Southwestern USA, east central Arizona/west southern New Mexico, Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi)/Mogollon culture, ca. 1175 to 1325 CE. An impressive pottery bowl presenting a hemispherical form with a round yet stable base and circular rim. Adorned with white and black pigments on an earthy red ground, the elegant vessel has been intricately decorated with an abstract design of spiral, linear, step, and geometric motifs along its interior walls. Alternatively, the exterior is encircled by a white serpent, outlined in black with a slender, angular body and an arrow-shaped head. While they serve as remarkable decorative elements, these beautiful designs often held great significance to their makers. The symbols of this vessel appear to center around the theme of weather; the spirals are water, the dots on the snake are rain, the zigzag striations are rivers or lightning, and parallel lines represent earth. The Anasazi artisans of St. Johns were the first Anasazi potters to make polychrome pottery during the prehistoric period. Prior to this, pottery was either black-on-white or black-on-red. Size: 11" W x 5" H (27.9 cm x 12.7 cm)

The Mogollon people created pottery from iron-rich volcanic clays using the coil-and-scrape technique. The type is known primarily from the Pinedale Ruin, a settlement of approximately 200 rooms located near modern-day Show Low, Arizona, that was sadly lost to bulldozers in the 1970s. The people who lived at Pinedale would have been at the edges of the cultural sphere governed by Chaco Canyon, and by the time they created this bowl, lived a sedentary agricultural lifestyle. A bowl like this one may have held ground corn.

According to the Office of Archaeological Studies Pottery Typology Project, "Pinedale Black-on-red and Pinedale Polychrome were defined by Haury and Hargrave (1931). These types reflect technological and stylistic changes reflected by many of the White Mountain Red Ware forms produced during late thirteenth and early fourteenth century. The Pinedale Black-on-red and Polychrome types most commonly occur at sites in areas just below the Mogollon Rim in Arizona."

Provenance: private Pennsylvania, USA collection, acquired before 2004

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#164455

Some minor areas of repair and restoration along rim. Expected nicks, abrasions, and scratches throughout, commensurate with age. Otherwise, excellent with lovely remaining pigments.