Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:17:13.940Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ceramic Profiles in the Western Mound at Awatovi, Northeastern Arizona

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Robert F. Burgh
Robert F. Burgh*
Affiliation:
Peabody Museum West of the Pecos, Tucson, Ariz.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Excavations in the Western Mound at this prehistoric Hopi pueblo provide 13 adjacent columns of refuse in masonry rooms which yielded 21,569 painted sherds. Stratigraphic analysis of these ceramic profiles has resulted in a relative chronology of five color classes of locally made painted pottery which will serve as a control for future ceramic studies at the site. Black-onwhite, black-on-orange, and orange-paste polychrome were made from about A.r>. 1200 to 1300 when they were abruptly replaced by black-on-yellow and yellow-paste polychrome. The differences between trash deposited in rooms and that dumped in the open, the anomalies of sherd and vessel quantities, and the well documented nature of this large sherd collection make possible observations on the problems of stratigraphic interpretation. Numerical comparison of painted sherds with vessels restored from them demonstrates the hazards of interpretation based solely on limited sherd samples. The fact that one of the rooms produced a sequence exactly the reverse of the situation in the other 12 rooms emphasizes the need for more extensive testing in room blocks than in trash dumps. Restoration of vessels from sherds found at different levels in different rooms shows the inadequacy of chronological inference based on stratigraphic position of unassembled sherds.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , October 1959 , pp. 184 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1959

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Brew, J. O. 1937 The First Two Seasons at Awatovi. American Antiquity, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 122–37. Menasha.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brew, J. O. 1949 The Excavation of Franciscan Awatovi. In “Franciscan Awatovi,” by Montgomery, R. G., Smith, Watson, and Brew, J. O., pp. 45–108. Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Vol. 36. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Hack, J. T. 1942a The Changing Physical Environment of the Hopi Indians of Arizona, Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Vol. 35, No. 1. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Hack, J. T. 1942b Prehistoric Coal Mining in the Jeddito Valley, Arizona. Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Vol. 35, No. 2. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Newell, H. P. and Krieger, A. D. 1949 The George C. Davis Site, Cherokee County, Texas. Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology, No. 5. Menasha.Google Scholar
Roberts, F. H. H. Jr. 1932 The Village of the Great Kivas on the Zuni Reservation, New Mexico. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 111. Washington.Google Scholar
Shepard, A. O. 1953 Notes on Color and Paste Composition. In “Archaeological Studies in the Petrified Forest National Monument,” by Wendorf, Fred, pp. 177–93. Museum of Northern Arizona, Bulletin 27. Flagstaff.Google Scholar
Smith, Watson 1952 Kiva Mural Decorations at Awatovi and Kawaika-a. Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Vol. 37. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Woodbury, R. B. 1954 Prehistoric Stone Implements of Northeastern Arizona. Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Vol. 34. Cambridge.Google Scholar