evidence for both local production—particularly in the Gila River drainage, with exchange between the Upper Gila and Mimbres Valley proper apparently diminishing over time—and for the movement of small quantities of painted pottery from major Mimbres Valley production areas to communities to the east and south.
There remains one issue that I feel must be mentioned: an unclear but certainly nontrivial proportion of the vessels sampled for the project are funerary objects. The volume includes surprisingly little (if any) acknowledgment that this is problematic in the ethical and legal context of archaeology in the United States. It seems very unlikely to me that museums or descendant communities would approve such a sampling strategy going forward.
The volume closes with recommendations for future work, and there is a great deal of potential for new sourcing projects both to test potential patterns reported in the volume and to fill in lacunae in the existing dataset; such work might focus on the Mimbres Valley's neighboring regions, on earlier time periods, or on unpainted pottery. As they stand, the results and discussion offered by the volume will be an enduring resource for those with interests in the Mimbres region and surrounding areas of the Southwest, in NAA as applied to aggregated datasets, or in pottery production and circulation.
