El Paso's Museum of Archaeology, Walking with the Ancestors

One of the excellent permanent exhibits
at El Paso's Museum of Archaeology
photo courtesy, Texas Historical Commission

El Paso's Museum of Archaeology on TransMountain Road, is a terrific place to visit and gain appreciation of our heritage and our roots as residents of the Trans Pecos and Chihuahuan Desert.

There's a great exhibit on now:

Walking with the Ancestors:
From Mesoamerica to the Southwest

On View September 22, 2012 through January 13, 2013

 

Guest Curator, Dr. Yolanda Chávez Leyva

Chair of the History Department, University of Texas, El Paso

A statement from the exhibit's curator, from the Museum's website:

"Walking with the Ancestors: From Mesoamerica to the Southwest is an exhibit about the connections among peoples across time and space. Although the movement of people shaped the El Paso del Norte region of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez for thousands of years, we often think of migration as a relatively new development. Yet, we are surrounded by traces of much, much older movements of peoples and cultures moving from south to north, from what is now Mexico to what is now the Southwestern United States.

My ancestors believed that without movement there is no life. The heart beats, moving our blood through our bodies. The earth rotates around the sun and the moon circles the earth. The seasons move from the new life of springtime to the resting time of winter only to begin a new cycle of growth again. Animals migrate. And people move. The history of humanity is a story of movement, of migration from one place to another for a season or for generations. Walking with the Ancestors connects us to each other because it asks us to remember what we share. At a time when immigration is one of the most contested and emotional issues in our nation, this exhibit calls on us to stop for a moment and think about the ancient history of movements of people and culture.

Utilizing pottery, photographs, stories and other artifacts, the exhibit draws on themes of corn, rain, parrots, the peyote cactus and the rabbit in the moon to trace the movement of life: the movement of the ancestors."

Olin, Aztec glyph from Codex Magliabechiano

Tlaloc from Codex Rios