Archaeologist Eric Blinman gives lecture on early pottery making

Blinman gives lecture on various styles and techniques of early pottery making

By Mary Alice Murphy

Eric Blinman, who described himself as a contract archaeologist, holds a Ph.D. in the field.

"If you are not willing to have your ego smashed, you won't learn anything about making pottery," Blinman said at a lecture on Thursday at "A"Space Studio/Art/Gallery.

He said that pots and pottery were used as household items, then progressed to art and to economic development.

"The diversity is vast," Blinman said. "Once fired, pottery survives normal erosion and decay. Every family could replace about five pots per year."

He said pottery is essential to archaeologists. Blinman showed a map with dots, representing 18 pueblos and 23-25 tribes. The smaller dots indicated small villages that existed when the Spanish first came to the Southwest. The larger dots were pueblos, representing the reduction of an even greater diversity. He described six distinct language families, including Hopi, Zuni, and Keres Eastern and Western.

The populations were somewhat dependent on the history of corn. The first cultures with a distinct set date go back to 12,000 years ago. Corn and pottery evidence shows up about 4,000 years ago, and early sites with pottery in Southeast Arizona date from 3,500 to 4,000 years ago.

"The villages were relatively stable, with pit structures after pit structures, generation after generation," Blinman said. "The early pottery pieces were like what we would call knick-knacks, small saucers and small containers, not the functional set of vessels of later."

He said a conscious style persists for about 2,000 years. "The real question for all us archaeologists is why the pottery did not get elaborated. The harvesting of the resources was easy. You can see it today in the cracked clay at the bottom of arroyos. The fire they had. The pottery was simple, robust, with translatable technology."

"Why do people make pots?" he asked and talked about. "We know the people are subsisting on corn. Early basket boiling of corn was common. Once you have made the basket, it makes heating with stones very effective. Pit roasting worked well, too, with the baskets and the early pottery."

Pots were used for cooking and storage. Especially for water pots are better. "Beans correlate with the elaboration of vessel forms. Also leading to new forms was sedentism. The people had less liability of having stuff when they settled in one place and didn't have to carry everything. In the Four Corners area, each family might have 25-30 pots of all different types. Pots also play a role in ceremonies. They may have been used for hallucinogenic drinks in earlier times."

In AD 200, sites had full-blown pottery production. North of lower Arizona, the earliest pots date from before AD 500.

During the years by AD 500, elaboration began in vessel forms. Some pots were used for water storage; other shapes were clunky and made of alluvial mud clay. "When pottery gets established, we see regional differentiation, with people collecting the resources nearby, although the slips can come from farther away. The people adapted their technologies to local resources. The clays that were present offered different possibilities and challenges."

The properties of the clays, including mixtures, shrinkage and plasticity required remarkably different techniques.

He noted that most white clays in the Southwest are not kaolinites, but rather are smectites. "They are of a rare quality lacking contaminants."

The focus on different types of tempering is for different functions, according to Blinman.

"With the diversity of pottery styles and types, we archaeologists can study them as trade items," he said. "Mogollon pottery is resource driven. The constraints are different from that of the Anasazi. There are also probably ethnic differences within the Anasazi, Mogollon and Hohokam."

He briefly discussed the broad paddle and anvil finishing as opposed to the coil and scrape method of making pots.

The paddle and anvil method of making pottery is found in southern California and southern Arizona. The majority of pottery is coil and scrape finished.

"Women build pots the way they learned from the mother, aunt or other role model," Blinman said.

He said the earliest cooking jars had plain surfaces, then next came the neck-banded to all over corrugation. In studies done recently, it was discovered that the neck-bands reduced boil over, and the corrugated pots last twice as long in use, so the style spread across the northern Southwest like wildfire.

"The decorated pottery comes on the heels of cooking pottery technologies," Blinman said.

In a short discussion on clay paints, he described iron and manganese mineral paints, and said that lead and copper were also used in paints. "Carbon paint soaked into the clay surface. It is rare worldwide, because it requires a combination of the right clay mineralogy for the slip and good firing."

He showed slides of redware paint diversity, which sometimes included painting with carbon, which reduces the iron in the clay. "El Paso pottery is huge and 4 millimeters thick. It is totally underappreciated until fairly recently."

Blinman talked about the experiments that are essential to lab work. He showed photos of people studying tempering and atmospheres and their effects on the sintering process. He said open fires run 800-900 degrees Centigrade.

He showed slides of trench kilns at Mesa Verde, which were used for a short time. The largest was about 30-feet long. "There are various kinds of kilns. Failure of firing is easy, but the vast majority of their fairings did not result in failures. We can't yet figure out the firing for Rio Grande ware. Mimbres pottery is marvelous. The white may be a volcanic slip, and Mimbres pottery is not often polished. The Salinas Pueblo pottery is the closest to Mimbres."

To a question about why Blinman only talked about women potters, he said the evidence comes from women's graves, where many more pots were found than in male graves. Worked sherds and polishing tools were exclusive to women's graves. He cited a worldwide evaluation by Dean Arnold that showed that men take on pottery only when it can be sustainable. He also noted that in an industrial setting, the status of potters goes down, but, in an art setting with both men and women, potters' status rises.

A woman asked about the parallel track of pottery and textiles. "Early on, yucca fiber weaving was beautiful, around AD 600. By AD 900, weaving was expedient, but there was no esthetic. For instance, sandalsâ€”in kivas you find finely women sandals, but for everyday use, they wore plaited leaves. "The best collection of fine baskets is in the Grant Museum. They date from around AD 1300. Basketry was gone by the time collection begins. We wish we had more information on textiles."

Blinman answered a question about the influence of Mesoamerican design. "Mimbres separates out as distinct. Salado brings in new designs. There were parallel influences from Hopi and Zuni to the Rio Grande. Around 1400, there was an explosion in kachina imagery, which can be traced back to Meso-America. The majority of such pottery symbolism is late in the Santa Fe area. Mimbres pottery is way cool."

The same woman asked about the hero twins to which Blinman said the imagery is seen a lot in kiva murals, but not as much in pottery.

Tom Vaughan said he had attended a conference at Mesa Verde where the talk had been about atmosphere and timing, with the comment having been made that the best time for firing was around the summer solstice.

"I've sweated on pots," Blinman said. "I have successfully fired when it was snowing. There is evidence that when there was a period of strife and paranoia that there were mass firings, so they could defend themselves, while leaving someone back to defend the village and the corn. Earlier kilns were smaller. The first trench kilns were seen in the late 10th Century to early 11th Century. They didn't want firing to conflict with other tasks like growing crops."

He then had smaller discussions among those looking for more information, before the workshop continued with the talk of the different tools used by early potters.