Vases.—Small vases with contracted neck and lip slightly curved, and larger vases with the same characters, occur sparingly. These ([pls. 26], [27, b]) are decorated on the exterior in geometrical designs; the interior is plain. The bases are rounded, sometimes flat, and in rare instances concave.
Disks.—Among pottery objects should be mentioned certain disks, some large, others small, some perforated in the middle, others imperforate. Several are decorated. These disks served as covers for bowls, and similar disks were employed as counters in games or as spindle whorls. None of the clay disks from Cliff Palace has a central knob or handle like those from Spruce-tree House.
RELATIONS AS DETERMINED BY POTTERY
In the report on Spruce-tree House, using pottery as a basis, the prehistoric culture of the Southwest, including the Gila-Salt area, which can not strictly be designated Pueblo, has been provisionally divided into several subcultural areas. Among these are the Hopi, a specialized modification of the Little Colorado, the Little Colorado proper, the San Juan, and the Gila-Salt areas.
Cliff Palace pottery symbols are not closely related to those on old Hopi ware, as typified by the collections from Sikyatki.[71] Neither Cliff Palace nor Spruce-tree House pottery is closely allied to that of the Little Colorado, as exemplified by Homolobi ware, but both have a closer likeness to that from Wukóki, a settlement ascribed to the Snake clans, situated near Black Falls, not far from Flagstaff, Arizona. As a rule the symbolism on pottery from the Little Colorado, which includes that of its upper tributaries, as the Zuñi, Puerco, Leroux, and Cottonwood washes, is a mixture of all types. This river valley has exerted a distributing influence in Pueblo migrations, and in its ruins are found symbols characteristic of many clans, some of which, following up the tributaries of the Salt and the Gila, have brought Casas Grandes decorative elements; others, with sources in the northeast, have contributed designs from an opposite direction. The predominating directions of ceramic culture migration in this valley have been from south to north and from west to east.[72]
The relation of Cliff Palace pottery designs to the symbolism or decorative motives characteristic of the Gila valley ruins is remote. Several geometrical patterns are common to all areas of the Southwest, but specialized features characterize each of these areas. The pottery from Cliff Palace finds its nearest relation throughout the upper San Juan region; the most distant to that of ruins in northern Arizona near Colorado Grande.[73]
SYMBOLS ON POTTERY
The symbols on the Cliff Palace pottery are reducible to rectangular geometrical figures; life forms, with the rare exceptions noted above, are not represented, and the exceptional examples are crude. Contrast this condition with the pottery from Sikyatki, where three-fourths of the decorations are life designs, as figures of men or animals, many of which are highly symbolic. The "sky band" with hanging bird design, peculiar to old Hopi ware, was unknown to Cliff Palace potters. Encircling lines are unbroken, no specimen being found with the break so common to the pottery from the Hopi, Little Colorado, Gila, and Jemez subareas. The designs on food bowls are often accompanied with marginal dots. No example of the conventionalized "breath-feather" so common in Sikyatki pottery decoration occurs. Spattering with color was not practiced.
An analysis of the pottery decorations shows that the dominant forms may be reduced to a few types, of which the terrace, the spiral, the triangle, and the cross in its various forms are the most common.