Pottery of the Pajarito plateau and of some adjacent regions in New Mexico

Abstract

The Pajarito plateau to the west of the Rio Grande in Sandoval and Santa Fe counties, New Mexico, is very rich in archaeological remains. Although the location and general appearance of its ruins have been ably recorded by Bandelier and Hewett, no adequate description of the pottery found in and about those ruins has yet been published. Because of this, each new investigator has been without any hint as to what sort of pottery he might find in his region, or what he might reasonably infer from what he did find. Hence, much valuable evidence has undoubtedly been overlooked because of ignorance of its possible meaning. The finding, for example, of sherds of a certain type in a certain section of a ruin might be a discovery of the last importance, but it would hardly be recognized as such, and therefore not properly recorded, unless the investigator had a general knowledge of the distribution of the wares outside the immediate zone of his activity. Such a knowledge is not to be had in any published work, a very severe handicap to successful field and museum practice. The present brief summary is intended as a start toward remedying this condition. It is, however, based on incomplete data, there being many ruins as yet unrepresented in our museums, nor have I has the opportunity of examining all the available collections. For this reason, it seems wisest to present merely a short description of the known wares and not attempt to draw any final conclusions.

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