SOUTHWESTERN POTTERY

Blinman, Eric
1993     Anasazi Pottery, Evolution of a Technology. Expedition 35(1):14-22.

The earliest ceramic containers are dated to ca. A.D. 100 in the Tucson Basin, and ca. A.D. 200-300 on the Colorado Plateau. However, the earliest ceramics are dated a few hundred years earlier in the Tucson Basin. These are very small figurines and drinking cups.

The main raw materials used for making pottery are clay, temper, and slip. Clay was mined from a variety of sources, and possessed different physical properties depending on the geology of the area. Temper refers to inclusions added to the clay by people to increase workability, aid in firing, or enhance the performance of the completed pot. For example, experiments have demonstrated that certain types of temper can help prevent pots from cracking while drying or exploding during firing. Common types of temper added to pottery in the Southwest include sand, crushed rock, and crushed potsherds. A slip is a thin coating of watery clay that may be added to the surface of a pot before firing to give it a smooth, polished look.

The potter's wheel was not used in the Southwest until the arrival of the Spanish. There were two basic techniques for building a pot: coil-and-scrape and paddle-and-anvil. In coil-and-scrape, the clay is rolled into coils that are wound around and attached to each other to form the walls of the vessel. The coils are then scraped together to form the smooth surface of the pot. In the paddle-and-anvil technique, a large piece of clay is worked into the shape of a pot and then the walls are formed by holding a flat stone or other object (the anvil) on the inside and then hitting the outside of the wall with a wooden paddle. Plates or "pukis" may be used as a base on which to rotate the pot during construction.

A variety of surface treatments were applied to Southwestern ceramics for decorative purposes. The surface of a pot would often be smoothed with a polishing stone, giving it an almost glassy finish. Corrugations could also be added to the surface by pressing a stick or other object into the wet clay, producing a pattern of indentations. Prehistoric Southwestern ceramics are famous for the designs that were often painted on the surface of the pots. Designs could be naturalistic, depicting animals or other facets of nature, or geometric, using triangles or other shapes. The names of different pottery styles often refer to the number of different colors used in the design; bichrome pots use only two colors, while polychrome pots use three or more colors. Another type of surface treatment was smudging, which was accomplished by smothering a pot during firing, producing a smokey, black surface.

Kilns used for firing pottery have only been found in the Mesa Verde area, and they are not the sort that most Westerners are familiar with. The Mesa Verde kilns are actually large trenches that would have been filled with fuel and dozens of pots, then set ablaze. These kilns demonstrate cooperative firing among a group of potters. In most areas, pots were fired in open bonfires that have left almost no traces in the archaeological record.

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