Ceramic Commodities and Common Containers: Production and Distribution of White Mountain Red Ware in the Grasshopper Region, Arizona (review)

This monograph is part of the renaissance in American Southwestern ceramic studies and the evidence they provide for theorizing about prehistoric sociocultural processes. It is about a type of painted pottery, White Mountain Red Ware, found in many thirteenth- and fourteenth-century a.d. sites in the northern Southwest. Using chemical and mineral analyses of systematically excavated vessels from the Grasshopper Pueblo, of ceramic sherds collected from other prehistoric habitation sites in east-central Arizona, and of source clays and possible tempering agents available in that part of the country, Daniela Triadan determined through comparison where variants in this type of ware were possibly made and how much these variants were moved around this portion of the Southwest in late prehistoric times.

With this provenance information, Triadan could reevaluate the production, distribution, and use of this ware. Her findings run counter to earlier archaeological assumptions about two sociocultural processes based on stylistic definition of this pottery and its general spatial distribution. First, the wide spatial distribution of this ware was due to an extensive trade network. Second, this pottery had restricted use by societal elite groups and was a status symbol. Rather than having one production area from which pottery was traded, White Mountain Red Ware had two regional areas of production: the east-central mountains of Arizona and the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau. At Grasshopper Pueblo, the local production of this pottery began when there was a significant aggregation of people at the pueblo. This localized production associated with population aggregation and preceded by earlier importation of this ware from more northerly sources suggests a significant migration of people into the pueblo from the north. Migration in addition to trade is important to the wide distribution of this type of pottery. Triadan’s analysis of the ware’s spatial distribution within habitation sites indicates that everyone in the Grasshopper region could use this pottery. The ware was not associated with a particular group of people or apparently used as a status symbol.

Triadan is aware of the limitations of using chemical/mineral composition and artifact analysis in determining specifics about the organization of local, prehistoric ceramic production. Who were the potters? When and why did they make particular kinds of pottery? These questions at best are answered tentatively by these analyses. On the other hand, this study is a fine example of the treasure trove of information recoverable from artifact assemblages and collection/excavation records residing in museums and universities.