Art Institute of Chicago

Shoulder Cauldron with Diagonal Basketry Pattern

Hohokam, Sacaton Red-on-buff

Date

950–1150

Medium

Ceramic and pigment

Culture

Arizona

Department

Arts of the Americas

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Pottery making reached the Southwest from western Mexico. By A.D. 300, along the Gila and Salt rivers in the southern Arizona desert, the Hohokam people were building pithouse villages and irrigation canals, slowly changing their way of life from hunting and gathering to a more sedentary existence. They formed ceramic vessels by coiling clay rolls and finished them in the “paddle-and-anvil” technique, supporting the inside of a vessel with a smooth stone or fingers, while working the outer surface with a paddle. Red-painted linear designs appear to derive from older Southwestern basketry weaving; the diagonal pattern on this vessel is created by vertically linked, parallel lines of scrolls.

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