From Aunt Gina and Max... On June 27-29, Max, my friend Myriam, and I, visited Casas Grandes, a village in the Mexican state of Chihuahua (3 hours South of El Paso, Texas). Casas Grandes is world famous for the nearby "potter village" of Mata Ortiz, which we also visited (I bought a lot of pottery!!). Living nearby are Mennonite and Mormon communities. Both groups are bilingual with Spanish as their second language. The Mennonites are Old Order Mennonites and speak their own dialect of German, while those in the Mormon community
speak English.
speak English.
All these pictures were taken at the largest identified settlement called Paquimé, a UNESCO World Heritage Archeologist Site. Paquimé began as a group of 20 or more house clusters, each with a plaza and enclosing wall. These single-story adobe dwellings shared a common water system. Excavations in one compound produced eggshell fragments, bird skeletons and traces of wooden perches which led to the conclusion that the community raised scarlet macaws, important in Mesoamerican rituals. Paquimé was abandoned in the early 15th century. At its height in 1300 AD, Paquimé was the center of a culture which included much of New Mexico and Chihuahua, as well as portions of Sonora, Texas and Arizona. Once believed to be part of the Toltec society, the Casas Grandes has been re-dated and is now believed to be wedged between the Toltec and Aztec cultures. (MORE PICTURES ON WEB ALBUMS LINK ON LEFT)
