The mounds of Awatobi are entirely covered with fragments of pottery
of all the various kinds and colors known to ancient Tusayan. There
were found coiled and indented ware, coarse undecorated vessels, fine
yellow and smooth ware with black-and-white and red decorations. There
is no special kind of pottery peculiar to Awatobi, but it shares with
the other Tusayan ruins all types, save a few fragments of black
glazed ware, which occur elsewhere.
[Illustration: FIG. 260--Shrine at Awatobi]
It is highly probable that the few specimens of black-and-white ware
found in this ruin were not manufactured in the village, and the red
ware probably came from settlements to the south, on the Little
Colorado. These colors are in part due to the character of the paste
which was used, and the clay most often selected by Awatobi potters
made a fine yellow vessel. The material from which most of the vessels
were manufactured came, no doubt, from a bank near the ruin, where
there is good evidence that it was formerly quarried.
Three coarse clay objects, such as might have been used for roof
drains, were found. The use of these objects, possibly indicated by
their resemblance, is not, however, perfectly clear. Their capacity
would not be equal to the torrents of rain which, no doubt, often fell
on the housetops of Awatobi, and they can hardly be identified as
spouts of large bowls, since they are attached to a circular disk with
smooth edges. In want of a satisfactory explanation I have
provisionally regarded them as water spouts, but whether they are from
ancient vessels or from the roofs of houses I am in much doubt.[82]
One of the most instructive fragments of pottery taken from the ruins
is that of a coarse clay vessel, evidently a part of a flat basin or
saucer. The rim of this vessel is punctured with numerous holes, the
intervals between which are not greater than the diameter of the
perforations.
Several platter-like vessels with similar holes about their rims have
been taken from other ruins of Jeditoh valley and mesa, the holes
being regarded as having been made as a means of suspension. Near a
sacred spring called Kawaika,[83] not far from Jeditoh, near Awatobi,
a large number of beautiful vessels with similar holes in their rims
were excavated by Mr T. V. Keam, and later passed into the collections
of the Hemenway Expedition, now installed at Cambridge. They are of
all kinds of ware, widely different in shape, the number of marginal
perforations varying greatly. As they were found in large numbers near
a spring they are regarded as sacrificial vessels, in which food or
sacred meal was deposited as an offering to some water deity. The
handle of a mug (plate CXI, _f_) from Awatobi, so closely resembles
the handles of certain drinking cups taken from the cliff-houses of
San Juan valley that it should be specially mentioned. There is in the
handle of this mug a T-shape opening quite similar in form to the
peculiar doorways of certain cliff-dwellings. The mug is made of the
finest white ware, decorated with black lines arranged in geometric
patterns. So close is its likeness in form and texture to cliff-house
pottery that the two may be regarded as identical. Moreover, it is not
impossible that the object may have been brought to Tusayan from Tségi
canyon, in the cliff-houses of which Hopi clans[84] lived while
Awatobi was in its prime, and, indeed, possibly after the tragedy of
1700. The few fragments of Tségi canyon pottery known to me have
strong resemblances to ancient Hopi ware, although the black-and-white
variety predominates.
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY