2 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL, MUSEUM vol. 81 



intrusion of a development of the varied polychrome ceramic art 

 of this region. 



There is no longer question that the focus of the gray-ware 

 art was in the San Juan drainage, since Dr. F. H. H. Roberts's 

 explorations in Pueblo I ruins in the Piedra district show not only 

 the beginning of Pueblo Indian pottery, but also that the first ware 

 was of the gray type. (Roberts, 1930.) This is a clear case of the 

 influence of environmental clays on the formation of a ceramic 

 type. With this fact in view, the polychrome, orange, yellow, and 

 brown classes are seen to depend on the original sedimentary clays 

 of the Jurassic and Cretaceous and resedimented clays from older 

 and later periods spread out on the eroded strata. 



Over a very large area north of the Little Colorado, archeologists 

 have noted in small house sites shards of gray ware on which the 

 decoration appears faded. These sites, which were much weather- 

 worn and gave an impression of antiquity, were for a long time 

 an enigma. More intensive work in the Pueblo region has revealed 

 that this ware seems to have been dispersed from the Kayenta 

 focus during Pueblo III period. It may be surmised that the dis- 

 tribution of gray ware of the class mentioned was toward the south 

 and west from the Kayenta focus. This is borne out by the char- 

 acter of the decoration (see pi, 1 and pi. 3, fig. 3), which may be 

 called diffuse, while from the other major focus in the San Juan 

 appears to emerge the sharp-cut designs in dark pigment not cover- 

 ing the whole surface of vessels. The priority seems to be with 

 the San Juan, but the greatest development in an art sense occurs 

 to the westward, and its distribution is southward in Arizona- 

 Placed on Doctor Kidder's base map graphically, the gray-ware 

 centers are shown in Figure 1. The dimness or clearness of the 

 decoration is probably due to the medium used, possibly water in the 

 case of the faded designs and seed oil in the clear ones. With the 

 iron pigments, water would give a thin paint and oil more of a mass 

 of color. (Hawley, 1929.) 



Evidently the gray ware continued over so long a period and 

 became fixed to such an extent that when a group of Pueblo Indians 

 moved into a locality where it was not possible to obtain the clay to 

 produce the ware, they practiced slipping with white clay over a local 

 body, the kaolin evidently being brought in small quantities from a 

 long distance or obtained from detritus from old formations.^ There 

 is evidence that halloysite, a white claylike mineral near to kaolin, 

 was gotten from the ancient gravels along the Little Colorado. 

 Halloysite shrinks considerably and tends to warp in firing, a feature 

 noticed frequently in southern gray ware. 



» Kaolin for ceremonial purposes is brought by the Hopi Indians from a butte south- 

 west of Walpi, where novices are taken for their initiation into the fraternities. 



