Name: ______________________ Univ: _____________ Native American Pottery Designs Directions: Use the symbols below and what you learn from the article to create your own full color Pottery designs on the blank Potter Design Worksheet For Fun : Break (Cut up) your pottery design and see if your friends can reassemble your design. Repeat Designs To make patterns

Native American Pottery Prior to the coming of Europeans, the peoples of both the North and South American continents had a wide variety of pottery traditions. However, there is no evidence that a Native American potter ever invented the potter's wheel. Because of this, all known Pre-Columbian American pottery was made entirely by hand, using a number of traditional techniques. These include sculptural modeling, press molding, coiling, and paddling. Functional pottery objects were produced by many cultures, as were figurines, masks, and ritual items. Techniques: The procedure for creating coil pottery favored in the Eastern United States was more focused on preparing clay than in the West. The women would spend hours on end mixing the clay they had gathered with crushed seashells, sand, plant materials and other temper until they had precisely the right consistency; then wedging it to remove the air bubbles that could easily make it blow up during firing. They would then pound out a flat circle of clay to serve as a base. While the potter was building the coils up, she was also deliberately to take the time to blend them together. Once they were blended nicely, there was no trace of the ropes of clay so carefully coiled to form the pot, no change in the thickness of the walls, and so there are no weaknesses. As a finishing touch, the pot was hit with a cord-wrapped stick to compact it and give it its final shape. American Indians have never used enclosed kilns (ovens), so the pot was put in a shallow pit dug into the earth along with other unfired pottery, covered with wood and brush, and lit on fire where it would harden and heat to temperatures of 1400 degrees or more. For a finishing touch, the surface of the pot would be rubbed vigorously with special stones, leaving the surface smooth and polished. Several current Native American cultures continue their original pottery traditions, still producing ware for practical use and for sale to collectors. One of the most common kinds of pots made by native peoples of North and Central America is the olla. The unglazed pot is characterized by a spherical body and wide mouth. Ollas were made over a thousand years ago and almost all the tribes in the Southwest United States and Mexico still make them today. What techniques have you used?

Potter Design Worksheet: Use this worksheet to create your Native American Pottery Design. 1 st – Trace the Rough Pot Design 2 nd – Think of your Theme 3 rd – Draw your Design 4 th – Color your Design Remember to Use Dark Rich Colors Symbols Write your name on back

Create Pot – Cut out Pot Share With partner – who tries to assemble your native American Design