Topic 9
Pottery

Two primary types of pottery are found in the Plains Village sites in the West Pasture, and they are distinguished by their surface treatments—cordmarked and plainware. Cordmarked body sherds represent the dominate style of surface treatment on body sherd found at all three sites, and cordmarking is distinctive decorative style made paddling the surface of the wet clay with a cord-wrapped paddle. In the West Pasture sites, these sherds are more appropriately termed smooth cordmarked, meaning that the original cordmarked surface has been smoothed over to some extent, whether intentionally at the time the pot was made and/or perhaps worn down by use. Some small sherds (i.e., less than 2 cm2) appear to be smooth-surfaced plainware, but they may be cordmarked sherds where the cordmarking has been completely obliterated through use wear.

As shown in the table below, 89 to 96 percent of the Plains Village pottery sherds from each of the sites is comprised of smoothed cordmarked. In contrast, between 4 and 11 percent of the pottery is plainware with a smoothed surface finish. These sherds seem to represent true plainwares rather than cordmarked sherds where the surface cordmarks have been obliterated.

To find out more about how cordmaked pottery was made, visit the exhibit on Texas Beyond History called ‘Making Cordmarked Pottery.” It was written and illustrated by the late Alvin Lynn, a true master craftsman who learned to replicate prehistoric cordmarked pottery. Alvin used a wooden paddle wrapped with yucca-fiber cordage to paddle the wet clay to produce the distinctive cordmarked surface treatment.

See: https://texasbeyondhistory.net/villagers/cordmarked/index.html

Examples of pottery sherds from West Pasture sites. The sherd at left is plainware that has a smooth surface and appears to have reddish applied slip. The 6 sherds in the center are prominent cordmarked sherds from the Woodland Period occupations at the Indian Springs site. The 9 sherds on the right are smooth cordmarked sherds from the Plains Village sites in the West Pasture.

While cordmarked pottery is the dominant type in the Plains Village sites, it also occurs in the late Plains Woodland occupations at the Indian Springs site beginning around 910 A.D. We don’t know much about the Plains Woodland ceramic traditions in the Texas Panhandle. Few sites from this cultural period have been adequately investigated and studied. By and large, Plains Woodland pottery has prominent vertically impressed cordmarking and plain rims that lack any decorations. Compared with Woodland pottery, the Plains Village wares are characterized as smooth cordmarked.

Besides the surface treatment, the other important attribute that appears in West Pasture pottery assemblage is decorations. The dominant attribute is decorations that appear on the shoulder, neck, and rim. Whether this attribute is prominent or subtle, most rim sherds exhibit some addition of decoration. What do these decorations mean? Is this artistic expression? Is it possibly some form of communication or language? Is this symbolism that identifies social groups?  

The list of decorations applied to vessels in West Pasture is rather extensive, and multiple design elements were sometimes applied to one vessel. The list includes: hatch marks / incised, punctate / finger pinched; finger impressed; fingertip “swoosh”; lugs; nodes; and an interesting design resembling a pie crust. The most common designs are punctate, finger pinched, and incised.

Rimsherd at left has punctates along the rim just below a flattened lip (left). It was recovered from a borrow pit at Hank’s site, Area B. Rimsherd at right has punctates around the neck below a beveled lip. It was recovered within a trash-filled storage pit located at Whistling Squaw.

These rimsherds have a design similar to punctates, but they have broader impressions. It appears that fingertips are used to make the design by pinching or gouging the clay, but it could be done with a blunt object.

An unusual rimsherd decoration (two photos at left) is herein called a pie crust decoration, and it consists of an undulating rim edge formed by compressions that alternate directions. The rimsherd in the center represents a vessel mouth with an unusual double lug with vertical incised lines. The rimsherd on the right contains a single protrusion or node attached to the rim.

Incising on rims, necks, and shoulders are common forms of decoration on the west pasture pottery. The top four are rimsherds with incised straight lines or V-lines along the top or side of the rim. The body sherd at bottom right has incised lines in a V-shaped, or chevron pattern. The sherd at bottom center could be classified as punctate as the rim appears to have been penetrated using a more blunted object.  The sherd at bottom right has V-line incisions that are along a curved neck.

Two burials investigated in the West Pasture have produced an unusual decorated pottery vessels. Both are discussed below.

A burial at Hank’s Site, Area C, contained the remains of a young child protected by a covering cairn cap of large caliche boulders. Scattered among the cairn stones and well above the burial pit were fragments of a well-fired plainware vessel with an unusual rim decoration. It probably represents a food offering placed on top of the cairn at the time of burial, or perhaps sometime after the burial (e.g., a special occasion or anniversary). A significant portion of the vessel was reconstructed. It was a rounded jar with a band of punctates running all around the neck immediately below a beveled rim.

The rim design on this burial offering vessel is very similar to the punctate and beveled rim design that came from a trash-filled storage pit at Whistling Squaw, which is only about 400 meters east of the burial. The latter vessel (illustrated earlier in the rim decoration discussion) was well-worn and already broken when it was discarded, but the similarities in the rim decorations are striking. Do these sherds connect these two sites somehow? Was the child a family member to someone who lived across the creek at  Whistling Squaw? During the Plains Village occupation, one could look west across the valley and see the child’s burial spot.

Like-kind decoration attributes, punctate, and beveled rim. The rimsherd on the left is from a child’s burial at Hank’s Site, Area B. It is a globular jar with a very smooth exterior body finish and a band of punctates just below a beveled rim edge. The sherd found at  (left), and storage pit recovery is cordmarked smoothed (right).

A second fragmented pot was discovered at the Whistling Squaws site, and the sherds were found mixed in among large boulders representing a burial cairn. The subsurface excavations were minimal, and were terminated when conclusive evidence was found to determine that it is indeed a cairn burial. The recovered sherds form a partially reconstructed vessel with unique attributes. It is a large globular vessel with an abrupt shoulder and pronounced vertical neck. The entire vessel exterior is covered with smoothed cordmarking, but it also has decorations on the rim and upper body. The rim is wide and flattened with cord marks reaching to the edge. A chevron design was incised on the vessel’s shoulder, and it terminates abruptly at the sharp neck curve. The chevron design is quite unusual because it consists of two parallel lines formed by incising three parallel lines. While the clay was still wet, it appears the potter made three parallel line incisions in a V-pattern around the whole vessel. The potter possibly removed some of the clay that was pushed out at the same time. The potter then compressed and smoothed out the intervening areas, thus forming two raised but flattened parallel lines that look like appliqued ribbons of clay. Exactly how this was accomplished is unclear, but the potter may have used some sort of notched tool to compress and flatten the ridges formed by the incising.

Unique parallel line chevron motif on vessel recovered at Whistling Squaw cairn site.