Southwestern US, Mimbres Valley, New Mexico, ca. 1000 to 1150 CE. A classic seed bowl from an imaginative and unique ceramic culture. The bowl has steep walls, rimmed with a thick border of a checked pattern, and with a finely painted "doodle bug," an antlion larva in the center. The bug's head has anthropomorphic eyes, but otherwise it is a fascinating representation of an insect painted by someone who was probably intimately familiar with the animal - indeed, they may have observed their infamous practice of moving in a "doodle" shape as they dig pits to trap ants and other insects. A bowl like this probably ended its useful life placed over the face of someone in a grave. Size: 7.95" W x 4.2" H (20.2 cm x 10.7 cm)

The antlion, like other zoomorphic motifs on Mimbres ceramics, may have been a marker of a particular clan, lineage, or other social group. Insects are a frequent motif, with hundreds of known examples, and they have been recorded at nearly every excavated Mimbres archaeological site. Some ethnographic and ethnohistoric descriptions from nearby Mesoamerica connect insects to the ancestors, with the dead sometimes returning as insects; although it is difficult to speculate on the connection between Mesoamerican beliefs and those of the ancient Southwest, it does provide a suggestion for the meaning behind this bowl.

Provenance: ex private Ohio, USA collection

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#131405

Repaired from multiple pieces with some overpainting along restoration lines; much of the motifs are original pigment and are nicely preserved.