Curator’s Corner
By Amanda Mather Throughout the course of human history, one thing we needed to figure out, and quick, was how to preserve food. With the advent of agriculture, that need became even more intense, to put it mildly. Here in the desert, this is shocking I know — people came up with drying. Crazy right? In the…
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By Amanda Mather Another month, another newsletter and another Object of the Month. This month we’ll look at shoes, namely tewas, or teguas, or tecoas. In 1582, expedition leader, Antonio de Espejo, wrote about New Mexican footwear stating: “Everyone, man or woman, wears shoes or boots with soles of buffalo hide and uppers of dressed…
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By Amanda Mather For the past 2.5 million years, people have been manipulating rock to do our bidding: sharpening and shaping stone into things we can scrape, hunt, cut, and drill with. Rock has been our friend! Projectile points and stone tools are great ways to see how cultures have changed over time and to…
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By Amanda Mather Well, it’s not a pretty subject, but it is one that we all face, day in and day out. So, we wondered, how did Spanish colonists deal with “it?” “It” being the most mundane of tasks: using the bathroom. In rural and suburban Europe, during the 16th and 17th centuries, many people…
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by Amanda Mather One of the most ubiquitous sights in our gorgeous state, the ristra, is one of New Mexico’s great visual icons. But other than being awesome looking, it did, and to some, still does, serve a very practical purpose: not running out of chile during the long winter months, which, as any New…
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By Amanda Mather When you volunteer in or visit the Tiendita, (the small store), you will find many odd looking bottles filled with brightly colored liquids with unique old labels on the shelves. What were these remedies and chemicals, and what did people in the late 1800s use them for? Let’s start with wintergreen oil. The…
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by Amanda Mather Along with the Pueblo implements for the processing and cooking of corn (manos, metates, comals, etc.) with the Spanish came wheat and thusly bread, and the deep desire for more of it. This included an oven appropriate for the task of baking bread, of which there simply was no such thing before…
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by Amanda Mather Manos and metates (or, in nerdy archeology speak “groundstone”) have been one of the most common food preparation objects in the Southwest for the last 5,500 years. They have existed in New Mexican households from the late Archaic period around 3,500 BCE right up until the present day. Here at Las Golondrinas…
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Maybe one of the most important tools on the New Mexican frontier was the strike-a-light, known as an eslabón (link) in Mexico and chispa (spark) in New Mexico. Dating from the time of the Romans, chispas are a highly effective fire starter when paired with a small piece of hard stone such as flint, chert,…
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The object pictured here is an aparejo. Aparejos are pack pad saddles that go over the backs of donkeys and mules to form the base of the packing system, and protect the animal from injury. This particular aparejo is from the mid to late 1800s; it even still has the grass inside of it that was used as cushioning!…
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