New Perspectives on Pottery Mound Pueblo

Polly Schaafsma , Editor

Preface by Linda S. Cordell

Ancestral Puebloan peoples inhabited the Pottery Mound site on New Mexico's Rio Puerco River from the late fourteenth to the late fifteenth centuries. Archaeologist Frank C. Hibben began excavating Pottery Mound fifty years ago, when archaeologists were paying relatively little attention to Ancestral Pueblo sites. Pottery Mound remains poorly studied, under published, and largely neglected.

Hibben found that Pottery Mound was home to diverse Puebloan characteristics evident in both Rio Grande Pueblos and the Western Pueblos. Hibben also discovered an abundance of pottery styles and layers of murals in eleven kivas that are a magnificent archive of religious iconography of the period.

In New Perspectives on the Pottery Mound Pueblo, renowned Southwestern archaeologist Polly Schaafsma presents essays by contemporary scholars on the site's murals, rock art, pottery, textiles, and archaeofaunal remains. Contributors revisit Pottery Mound for new insights into inhabitants' regional interactions, migrations, and trade during the Pueblo IV period--a time of dynamic change in Puebloan culture.

Contributors:
Michael Adler--associate professor of anthropology, Southern Methodist University
Tiffany Clark--zooarchaeologist, Arizona State University, Tempe
Helen K. Crotty--research associate, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture Laboratory of Anthropology, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Suzanne Eckert--assistant professor of anthropology, Texas A&M University
Kelley Hays-Gilpin--associate professor of anthropology, Northern Arizona University
Steven LeBlanc--director of collections, Peabody Museum, Harvard University
Patricia Vivian--anthropologist, Witch Well, Arizona
R. Gwinn Vivian--professor emeritus of anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson
Laurie Webster--visiting scholar in anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson
David R. Wilcox--curator of anthropology, Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff

Winner of a Bookbuilders West design award for reference and scholarly books, 2008. Kathleen Sparkes is the designer of the book.

"...an interesting and educational read--especially for those readers who have a fascination with the American Southwest."--Missouri Archaeological Society Quarterly

"This book is well written and edited, profuse with illustrations, and extremely well produced."--Choice Magazine

"[New Perspectives on Pottery Mound Pueblo] is well written and organized, with clear, useful, and pertinent illustrations and tabular data."--New Mexico Historical Review

"[A] noteworthy volume,...Richly illustrated and finely produced, this volume is a must for those interested in the art and archaeology of the Puebloan world."--American Archaeology

Polly Schaafsma is a research associate with the Museum of Indian Art and Culture in the Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe.

8.5 x 11 318 pages 112 color photos, 50 halftones, 38 line drawings, 13 maps