West Collection

The West Collection was originally a collection of pottery made by a private collector, Robert W. West, when he lived in Deming, New Mexico (at the southern end of the Mimbres Valley) in the early 20th century. Mr. West and his wife later moved to Quartzite, Arizona, and they loaned the vessels to the Arizona State Museum (ASM), where they were accessioned and catalogued. The vessels were returned to the Wests in 1966 and (as far as professional archaeologists know) they have since been sold. All that remains of the collection for research are the photographs and associated descriptive data, including site-level provenience information. Dr. Darrell Creel (University of Texas, Austin) obtained the photographs and data from the ASM and received permission from ASM to include the images and descriptive information in MimPIDD. The West Collection includes photographs and data on 92 Mimbres black-on-white vessels.

In Fall, 2014 Dr. Michelle Hegmon (Arizona State University) received a grant from the American Anthropological Association for "Archiving Legacy Digital Data" which was used to incorporate the West Collection into MimPIDD.