What raw-clay color did The Salado (i.e. the Prehistoric People of the Desert Southwest) start with in ....?

Question

.... order to make their magnificent black-and-white-on-red polychrome pottery?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw_nebmThLY&feature=related

.

Answer 1

Magnificent, indeed. :-)

As it happens, I spent a year of school irritating my instructor with my deliberate and careful imitation of Salado black-and-white on red. (It was a brilliant body of work--still prominently displayed on a dusty shelf in someone’s basement.) I couldn’t get enough of it, though, I felt inexorably captivated by its uniqueness, and boldness. Much of the imagery is elemental; earth, water, fire. Beautiful to behold, yet quite primal.

And really, the craft deserves admiration. In such delicate work, the proper firing technique is crucial; the design may burnout, the vessel may even explode. To gauge, without instrument, the proper duration, while maintaining a high enough temperature, speaks to enormous ability. When it works, though, it creates a lovely, incomparable burn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9Ht1q9ps...

Answer 2

Excellent.

Excellent!

I never watch your youtube selections but tonight I did.

Unchained Melody will -

will -

I digress.

Ochre.

From many days run.

The melody is not unchained.

Answer 3

What a weird question to ask.  I'm a little worried about you.  

However, I happen to have investigated many Salado or Hohokam ruins in the vicinity of Roosevelt Lake and the Salt River and Verde River in Central Arizona.  There are hundreds of sites with pictographs and pueblo ruins.  I saw countless pieces of painted pottery.  The pottery was about 600-800 yrs old and appeared to all be about the same kind of clay - a light sand color with a slight touch of red and yellow in it.  It was a fairly drab color of clay and I don't know what they used to get the paint for decorating the outside (most of which was simply black designs).

EDIT:  I have seen some videos on PBS showing Hopi and Papago artists making pottery in the traditional method.  It is simply amazing how skilled the artists are and their methods probably haven't changed much in hundreds of years.  

The entire Tonto basin and Valley of the Sun is littered with pottery pieces from the past.  When I lived there it was common to come across ancient pieces of pottery while gardening.

Answer 4

I think your questions are extremely stimulating and enjoy reading them as well as trying to figure them out!  I have to admit there are times when I am completely baffled, but the question from yesterday . . . .

Early artists painted with four basic colors from the desert of the southwest in prehistoric times.  They obtained black from charcoal and ground up manganese ore; white from clay and lime mud; and red and yellow from animal blood, red clay and ground up iron compounds.  They mixed the colors in animal fats and blood to produce a paste like paint.  They rubbed paste onto their pottery or blew it onto the surface through a hollow bone.