Casas Grandes Ceramics at the Milwaukee Public Museum

Abstract

Museums across the world hold unprovenienced artifacts with valuable data left unresearched because of their lack of context. The Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) holds one such collection of Casas Grandes vessels. The intent of this paper is to present an example of how a museum collection can be contextualized in order to be compared to others of its kind and contribute to the knowledge of a prehistoric culture. Using a coding scheme, this research will present data for: 1) type and time period for each of the Casas Grandes vessels and 2) iconography analysis on the polychromes. With Northwest Mexico being under-researched compared to the American Southwest or Mesoamerica, utilization of these museum collections is more important than ever.