**SALADO CRAFT ARTS**

During the centuries the Salado lived in the Tonto Basin, their culture
expanded and diversified. Their beautifully decorated pottery and
elaborate textiles show us a people well versed in handicrafts, and with
a highly developed artistic sense. Sufficient discretionary time to
transform functional household goods into works of art is one indication
of a thriving culture.

[Ceramics]{.underline}

Clay, temper, and water are the ingredients needed for making pottery.
Temper is coarse material added to the clay to give it body and keep the
pot from cracking when fired. Common tempers include crushed pottery
sherds, sand, quartz, and crushed rock.

Once clay and temper were thoroughly mixed, sufficient water was added
to achieve the desired consistency. Pottery wheels were unknown to
prehistoric Southwestern peoples; instead, Salado women built up their
pots with round rolls of clay that were coiled on each other, either as
a series of concentric rings or a continuous spiral. With her hand on
the inside of the vessel and a small even-edged tool on the outside, the
potter smoothed and shaped the walls of the pot into the desired form.
The vessel could then be polished with a smooth stone, covered with a
thin clay wash called a slip, and painted with elaborate designs.
Finally, the vessel was fired over a bed of wood coals, probably
inverting the vessel, and then carefully piling more wood around it,
leaving room for the air to circulate.

Oxygen, mixed with the heat, created an oxidizing atmosphere. Varying
percentages of iron, naturally present in the clay, oxidized and emerged
from the firing as red, orange, or yellow. White was derived from a type
of kaolin clay, and black was produced from plant material that
carbonized during the firing process.

Like other pueblo cultures, the Salado made plain red utility wares for
everyday use. Their decorative wares consisted of three styles of
beautifully painted polychromes that were reserved for ceremonial use
and burial offerings. These Salado polychromes form one of the most
popular pottery types ever produced in the Southwest and are often
called the hallmark of the Salado tradition.

Pinto polychrome, the earliest of the styles, first appeared around AD
1200. These bowls have red slipped exteriors, and white slipped
interiors that are painted with black designs. The designs involve mixed
geometric and curvilinear motifs in broad line, fine line, and hatchur,
which cover the entire interior of the bowl.

Gila polychrome, developed from the earlier Pinto polychrome style, also
has a red-slipped exterior and black-on-white interior. These bowls are
decorated with bolder, more variable designs that usually cover the
entire interior, but are separated from the rim by a broad encircling
band. This band, or \"life line", usually has a short gap, possibly to
allow the spirit of the bowl to escape.

Tonto polychrome is distinguished from Gila polychrome only by the
addition of red design elements on the white slip between the black
painted elements. Tonto Polychrome is primarily confined to jars and may
be simply a variety of Gila Polychrome.

[Textiles]{.underline}

The textiles excavated form one of the finest collections of prehistoric
fabrics in the Southwest. The Salado evolved a weaving technology and
artistry that rivaled any contemporary southwestern culture.

Cotton was grown in the irrigated fields near the river. When the cotton
matured, the bolls were brought to the village and the fibers were
separated from the bolls and seeds. The fibers were spun into thread
with a slender spindle stick that was weighted below the center with a
flat disk called a whorl. Some skeins were dyed; others were left
natural. There were various shades of brown, red, black, dark blue, dark
blue-green, light blue, and yellow. The colors of the textiles we see
today have been discolored to varying tones of gray, yellow, brown, or
black by charring or age.

Weaving tools have been discovered in male burials, suggesting that men
did the weaving in pueblo cultures of the past, just as they do among
the Hopi today.

It appears that nearly all the Tonto textiles were woven on a loom by
fastening vertical warp threads between two stationary bars, placed
parallel to the ground and a few inches above it, and interlacing
horizontal weft threads back and forth across the warps.

The variety of weaves is astonishing. Some were basic plain weaves in a
simple over one, under one pattern that was used for large utilitarian
items such as blankets and kilts. Others were complicated in technique
and produced elaborate designs.

Only two pieces of plaid have been found in the Southwest; one is a
brown and white fragment found in the Tonto dwellings.

The most popular decorative technique was weft-wrap openwork. This cloth
was a plain weave, in which decorative holes were made by wrapping the
weft threads around certain groups of warp threads, pulling them apart
to form small holes. The distribution of these holes created a design on
the cloth.

Embroidery also seems to have been a popular decorative technique.
Several complex designs are found on textile fragments in the Tonto
collection.

The finest example of Salado textile art in existence was found in the
Tonto cliff dwellings. It is a man\'s shirt, manufactured by an
elaborate open work technique called twine plaiting. This lace-like
fabric is constructed of pairs of yarns that twine around each other,
and then separate to twine around yarns from adjoining pairs. This
process creates diamond and hexagonal-shaped holes that are distributed
to form decorative patterns.

Prehistoric textile collections contain many examples of darned and
patched cloth, suggesting that cotton fabrics were valuable and were
preserved for use as long as possible. When a fabric was beyond repair,
it was torn into narrow strips that were used as weft threads for
weaving heavy blankets.

These two major art forms, along with turquoise jewelry, baskets and
cradleboards, bone awls, arrows, and other tools and implements for
daily living, reflect the ever-present human desire for creativity and
artistic expression. These pieces of the past, found throughout the
Tonto Basin, are helping archeologists to reconstruct the daily lives of
the Salado and show us a culture emerging from the mists of prehistoric
time.