Ceramics and Ideology: Salado Polychrome Pottery

by Patricia L. Crown, Ronald L. Bishop

The late thirteenth-century Southwest was characterized by environmental change and a related dramatic population shift from north to south. The associated appearance, dissemination, and subsequent disappearance of the pottery known as Salado Polychrome has until now been poorly understood. Crown's exhaustive study provides evidence of a Southwestern Regional Cult, an ideology that unified the disparate groups who came to share the region and resulted in the manufacture of the distinctive pottery over a wide area.
In the most comprehensive study ever undertaken on southwestern pottery, the author examines the context of the recovery of vessels, their probable use, the imagery of the designs, evidence for the mode of production, and independent evidence for the existence of a new religious ideology. Her results suggest the presence of an inclusive ideology that helped to stabilize social relations during this time of upheaval and change in the prehistoric Southwest. Ceramics and Ideology contributes to both the theory and methodology of the study of the greater Southwest.

254 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1994

About the author

Patricia L. Crown received her A.B. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1974, and her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1981. She held teaching positions at Southern Methodist University and Arizona State University, and has been on the faculty at the University of New Mexico since 1993, where she is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology. Dr. Crown has conducted field investigations in the Ancestral Pueblo, Mogollon, and Hohokam areas of the American Southwest; she recently directed the analysis of artifacts from the trash mounds at Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon. One result of this research was the recent identification of the first prehispanic cacao (chocolate) north of the Mexican border in ceramics from Chaco Canyon. The Society for American Archaeology awarded her the Excellence in Ceramic Research Award in 1994, and the American Anthropological Association gave her (jointly with Suzanne K. Fish) the Gordon Willey Award in 1998. Her books have included three co-edited volumes, Chaco and Hohokam (SAR Press), Social Violence in the Prehispanic Southwest (University of Arizona Press) and Ceramic Production in the American Southwest (University of Arizona Press), the single-authored, Ceramics and Ideology: Salado Polychrome Pottery (University of New Mexico Press), and an edited volume Women and Men in the Prehispanic Southwest: Labor, Power, and Prestige (School of American Research Press).

Reviews

[Artemis]

I FINISHED IT I READ THE WHOLE BOOK

Extremely thorough! There's a reason this is THE book on Salado, the one I was encouraged to read cover-to-cover even if I skimmed the rest of my comps readings.