Pueblo pottery are ceramic objects made by the Indigenous Pueblo people and their antecedents, the Ancestral Puebloans and Mogollon cultures in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. For centuries, pottery has been central to pueblo life as a feature of ceremonial and utilitarian usage. The clay is locally sourced, most frequently handmade (not thrown on a potters wheel nor cast in a mold), and fired traditionally in an earthen pit. These items take the form of storage jars, canteens, serving bowls, seed jars, and ladles. Some utility wares were undecorated except from simple corrugations or marks made with a stick or fingernail, however many examples for centuries were painted with abstract or representational motifs. Some pueblos made effigy vessels, fetishes or figurines. During modern times, pueblo pottery was produced specifically as an art form to serve an economic function. This role is not dissimilar to prehistoric times when pottery was traded throughout the Southwest, and in historic times after contact with the Spanish colonialists. In the 1880s, the arrival of the transcontinental railroad brought anthropologists and ethnographers as well as tourists to the pueblo lands. This resulted in tens of thousands of pottery objects being transferred, sometimes mysteriously, to museums and collectors on the East Coast. Pottery and artifact looting from historical sites began to occur. At the turn of the century, a modern sensibility began to emerge in the work of a Hopi-Tewa potter, Nampeyo of Hano, and a few years later, in the work of María Martinez from San Ildefonso Pueblo. In the 20th century, pueblo pottery entered the commercial marketplace with its primarily Anglo "middle-men" of gallerists and independent dealers acting as representatives for the artists, who sold these wares to museums and private collectors. This drove up the value of modern and contemporary works, and created a black market for historic and prehistoric objects; even prominent galleries in the 1990s were selling pueblo pottery of questionable provenance. These activities led to stricter enforcement of the Antiquities Act of 1906, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. Modern and contemporary pueblo potters tend to work within their family tradition, although some have developed unique styles that break with tradition while remaining cognizant of their ancestry. These artists cite their grandmothers and great-grandmothers as early influences. Currently, there are 21 federally recognized Pueblos in the Southwest, all of which have a range of distinctive styles of pottery produced in the historical colonial period and today. Nineteen pueblos are in New Mexico, one is in Arizona, and one in Texas. Many Puebloans are multi-lingual, speaking Indigenous languages as well and English and Spanish. They never entirely conceded their customs and way of life, and have held fast onto their cultures, languages and religious beliefs and practices. The modern and contemporary Tewa people of Kha'po Owingeh (Santa Clara Pueblo) and P'ohwhóge Owingeh (San Ildefonso Pueblo) favored working in blackware, whereas the Keresan-speaking people of Acoma Pueblo and the Shiwiʼma speaking people of the Pueblo of Zuni work with a wide variety of colors and design motifs.
Methods Traditional pueblo pottery is handmade from locally dug clay that is cleaned by hand of foreign matter. The clay is then worked using coiling techniques to form it into vessels that are primarily used for utilitarian purposes such as pots, storage containers for food and water, bowls and platters. Slab and pinch pot techniques are used for animal or human figurines. Tempering agents such as sand, old pieces of broken and ground-up pottery or volcanic ash are added to the clay to harden it during firing. Vessels are often decorated with incised patterns, burnished, painted with mineral paints or colored slips that are fixed during the firing process. The vessels are hardened into earthenware in a fire pit dug into the ground. Various locally sourced materials are used as fuel including wood, dung or coal.
History
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