This ground-breaking volume, spotlights the use and importance of color over some 2,000 years of Ancestral Puebloan history. Perhaps because we take it for granted in our modern world, we are unaware of the importance of color in most all aspects of human endeavor. As one of the authors points out, “color attracts attention, evokes emotion, conveys information, carries symbolic meanings, displays technical knowledge, and makes things beautiful.” So it was for the Ancestral Puebloans.
They used color in personal adornments like clothing and jewelry, in painted murals, in decorations on buildings and rocks, in their pottery and other household goods, as well as in other meaningful ways. Their use of color varied over time and place, though not in a linear way from simple to complex, but rather in ebbs and flows in a constantly changing series of styles and patterns. Color had spiritual as well as temporal meanings that changed regularly.
Five specialists contribute to six chapters on different aspects of Puebloan color. There is a chapter on the technical aspects of pigments, paints, and dyes that they used, placing the use of color into context. Other chapters focus on pueblo pottery, painted kivas and rooms, jewelry, and painted rock art known as pictographs.
Basketmaker people (1000 B.C to A.D. 700) used a wide variety of colors in textiles and baskets, but their rock art was largely monochromatic. Pueblo I-III people (A.D. 700-1300) tended to use simple bichrome combinations—black and white and red and white. As might be expected, the people of Chaco Canyon deviated from others in the Southwest, using bright and varied colors in ceremonial offerings, elite burials, and religious paraphernalia. After the demise of Chaco around A.D. 1130, the Ancestral Puebloans began to develop polychrome pottery that required new materials and refined firing techniques. By the Pueblo IV period (A.D. 1300-1540), they were using a wide range of colors in many contexts.
This volume will encourage archaeologists to look at the importance of color in many aspects of research that have been heretofore ignored. It should lead to a better understanding of ancestral Puebloan people in many aspects of their lives. —Mark Michel
