Pottery has been made by the Pueblo Indians of the Southwestern States of Arizona and New Mexico for 2000 years. Neolithic techniques are still in use. Pots are hand built, decorated by painting with different colored slips and vegetable dyes, polished with a pebble and fired in a shallow hole in the ground with cow dung as fuel. Clay, temper and slips are collected from local sources. Pots are mostly coiled or pinched. Gourd shells are used to scrape and shape the pots. Yellow to red colors are produced by using natural earths. For the black paint Guaco or Rocky Mountain bee plant is boiled down. Some of the blacks are made with a natural stone containing both iron and manganese. In the firing some pots are deliberately smudged by putting loose manure on the fire before the end of the firing cycle. -- AATA