Ancestral Pueblo: Southern Colorado Plateau (Anasazi)Western AnasaziTusayan (Kayenta)Jeddito Yellow WareBidahochi Polychrome

Type Name: Bidahochi Polychrome

Period: 1325 A.D. - 1400 A..D
Culture: Ancestral Pueblo: Southern Colorado Plateau (Anasazi)
Branch: Western Anasazi
Tradition: Tusayan (Kayenta)
Ware: Jeddito Yellow Ware


First posted by C. Dean Wilson 2013

Bidahochi Polychrome was defined by Hargrave (1932). Bidahochi Polychrome is similar to Awatovi Black-on-yellow, both technologically and stylistically, and differs only by the addition of a white outline in design elements (Colton 1956; Hays 1991; Smith 1971).The production of this type appears to have been limited to a span within the fourteenth century from about A.D. 1325 to 1400.

Surfaces are never slipped,but are compact and well polished. Paste is very fine. Surface color is usually yellow but occasionally pinkish or orange in color, resulting from firing in an oxidizing atmosphere. Temper consists of fine quartz sand and reddish angular fragments. Vessels are very strong and tend to shatter when broken. Vessels wall tend to be thick. Forms include bowls, jars, and ladles. Rims are slightly incurved sometimes exhibiting a slight flare with rounded lips. Decorations are applied in both black and dark reddish brown and white pigment. Painted derations occur on jar exteriors and the interior and sometimes exterior surfaces of bowls. Designs are organized geometrically and also include isolated designs and open layouts. Bowls exhibit framing lines just below the rim. Designs on bowl interiors are organized in both in zonal and radial layouts. Designs on zonal layouts often include simple filling elements, such as corbelling superimposed on a series of circumferential lines or rows of opposed stepped triangles. Among the many radial layout designs are offset-quartered and off-set tri-quartered forms. Exterior designs are painted in black with white outlines. These designs include large, independent, isolated elements, in a rectangular fret or S-figure, stepped and key shaped elements. Jar designs consists of broad black bands; solid, stepped triangles, cross-hatched panels, narrow-line, rectangular involutes; and longitudinal hatching. Thin lines of white paint outline black designs.

References:
Colton, Harold S.
1956 Pottery Types of the Soutwest, Museum of Northern Arizona Ceramic Series 1, Flagstaff.

Hays, Kelley A.
1991 Ceramics. In Homol’ovi II: Archaeology of an Ancestral Hopi Village, Arizona. E.C. Adams & K. Hays (Eds.), pp. 23-49. Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona, No. 55. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Hargrave, L Lyndon
1932 Guide to Forty Pottery Types from the Hopi Country and the San Francisco Mountains, Arizona. Museum of Northern Arizona Bulletin, No. 1, Flagstaff.

Smith, Watson
1971 Painted Ceramics of the Western Mound at Awatovi. Reports of the Awatovi Expedition, Report No. 8. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Vol. 38. Peabody Museum, Cambridge




Related Photos

Bidahochi Polychrome sherds

Bidahochi Polychrome bowl

Bidahochi Polychrome bowl