Shoulder Cauldron with Diagonal Basketry Pattern

Pottery making reached the Southwest from western Mexico. By A.D. 300, along the Gila and Salt rivers in the southern Arizona desert, the Hohokam people were building pithouse villages and irrigation canals, slowly changing their way of life from hunting and gathering to a more sedentary existence. They formed ceramic vessels by coiling clay rolls and finished them in the “paddle-and-anvil” technique, supporting the inside of a vessel with a smooth stone or fingers, while working the outer surface with a paddle. Red-painted linear designs appear to derive from older Southwestern basketry weaving; the diagonal pattern on this vessel is created by vertically linked, parallel lines of scrolls.