Zuni Pot

1680-1700

Name(s) currently unknown

Zuni Pueblo, NM, USA (original location); Santa Fe, NM, USA, School of American Research (current location)

This boldly patterned pot was created in Zuni, New Mexico, one of the Amerindian pueblos in the Southwest of the United States. Made and used in the northern reaches of Spanish America, this water jar measures 22.9 cm (ca. 9 inches) in height. Its body was hand-built of coils, and its surface hand-painted.

This style of pottery, with its particular use of black and red against a white ground, marks this water jar as one made in the late 17th century. The matte paint of the decoration was employed after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, perhaps as an intentional break from earlier traditions of glazed ceramics that were associated with Franciscan missions. Its iconography, a design of abstract feathers and birds, has pre-Hispanic origins in Zuni. Since this pot was made after the Spanish conquest, it suggests continuity in Zuni practices. The vessel’s base is slightly concave, to make carrying upon the head more stable.

The name of this vessel’s maker is not known. In Spanish America—as is often the case today—Pueblo women bore primary responsibility for manufacturing ceramic jars.

As with most pueblo ceramics, this jar built from coils of local clay (not thrown on a potter’s wheel), smoothed into shape, and painted with locally made mineral pigments before firing.

The jar is now in the collection of the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which holds a large collection of Pueblo pottery.

The date of this water jar, ca. 1680-1700, coincides with dramatic political and cultural events in New Mexico. In 1680, the Pueblo Revolt began, and pueblos across New Mexico joined forces to expel Spanish residents and friars from their land. While Spaniards would return within 12 years, the Pueblo Revolt represents a significant declaration of native independence and solidarity. This vessel references these events through its forms and materials, which embrace traditions of pre-Hispanic origin, and turn away from pottery-making techniques introduced by Spaniards prior to the Revolt.

Reproduced courtesy of the School of American Research, Catalog #IAF.1.

Dana Leibsohn and Barbara E. Mundy.
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. http://www.fordham.edu/vistas, 2015.

Anderson, Duane, ed. 1999. Legacy: Southwest Indian Art at the School of American Research. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research.

Habicht-Mauche, Judith, Suzanne Eckert and Deborah Huntley, eds. 2006. The Social Life of Pots: Glaze Wares and Cultural Dynamics in the Southwest, AD 1250-1680. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Mills, Barbara. 2002. “Acts of Resistance: Zuni Ceramics, Social Identity and the Pueblo Revolt.” In Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt: Identity, Meaning and Renewal in the Pueblo World. Robert Pruecel, ed. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 85-97.