The Potters of San Ildefonso

To be good in your field, no matter what that is, a scientist must be incredibly focused, sometimes to the exclusion of family and political issues. However, unlike for most of science, with the possible exception of stem cell research and animal testing, the science of archaeology resonates on a personal level with living people. Somewhat to our surprise, people actually do care what we as archaeologists do and say. Unfortunately, archaeologists sometimes forget that, making us, on occasion, insensitive clods. Fortunately, sometimes even an insensitive clod ends up doing good things for the people they study. That's why I always visit the potters of San Ildefonso Pueblo whenever I'm in the near vicinity of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The insensitive clod of which I speak is Edgar Lee Hewett, the first director at what is now the School of American Research and the Museum of New Mexico, and one of the founders of archaelogy of the American southwest. His status as an insensitive clod may be seen in this quote of his to the Cherokee opera star Tsianina Blackstone. In 1908 and 1909 Hewett was excavating on the Pajarito Plateau of northwest New Mexico, at the sites of Tyuonyi and Frijoles Canyon in what is now Bandelier National Monument. These are both ancient villages of the Anasazi.

During Hewett's excavations he found some remarkable potsherds, the paste a deep ebony black and the finish mirror-like. Maria Antonia Montoya Martinez [1887-1980] was a potter at the nearby San Ildefonso Pueblo, with a terrific local reputation. Hewett showed her the sherds and although the coal-black color and finish was unfamiliar to her, she and her husband Julian experimented with a reducing fire and burnishing, eventually producing the beautiful decorated ceramics known as San Ildefonso black-on-black cherished by art collectors and now found in museums around the world.

The potters at San Ildefonso Pueblo, descendants and students of Maria Martinez, still produce the black, shiny pottery developed by Maria and Julian from a handful of sherds brought to them by an insensitive clod. The inventive pottery types and colors, based on traditional forms but with modern adaptations, make a side trip to the San Ildefonso Pueblo a joy and a discovery.

I do believe (and most of my colleagues would argue, I'm sure) that, since the dim days of Edgar Lee Hewett, archaeologists have improved in their sensitivity to the descendants of our studies, no doubt partly because archaeologists are no longer rich white guys looking for an adventure. And, to be fair, for all his cloddish behavior, Hewett was considered a dear mentor by both Maria Martinez and Tsianina Blackstone.

There are tons of books on Maria Martinez and her ceramics, the best of which, liberally illustrated with examples of San Ildefonso pottery and the pueblo, and including interviews with Maria and her children and grandchildren, is called The Living Tradition of Maria Martinez, by Susan Peterson. Much of the information for this article was taken from Peterson's fine work.