In order that the reader may envisage the long history that lies behind the work of the modern potters, I give a summary of our present knowledge of the origin and development of pottery in the Southwest.
To go back to the very beginning, it is not yet certain whether pottery making was introduced into the region from Mexico, or whether it was a local invention. There is evidence in favor of each theory. As will presently be shown, there can be traced in the Southwest an almost unbroken development from the earliest and crudest forms, through intermediate stages, to the perfected styles of later times; nor can Mexican influence be seen in the wares themselves at any period from beginning to end. Hence it might appear that the art was of purely local origin and growth. On the other hand, Mexico was the breeding ground for all the higher elements of native American culture; corn-growing, the cultivation of cotton, the use of stone masonry, the true loom, etc., and it is practically certain that all these traits worked into the Southwest from Mexico. It would thus seem reasonable to suppose that the concept of pottery came from the same source, particularly as pottery does not appear in our area until some time after the introduction of corn, and the mere presence of corn proves contact of one sort or another with Mexico, where presumably pottery had been in use for a considerable period. My present feeling is, however, that the importation consisted of no more than the bare idea that vessels could be made of clay, and that the subsequent development of the art was entirely unaffected by outside influences. This question, so important for its bearing on general problems of dissemination versus independent origin of culture traits, can only be settled by work in the archaeologically still unknown field of northern Mexico.
The earliest inhabitants of the Southwest of whom we have certain knowledge were the Basket Makers, so called by their discoverer because basketry rather than pottery was buried with their dead. They lived in southeastern Utah and northern Arizona, were an agricultural or semi-agricultural people who built no permanent houses, and who had no true pottery. In some of the caves that they occupied, however, there have been found a few fragments of crude, unfired clay dishes whose thick, bungling sides bear the imprints of the fingers of their makers. Save for occasional hesitating lines of incised marks, or straggling daubs of black paint, these vessels are undecorated. They bear no slip, nor, as was said above, were any of them subjected to the burning which would have converted them into true pottery. In the course of time, though whether that time should be counted in tens, or hundreds, or even thousands of years, we have at present no way of telling, the Basket Makers began to build houses of stone slabs, to group their hitherto scattered dwellings together into small communities, and, most important of all from the point of view of our present inquiry, to make hard, thin-walled, thoroughly fired vessels, in other words real pottery. The culture stage characterized by these
Fig. 1. Outlines of Post-Basket Maker vessels. (Courtesy S. J. Guernsey.)
remains and further distinguishable from the classic Basket Maker on the basis of house structure, sandal form, and other traits, was first identified by S. J. Guernsey, and named by him “post-Basket Maker”.
Post-Basket Maker pottery is simple in form and in decoration. It is normally light gray in color. The vessel forms most commonly found are bowls ([fig. 1], d, e), globular vessels with restricted orifices ([fig. 1], a), and water jars, the latter often having a swollen neck ([fig. 1], b). The body of the ware in cross-section has a markedly granular appearance, due to the large size of the bits of tempering material included in it. A small percentage of the bowls bear a thin white slip on the interior
PLATE 2
ANCIENT CORRUGATED WARES