Unknown Acoma Potters

The potters of Acoma Pueblo have long produced utilitarian and decorative pottery but if it was made before about 1950, it's probably unsigned. Unsigned, we have little way of determining who the creator might have been.

That said, Acoma is at the northern boundary of the Mimbres culture and southern boundary of the Ancestral Puebloan culture. To the west is Zuni and Rio Salado, to the east is Pottery Mound and Isleta. Hundreds of years ago the people roamed this area looking for relief from the all-to-common droughts. Among them were legions of potters. There was constant, significant cross-pollination of techniques, forms and designs all across the Southwest for more than a thousand years. The Acoma oral history says they have lived on their mesa top for about that long, too, because their water sources have been that reliable.