This workshop gives an overview of historic Arkansas pottery and the ways archeologists analyze it to learn about indigenous and early settler lifeways. We will start with the basics of pottery production and identify attributes of pottery technology and style, using examples by the earliest potters in Arkansas, beginning about 1000 BC. While most of our discussion will focus on pottery made in this region by ancestral Caddo Indians, we will also look briefly at the stoneware pottery industry in Garland, Hot Spring, Saline, and Dallas counties in the nineteenth century.
This workshop will be taught by Dr. Mary Beth Trubitt of the Arkansas Archeological Survey, Henderson State University Research Station.