Native American, Southwestern United States, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona, Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi), ca. 1050 to 1225 CE. A beautiful drinking mug of utilitarian form that is hand-built via the coil-and-scrape technique. The spherical vessel presents with a planar base, swelling walls, a squat, flared rim, and a handle arching off the verso. The white-hued ground is decorated with dense, black-painted geometric motifs of stepped patterns that, while close to their neighboring forms, do not touch. Pottery played an important role in Anasazi culture and included both utilitarian and decorative pieces that could be traded with neighboring communities for food or other goods. Anasazi pottery was made by hand coiling clay, then smoothing the surface and painting with designs before firing. This petite cup is a lovely example created via this technique! Size: 4.875" Diameter x 4.125" H (12.4 cm x 10.5 cm)

Pottery of this kind is some of the most important found in the ancient Southwest. The Chaco Project, the major excavations of Chaco Canyon (today a National Historical Park that is well worth a visit), recovered more of this pottery than any other style. Chaco was the center of the ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) culture, a vast city of monumental architecture, including massive stone Great Houses of multiple stories and kivas of all sizes. Roads from Chaco Canyon radiated to outlying settlements for hundreds of miles, and it seems to have been a religious, social, and trade hub for a vast region. Today many Native peoples in the Southwest connect their own histories to Chaco, seeing it as a stop along their sacred migrations.

Provenance: private Eagle, Colorado, USA collection, acquired in the 1990s

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#168254

Minor nicks, abrasions, and pitting in some areas, otherwise intact and excellent. Wonderful preservation to painted motifs throughout.