A Behind Closed Doors spectator, looks at the intricate details inside a 600-year-old Ramos artifact from the Casas Grandes collection April 2 at the El Paso Museum of Archeology as Jason Jurgena, curator for EPMA, holds the piece. Photo by Lacey Justinger.
Behind Closed Doors offers look at obscure artifacts
Did you know museum curators display only a small portion of their valuable pieces at a time? The El Paso Museum of Archeology is offering a Behind Closed Doors special tour every Wednesday this month from noon to 1 p.m.
Behind Closed Doors takes spectators through the storage rooms in the museum people usually don’t get to see. Spectators will have the opportunity not only to view the entire collection in one trip, but they will also be accompanied by a guide who can answer inquiries for those inquisitive minds.
Jason Jurgena, curator for EPMA, said they only display 5 to 10 percent of their collections during an exhibit because objects in museums are subject to environmental damage including light and changes in temperature. He said even though their exhibits are permanent, the objects are rotated out, especially basketry, which is very susceptible to light damage.
The EPMA has 300 pieces of basketry, various beadwork pieces and more than 770 artifacts from the Casas Grandes collection. Casas Grandes, meaning great houses, is a small village in Chihuahua, Mexico, that was long inhabited by indigenous people who specialized in craft activities. Crafts included extensive pottery production that was traded as far north as New Mexico and Arizona and throughout northern Mexico.
An effigy head displayed at the EPMA current exhibit. One theory is that they were used as sacrifice for a good harvest. The heads and bodies are found separately, and the reasoning behind statues versus human remains is that not every tribe could afford to sacrifice their people. Farmers today are still finding them in their fields. Photo by Lacey Justinger.
“The interesting thing of some ceramics is that occasionally you do find a hand print or finger prints,” Jurgena said. “From that we can get an idea of how big or how old the person who made it was.”
The quality of pieces in the Casas Grandes collection is sometimes considered better than much of the modern pottery in the area. Jurgena said students from the University of Texas in El Paso tried to replicate some of the larger pieces, but in order to make them the correct height they had to make them almost three quarters of an inch thick. He said the reproduced pottery weighed about 30 pounds, versus the Casas Grandes pieces, which only weigh three pounds.
“It proves the point that these people were artists,” Jurgena said. “They were able to make something that intricate and that fine, without firing them in kilns, they were throwing manure over them and setting them on fire.”
Jurgena said there is a trade from Mexico selling tourists things that look old and authentic, but are not. Many times people end up donating the items and find out they are not real. Jurgena said it is very difficult to tell if pieces are authentic without having background in archeology. One of the easier pieces to identify as fake are those that are marked “Made in Mexico,” he said.
This water vessel is one of the few South American artifacts at the El Paso Museum of Archeology. Photo by Lacey Justinger.
Jurgena said their collections are also used for research, including local and out of town universities that work with EPMA collections for dissertations and theses.
“We try to contribute not only to the public education, but to scientific education as well,” Jurgena said. “We have a world class Casas Grandes ceramic collection that is used quite extensively for research.”
There is currently a Navajo exhibit at EPMA that was made from their permanent collections. For more information or for the Behind Closed Doors tour, call 755-4332.