Pueblo pottery making

Synopsis

The present paper is a careful study by Dr. Guthe of pottery making at San Ildefonso, a typical Pueblo Indian town on the Rio Grande, north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The field-work was undertaken in 1921 as part of an archaeological survey of the Southwest, that has been carried on for a number of years by the Department of Archaeology of Phillips Academy. From prehistoric archaeology to modern pottery making may seem a far cry.

But in the Southwest the past merges almost imperceptibly into the present, and the Pueblos of today live in almost exactly the same way, and practice almost exactly the same arts, as did their ancestors of a thousand years ago. In the Southwest, therefore, the archaeologist has the invaluable opportunity of observing, and of studying at first hand, the life whose earlier remains he unearths from the ancient ruins. When one considers what such a privilege would mean to the excavator in, for example, the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, or the Neolithic village-sites of Europe, it becomes obvious that the Southwestern archaeologist should devote a not inconsiderable part of his time to the study of that industrious, kindly, hospitable, and thoroughly charming folk, the Pueblo Indians.

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