Rodeck Collection

The Rodeck Collection consists of photographs of Mimbres pottery made by Dr. Hugo Rodeck, who was a professor of natural history and the director of the University of Colorado Museum. In 1952 he traveled around the country photographing and recording Mimbres pottery bowls with representational designs, including material in both museums and private collections. This material – a log of the information as well as the slides – was made part of the University of Colorado museum’s collections (accession 2003-03). The entire collection includes photographs and information on 1,870 vessels and sherds.

In 2003 Dr. Steven LeBlanc, then at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, digitized the Rodeck pottery vessel slides that had not been previously published. It is this material that constitutes the Rodeck Collection in MimPIDD. In some cases (e.g., MimPIDD 8114) the Rodeck photos supplement other photos of known vessels. However, for many of the bowls that were in private collections, the only information archaeologists have on these pieces is what was recorded by Dr. Rodeck.

The Rodeck photographs are in black and white and are distinguished by the labels (with distinctive black background) that he placed beside each vessel. Unfortunately, in many cases we do not know what the abbreviations in the labels mean.