KIDDER— CASAS GRANDES POTTERY 



Tempering consists of tiny, light-colored particles, presumably ground 

 potsherds. Visible surfaces are generally coated with a rich red slip 

 that has been polished on areas free from added ornament, handles, 

 etc., with the rubbing stone. 



Shapes (pi. I, figs. 1-5 and 7). — Unlike the black, the redware 

 occurs in so many different shapes that a classification is practically 

 impossible. There are several tiny bowls one to three inches in diam- 

 eter; many small jars with outcurved lips, no two of which are of 

 exactly the same form; and a few larger jars with rather fat bodies. 

 Besides these more ordinary types there are double pots connected by 

 hollow bars and arching handles (pi. 1, fig. 1); small, plain-bodied 

 pieces with high handles (pi. 1, fig. 4); double-lobed jars; small- 

 mouthed bottles (a shape of great rarity in the Southwest) ; and jars 

 with snakes (pi. 1, fig. 7), pairs of frogs (Mus. Amer. Ind. ttAt), or 

 unidentifiable animals modeled on their sides. Tiny ladles copied 

 evidently from gourds split lengthwise (Mus. Amer. Ind. riW), and 

 small flat jars in the form of squashes (Am. Mus. tMt. Rancho San 

 Diego), are conscious imitations of vegetal forms. 



The decorations of the surfaces of redware vessels are no less varied 

 than are their shapes. A few pieces are plain polished red; on others 

 polished areas are opposed by figures or areas left unpolished or even 

 in the lighter colored, unslipped base clay. A dull-black paint is occa- 

 sionally used to contrast with the polished red, or is applied indepen- 

 dently in bands or roughly drawn stepped figures. 



Aside from color variations there were employed a great number 

 of different methods for texturing parts of the surfaces of vessels. 

 Some of these were: the leaving unsmoothed of the original structural 

 coil (pi. I, fig. 3) ; incising, (pi. I, fig. 1), both heavy and light; gouging; 

 scoring with a stick; marking in small circles with the end of a reed 

 or hollow bone; indenting with the fingernail; and scraping with a 

 rough-edged tool, possibly a corncob. The most interesting of these 

 devices is the leaving of the coil; this shows us how the vessels were 

 made, and also provides an example of the retention of coiling for 

 decorative purposes after it had been abandoned on the cooking wares. 



PAINTED WARE 



Technology. — Painted ware forms about 70 per cent of the collec- 

 tion. It is made of light-colored clay of such good quality that an 

 outer covering or slip was usually dispensed with. 1 Where it occurs 

 it is of a whitish color, is soft and crumbly, and often partly wears 



1 This is an unusual feature in Southwestern pottery, being found commonly only here, in the 

 ancient Hopi ruins (Sikyatki, etc.), and in the finer black-and-white ware of the Kayenta district. 



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