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Several of the research questions central to our project were addressed through studies of ceramic production and distribution. Technological, stylistic, and contextual data provide a better understanding of how people migrated into and out of the Silver Creek drainage. Other questions this project focuses on are the changing organization and scale of craft production, and the increasing specialization of pueblo potters in this region. Changes in pottery production may be concomitant with other changes in household organization and division of labor. Finally, the distribution of non-local ceramics may be used as a proxy for social interaction, identifying areas with which the inhabitants of the Silver Creek drainage did and did not have contact with. The Silver Creek drainage is rich in high-quality clays, suitable for the manufacture of high-fired decorated pottery, which do not occur in some neighboring areas. Outcrops of light firing, kaolinitic clays occur in a band that extends from present day Show Low to Heber. All of the sites investigated by our project (with the exception of Cothrun's Kiva) are situated within it. There is strong evidence that the prehistoric inhabitants of our study area were manufacturing pottery with these clays and that these pots circulated to neighboring regions. Evidence about ceramic production and distribution in Silver Creek settlements come from a variety of studies. The chemical and mineralogical compositions of the ceramics and the geological raw materials from the area were analyzed. These analyses used petrography, chemical compositional analysis, and refiring. 
Petrographic analysis of ceramic thin sections and raw sands focused on the dominant decorated ceramics found at Bailey Ruin: Roosevelt Red Ware, Puerco (Showlow) Red Ware, White Mountain Red Ware, and Cibola White Ware. Susan Stinston conducted the petrographic analysis as part of her Master's thesis (1996). Comparison of the sand inclusions in the ceramic thin sections and those collected from the Silver Creek drainage indicate that the tempering materials added to these ceramics could have been obtained locally. The petrography data also indicate that contemporaneous styles of Cibola, Roosevelt, and White Mountain ceramic wares were compositionally similar in their ratio of sand, sherd, and clay matrix. However, the different paste colors suggests that different clay selection practices may have been used, which is supported by the chemical analysis. Most interestingly, the petrographic data from Roosevelt Red Ware sherds from Grasshopper Pueblo and sites in the Tonto Basin could not be distinguished from Roosevelt Red Ware sherds from Bailey Ruin on the basis of their mineralogy, and it was concluded that Silver Creek was the source for traded ceramics in these other two areas.
Chemical compositional analysis was also conducted on decorated ceramics and raw materials from Bailey Ruin. Instrumental neutron activation analysis conducted at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) was used to derive trace-elemental compositions of the sherds. The sample of sherds submitted to MURR was made up of the same wares that Stinson sampled from Bailey Ruin for petrography. These trace-element data were added to the compositional database of White Mountain Red Ware from other sites in the region, which were analyzed by Daniela Triadan (1997), Andrew Duff (1999), and James Woodman (see Triadan et al. 2002 for details and results of the chemical composition analysis). This enabled the Bailey Ruin sherds to be compared with well-defined groups from earlier analyses, even though the Bailey Ruin samples are made up ceramics that are stylistically older. 
The statistical analyses of these data indicate that Bailey Ruin sherds are not compositionally identical to Triadan's late White Mountain Red Ware groupings. A plausible explanation of these differences is that these groups represent the work of potters at individual sites in the Silver Creek drainage. The compositional analysis shows that the Cibola White Ware and the White Mountain Red Ware from Bailey Ruin are indistinguishable on the basis of their bulk composition. These ceramics were likely made by a group of potters at the site, using similar paste recipes. The difference between these wares is mainly in the type of slip applied, causing differences in surface color. However, the Roosevelt Red Ware from Bailey Ruin was clearly differentiated from the light-paste, Cibola White Ware and White Mountain Red Ware. Roosevelt Red Ware was either produced by different groups of potters, or was the result of an intentional manipulation of paste recipes. 
The chemical analysis of the geological raw clays failed to produce any strong candidates for the raw material sources of these decorated ceramics. The reason why no raw materials match the compositional groups either has to do with the sampling of sources or chemical alteration in the processing of the raw materials. However, one prepared clay sample from Bailey Ruin provides a strong match with the Bailey Cibola White Ware and White Mountain Red Ware compositional group. This clay was found in a sealed Mogollon Brown Ware jar, buried in the floor of Room 1, and had been mixed with ground sherds. This provides strong evidence that these two wares were produced at Bailey Ruin. The other line of evidence that ceramics were being produced at Bailey Ruin and the other excavated sites is the presence of potter's tools. These include scrapers, made from worked sherds, pukis (used to support the base of the pot while its being formed), plates (thought to have served a similar purpose as pukis), and pottery polishing stones. These tools have been identified as elements of potters' tool kits by Emil Haury's (1931) research at Pinedale and Show Low Pueblos (a little later than Bailey Ruin). 
Potters' tools were present at most sites excavated by this project. The distributions of these items can be compared to identify periods and locations of particularly intensive pottery production. The distribution of scrapers and plates indicate that the most intensive ceramic manufacture took place at Pottery Hill and Bailey Ruin, respectively. Plates appear to have been part of a northern, Kayenta pottery tradition. Their presence at post-1200 sites in the Silver Creek suggests that potters from the Four Corners region were working in this area. Bailey Ruin had the highest number of plates (at least 82 separate vessels were identified), with two rooms showing an unusual number of plate fragments. The unusually high number of plate fragments from Rooms 1 and 2 suggest that intensive pottery manufacture took place there. Although the number of potters' tools could be related to the size of the ceramic sample, the number of tools in relation to the sample indicates that several rooms were loci of intensive pottery production. Through our analyses of the excavated ceramics, potters' tools, and geological raw materials, we have linked the production of several wares to the inhabitants of sites in the Silver Creek drainage. Our compositional analyses suggest that potters who lived at Bailey Ruin during the Pueblo IV period made Cibola White Ware and White Mountain Red Ware, and it is likely that Roosevelt Red Ware was also produced there. Because the focus of our analyses was the early Pubelo IV period site, Bailey Ruin, our conclusions about the consumption and circulation of these vessels are limited. Ongoing studies will yield more information on the production and circulation of earlier decorated ceramics. However, the suite of tools recovered from the Bailey Ruin indicates that some of the most intensive ceramic production in the Silver Creek sites occurred during the early Pueblo IV period at the Bailey Ruin. | |
Fenn, Thomas R., Barbara J. Mills, and Maren Hopkins |
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© 2002. Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona. |
