Prehistoric Painted Pottery of Southeastern Arizona

This volume is a guide to the painted ceramics of southeastern Arizona, one of the most interesting, culturally diverse, and relatively unknown regions of the American Southwest— a crossroads and meeting ground for many different prehistoric peoples. The volume was commissioned by the U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Huachuca, for a class on the ceramics and prehistory of southeastern Arizona. Because the class was designed primarily for avocational archaeologists, the guide describes the painted ceramics and prehistory of the region in an informal and easy-to-understand format.

The guide focuses on the time between a.d. 650 and 1450 when painted pottery was made. The focus is painted pottery because it encodes diverse social, ideological, functional, and temporal information. The pottery discussed in this guide represents ceramics commonly found in southeastern Arizona, centering on the Garden Canyon site at Fort Huachuca. To set the stage, the authors provide a history of archaeological research in southeastern Arizona, an overview of culture history between a.d. 650 and 1450, and comments on the history and use of pottery classification in the Southwest. The guide focuses on lesser-known and poorly described ceramics of the region, such as Babocomari, Dragoon, San Simon, and Trincheras pottery, using the framework of ceramic tradition as a heuristic device. Black-and-white and color illustrations richly display the diversity of ceramic design and form.