On December 4, 2022, nineteen GCAS members and their guests- including our youngest visitor (age six months old!) – visited the Fleming Museum at WNMU. In addition to a guided tour of the Museum’s main exhibits, museum director Danni Romero treated our group to the first-ever public showing of their most recent acquisition of Mimbres artifacts, the Clint and Dee (Delk) Johnson Collection.
Local ranchers Clint and Dee Johnson spent decades collecting prehistoric ceramics and other artifacts, most or all of which they gathered from sites located on their extended family’s own private ranch lands in Grant and Luna Counties. Their heirs generously donated this assemblage to the WNMU Museum. The collection includes a few items not commonly found in Mimbres-Mogollon sites in our area so further study of the materials will undoubtedly lead archaeologists to put the concept of “Mimbres” into better context. The GCAS’s library was pleased to offer the museum some relevant documents from our archives that may provide researchers some historical background to the Johnson Collection during the years when Clint and Dee Johnson had been actively collecting.
We thank Director Romero for having given us the opportunity to view the museum’s collections while learning from her a professional’s insights into their significance. We look forward to our next trip to the museum to pick up where we left off!