THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF POTTERY MAKING IN THE

VALLEY OF GUATEMALA

Dean E. Arnold

328

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
LA CIENEGA .
SACOJ GRANDE
MIXCO . . .
CHINAUTLA, SACOJITO AND DURAZNO: INTRODUCTION.
Pottery Making . .
Vessel Shapes .
CHINAUTLA (PAKOM) .
SACOJITO (Sacax)
DURAZNO (Nak'oy)
CONCLUSIONS . . .
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
REFERENCES CITED
APPENDIX 1. Measurements of Sacoj Grande Cooking Pots
APPENDIX 2. Comal Diameters from Mixco Centers.
APPENDIX 3. Chinautla Vessel Shape Measurements . .
APPENDIX 4. Measurements of Sacojito Vessels . . . . .
APPENDIX 5. Measurements of Vessel Shapes from Durazno.

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389
390
391
394
395
398

LIST OF TABLES
Table
1 Soil Types in the Northern Valley of Guatemala.
2 Characteristics of Comal Diameters, Mixco .
3 Size and Mouth Variations of Tinajas.
4 Chinautla Vessel Types . . .
5 Sacojito Vessel Types . . .
6 Origin of Sacojito Potters.
7 Durazno Vessel Types. .

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359
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374
376
383

LIST OF FIGURES
Fig.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

Pottery-Making Communities in the Valley of Guatemala

Soil Types in the Northern Valley of Guatemala.
Profile of a Cooking Pot Made in Sacoj Grande
Moldes for Making Comals, Mixco . .
Detail of Moldes, Mixco . . , . . .
Potter No. 3 Making a Comal, Mixco . .
Firing Area of Mixco Potter No. 2 .
Mixco Potter Igniting Fuel to Begin Firing Process.
Frequencies of Comal Diameters, Mixco . . . . . .
Principal Vessel Shapes and Fabrication Stages in Chinautla,
Sacojito and Durazno . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Pokomam Reference Terms for Parts of a Tinaja .
Preparation for Firing during the Rainy Season.

332
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337
340
340
341
343
343
345
350
352
354

329

LIST OF FIGURES (continued)

Fig.
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32

Pile of Pottery during Firing in Sacojito

Apaste with Typical Horizontal Rim. . . .
Profile of a Tinajera . . . . . . . . .
Tinajera with Depressions as Decoration, Chinautla
Eroding Volcanic Ash on Barranca Slope, Chinautla
Clay Mine Near Finca Primavera: A Source of White Clay.
Sketch Map of Sacojito. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Genealogical Representation of a Family of Potters, Sacojito .
A Second Family of Potters, Sacojito.
A Third Family of Potters, Sacojito . .
A Fourth Family of Potters, Sacojito . .
Canteen-Shaped Vessel (tinaja pachito) used to Carry Water
to the Milpa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Floor Plan of Structure Used by SJ-4 for Making Pottery .
Slipped, Red-Painted Vessel Decorated in Durazno Style by a
Sacojito Potter. .
. .........
Irregular Burned Clay Areas Resulting from Repeated Firings
Irregular Burned Clay Areas Resulting from Repeated Firings
Sketch of Houselot SJ-20 Showing Positions of Broken Sherds
and Fire Baked Clay Areas . . . . . . . . . .
Ollas of White Slipped Black Clay, Decorated with Red Designs
A Red Painted Tinaja made of Black Clay, Durazno.
A Red Painted Tinaja made of Black Clay, Durazno.

356
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362
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365
366
370
373
373
373
373
375
375
375
378
378
379
384
385
385

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INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this paper is to present data on the materials and techniques
employed in contemporary pottery manufacture among several villages in the
Valley of Guatemala. Inter-village and inter-potter variations in materials,
manufacturing and firing steps, and firing locations are presented and
discussed. These differences have not only ethnographic significance but
implications for the archaeologist interested in ceramic analysis and
description.l
There are a number of pottery-making communities in the Valley of
Guatemala. In the summer of 1970, six communities of potters were studied:
Chinautla, Sacoj, Sacojito, La Cienega, Durazno and Mixco (Fig. 1). There
are also potters in San Raimundo which is located outside of the valley, and
there may be potters in other small, more isolated communities, like Petaca
northeast of the valley, but these communities are outside of the scope of
the present study.
Each of these communities (as well as others in the region) have traditional names, not always reflected in their Spanish counterparts. Chinautla,
for example, is called Pakom. Durazno is Nak'oy, Sacojito is Sakax, and
expectedly Sacoj Grande is Kamin (large) Sacax.2 San Jose Nacahail, a
Cakchiquel-speaking community north of Durazno is called Kate'.
All of these pottery-making conununities are located in the northern part
of the valley north of Guatemala City, and all occur on poor agricultural
land (Fig. 2, Table 1). While there is a small amount of alluvial bottom
land near Chinautla, most of the land around the community lies on the poor
AF-type soils which are the steep slopes of the highly eroded barrancas.
Similarly, the communities of Sacoj and Sacojito rest on the flat, fertile
and non-eroding Gt-type soils, but the area of this type of soil around
the communities is small and they are surrounded by large amounts of the
sloping, highly eroded (AF type) soils. The Durazno area lies on a
different soil--equally poor, but derived from old igneous and metaphoric
rocks which are shallow and do not permit root penetration. Similarly,
La Cienega and Mixco lie on the sloping Guatemala (Gtp) type soil which
erodes easily because of the slope. This description of the soils of the
region suggests a bleak picture for agricultural potential. Nevertheless,
good, well watered and highly fertile soils do exist in the region (see
Fig. 2,Table 1) but they are controlled by haciendas and fincas and thus
are inaccessible to local indigenous populations.
The poor agricultural land of the region is an important factor in
understanding pottery making in its environmental context. Women are
Ix-ray diffraction analyses of the ceramic raw materials from the
communities studied was carried out by Altheria Underwood, summer intern
under the supervision of Dr. Herbert McKinstry of the Materials Research
Laboratory at The Pennsylvania State University. Underwood ran plain powder
patterns of the samples as well as dehydrating them over P 2o 5 before x-ray
diffraction analysis. In addition, she examined the temper samples using
a polarizing microscope. Dr. B. F. Bohor of the Illinois Geological Survey
also analyzed some of the raw materials and assisted in identifying some
of the peaks in the analyses made by Underwood and McKinstry.
2unusual orthographic symbols employed in the orthography of Pokomam are:
/x/ velar fricative, // sound like 'ts' in English, // alveopalatal
grooved fricative like 'sh' in English, and /8/ alveopalatal stop like
'ch' in English.

331

potters in these communities whereas men are milperos raising corn and
associated crops. Since intensive agriculture is not possible, the potential population supported by agriculture on this land is low and thus it
appears that female pottery making supplements male subsistence activities
which are limited because of the poor land (Arnold 1971, 1977). Nevertheless, increasing p9pulation on this marginal land is forcing men to take
jobs in the city in order to survive (Reina 1960).
LA CIENEGA
La Cienega (9035' W. long.; 1443'15" N. lat.) is a Cakchiquel-speaking
community located approximately 10 km north of Guatemala City. Located on
the unimproved road departing to San Raimundo from the suburb of El Milagro,
it is directly east of San Juan Sacatepequez and within the Valley of
Guatemala. The town is on the slopes of the western edge of the valley,
and occurs on the sloping Guatemala type soils (Gtp) which are poor and
very susceptible to erosion. One visit was made to the community in July
of 1970. This description is based on the observations and questioning of
one potter.
There are many potters in La Cienega, and like other communities mentioned
in this study, all the potters are women. They primarily specialize in
making comals, but also produce cooking pots. The pottery-making technology
of La Cienega appears similar if not identical to that used in Cakchiquelspeaking San Raimundo (John Warner, personal communication).
There is no special or unique place to obtain clay (sapuk) necessary for
making pottery, but is obtained in the potter's yard. X-ray diffraction
analysis of this clay revealed the presence of quartz with a peak of 26.7
and feldspar with a peak at 27.8.
After extracting the clay, it is dried and ground to a fine powder before
being mixed with water. La Cienega potters add no non-plastics to their
clay since it is likely that the clay contains a sufficient amount of
naturally occurring non-plastics.
In contrast to Mixco, La Cienega potters do not use a mold to make comals
but rather fashion them on the flat ground in the yard. When the shape of
the carnal is completed, it is set aside to dry. Then potters place chawkiwin
on the surface of the carnal so that the tortillas will not stick to the
surface of the vessel during cooking. Chawkiwin is a rock and potters
purchase it in nearby San Raimundo. It must be ground into a fine powder
by a
and metate before it can be mixed with water and placed on the
vessel.
There are two types of chawkiwin, a red variety for the first coating of
the carnal and a white variety for a final more decorative coat. First,
potters spread the red variety all over the top surface of the carnal. After
this covering has dried for a while, it is polished with a smooth stone.
Then, another layer of the red chawkiwin is spread on the carnal. Finally,
they add the white chawkiwin, spreading it all over the top surface of the
vessels with their fingers first, and then apply it in a spiral design
starting from the outside and moving towards a point on one side of the
vessel. After placing small concentric circles or half circles on or near
the center of the spiral, the potters move their hand around the outside
of the carnal placing the chawkiwin on the rim of the vessel.
The two types of chawkiwin (red and white) used on the tortilla griddles
at La Cienega were analyzed by x-ray diffraction. Both contained

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Table 1.

Soil Type
Areas
Fragosas

Symbol

AF

Chinautla

Chn

Cauque

Dominant
Decline
(in %)

Soil Types in the Northern Valley of Guatemala

Drainage
through
Soil

Capacity
to Supply
Moisture

Levels
Limiting
Root Penetration

Erosion
Danger

Natural
Fertility

Problems

(Erosion prohibits permanent agricultural use.)

**

Rocks to
40-50 cm

Very
high

Low

Erosion

High

None

High

High

Combating
erosion and
maintaining
organic
material

Very
high

None

Low

High

Maintaining
organic
material

20-25

Slow

Low

Cq

15-19

Medium

Guatemala

Gt

0- 2

Slow

Guatemala
fase
pendiente

Gtp

(Eroded, sloping Gt-type soil of little depth.)

Compiled from Simmons et al. (1959).

*cv-, SA-, and AF-type soils are areas of no dominant soil type or where some geological characteristic
or other cause limits permanent agriculture use (Simmons et al., 1959:44).
**A soil of little depth over rock and not well adapted for intensive agricutural use (Simmons et al.,
1959:33ff.).
+slope too inclined for intensive use (Simmons et al., 1959:33ff.).
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334

10

K ilometer1

Figure 2.

Soil Types in the Northern Valley of Guatemala [Positions

of pottery-making communities relative to soil types are
indicated. Soil types are from Simmons et al., 1959.]

montmorillonite or chlorite (with a peak at 6.2), talc (with peaks at 9.7,

18.9, and 28.70 and additional peaks at 48.7 in the red variety and 48.1
in the white variety), kaolinite or chlorite (with a peak at 12.50), and
feldspar (with peaks at 23.20 and one at 27.30 in the white variety). In
addition, the white variety contained clay prisms (with a peak at 19.8),
quartz (with a peak at 21.2), dolomite (with a peak at 31.0o), dolomite or
pyrite (with a peak at 33.2), and possibly montmorillonite (with a peak at
10.6). An unidentified peak in the white variety also occurred at 30.5.

335
After the comals have dried for a while and are leather hard, the potter
takes a curved piece of metal and scrapes the outside to make a sharp angle
between the base and the upper outside edge. Then the vessel is set aside
to dry until firing.
For firing, three stones are placed around a fire and the comals are
placed on the stones in a horizontal position. Only two comals are fired
at one time. Split pine is used for fuel under the vessels and pine bark
placed on top of them to complete the firing process.
Potters recognize large and small sizes of comals, but both sizes were
not observed. Two fired comals measured 63 cm in diameter with a base on
one measuring 57 and 58 cm on the other. An unfired comal measured

cm in diameter. Potters say that they also make very large comals for
wedding ceremonies. These vessels are five hand spans (approximately 1 m)
wide and sell for $3 in contrast to prices of .50 for the large and .30
for the small varieties.
Potters also make cooking pots which have an angular junction of the
base and vessel wall. The bases of these vessels are either flat or
slightly rounded and have horizontal lugs as handles.
The La Cienega potters do not market their own pottery, but sell it to
middlemen who transport it to other towns for sale. Since pottery is made
predominately in the dry season, purchase and marketing of comals by the
middlemen occurs mostly during this time of the year.
There are several features which distinguish comals made in La Cienega
from those made in Mixco. First, there is a sharp angle on the underside
of the La Cienega carnal separating the flat base from the slanting outer
edge. Mixco comals have a continuous curved surface on the underside.
This feature, of course, is a product of the different fabrication techniques. Mixco potters use a mold to achieve the shape while La Cienega
potters form and dry their comals on the ground, removing some of the clay
on the underside to make the sharp angle. Secondly, the use of tez on the
Mixco comals has no pattern whereas that placed on the La Cienega comals
has circular spiral patterns with the center of the pattern near one of
the edges of the coma!. Finally, the underside of the Mixco comals is
rough and pockmarked with absence of scraping. Comals from La Cienega are
smoother and have scraping marks. The appearance of the Mixco comals
results from the particles of ash that stick to the undersurface of the
coma! used to prevent the comals from sticking to the mold. In firing
these ash particles melt and leave tiny holes in the base of the carnal.
La Cienega potters, on the other hand, prepare the bases of the comals by
scraping.
SACOJ GRANDE
Sacoj Grande (9032'6" W. long.; 1442' N. lat.) or Sacoj is a small
community located approximately 4 km northeast of the suburb of Milagro
north of Guatemala City. Being in the municipio of Mixco, people appear
to speak the Mixco dialect of Pokomam since they use a slightly different
vocabulary than Chinautla, Sacojito or Durazno, although the languages used
in Sacoj Grande and Chinautla are mutually intelligible. The community is
located along a narrow ridge of tableland of the excellent Guatemala (Gt)
type soils which stretches northeastward from Milagro to Sacoj Grande, then
eastward to the Finca Paris and then turns north towards the community of
Sacojito. At Sacojito the tableland ends. Highly eroded and steep-sloped

336

barrancas of very poor (AF type) soils circumscribe the tableland in this
part of the Valley of Guatemala.
There are only three potters in Sacoj Grande. Two are located in the
household visited; the third potter was not visited. One informant stressed
that pottery was not made in July because the weather was too hot. The
clay is wet, too, and the potter doesn't like to bring it up from the
river when it is wet. Nevertheless, two visits to one pottery-making
household in the rainy season (one in July and one in August) produced the
present ethnographic data plus measurements of a sizeable inventory of
recently fired cooking pots (Appendix 1).
The most unique aspect of pottery making in Sacoj Grande is the production of cooking pots (ollas or on in Pokomam) by a single old woman in the
household visited. Her daughter-in-law, the second potter in the household,
comes from Sacojito and makes some cooking pots but also makes tinajas,
apastes and tinajeras like those of Chinautla. The third potter in the
community also produces this latter kind of pottery. Except for the potter
who makes ollas, the other two potters of Sacoj Grande generally utilize
the white clay (sak ak'al) from Chinautla and transport it over the onehour trail from the community. They do not buy it at the mine. Although
ideally these potters made Chinautla pottery with white clay, there were
several tinajas and apastes in the yard made of red clay--the clay used to
make tinajeras. The clay to make ollas is a black clay (ul ak'al) and
comes from the barranca below the community. Potters say the source is
some distance away, but they own the land from which they obtain the clay.
Potters recognize that this clay and resultant pottery is different than
the red-firing clay used to make pottery in Chinautla.
The potter uses only the black clay to make the ollas and does not use
a separate tempering material. Observations of the Sacoj cooking pots
indicate that they have a micaceous paste.
In preparing the paste, potters
soak a portion of the clay, dry and grind a second portion of the clay,
and then mix the two portions together when the clay is kneaded.
Like the potters in Mixco, Chinautla, Sacojito and Durazno, the Sacoj
potter uses a molde to make her cooking pots. The molde is an old inverted
cooling pot, and the portion of the vessel constructed in this way extends
upwards to about the point of greatest circumference. The clay is added
to the molded portion with a modified coiling technique to finish the
vessel. Handles are placed slightly above the point of greatest circumference of the vessel, but not on the rim (Fig. 1). There is a slight
constriction at the top of the vessel at the neck (Fig. 3), and there
are two rim variations:
(1) an erect, flaring rim, and (2) a rim without
the flare.
Potters recognized two mouth variations:
small (kukubik) and
large.
Potters recognize three sizes of ollas:
(1) arroba or 11.5 pounds
(5.2 kg) of maize (small), (2) 15 libras (pounds) or 6.8 kg of maize
(medium), and (3) 1 arroba or 25 pounds (11.6 kg) of maize (large). Each
size has different uses. Large ollas are for cooking maize and tamales and
for making a large caldron of soup for a fiesta. Medium ollas are for
cooking maize, and small ollas are for cooking beans or soup.
For firing, potters used chiribisco (twigs) and basura
(literally
'garbage,' but which potters say consists of dried leaves and grass). In
preparing to fire her pottery, the potter puts part of dried grass and
leaves below, and then puts the ollas in two layers over this combustible
material. Finally, the remainder of the dried grass and leaves is placed

337

CM
0

Figure 3.

'

Profile of a Cooking Pot Made in Sacoj Grande

on top of the pottery. In order to be well fired, the pottery must be

amarillo 'yellow.' If any portion of the fired pottery turns out black it
must be fired again.
Clay cooking pots from Sacoj are in demand, and potters in Chinautla and
Sacojito recognize that superior cooking pots come from Sacoj (Fig. 3).
Several Sacoj cooking pots were observed in potters' households in both
Chinautla and Sacojito.
Sacoj potters say that clay cooking pots impart a rich and tasty
characteristic to the food cooked in the vessel. Metal pots do not produce
the same taste; nevertheless, many people use the metal cooking pots.
Potters have an abundance of uses for defective, unusable or discarded
pots. Some are turned upside down and served as shelters for domestic
fowl. Sherds with large curvatures were used to hold water and food for
domestic animals. Other pots are placed under the eaves of the house to
collect rain water. Without well water or piped water, collecting rain
water saves a long trip into the barranca below the community to obtain
water. Sherds also were used as containers for ashes scraped from the
cooking fire.
MIX CO
Mixco is a Pokomam-speaking community located on the slopes of the hills
just outside Guatemala City to the west. An asphalt highway connects the
community with the capital, and continues on to Antigua and the western
part of the country. It is the main transportation artery going directly
to the western highlands from the capital. Regular bus service from the
capital occurs several times every hour, making Mixco more and more a
suburb of Guatemala City than an Indian peasant community near the capital.
The only literature written about contemporary Mixco potters is an
article by Arrot (1967). Arrot's description differs somewhat from that
presented here. Two explanations may account for this discrepancy:
1. Arrot's sample was of unknown size and the differences of his study
from that presented here may be the result of individual variation.
2. Pottery making may have changed since he carried out his study,
even though the date of his research is not mentioned.

338
The lack of careinpresenting Arrot's material, and his failure to mention
the conditions under which the data were collected does not evoke much
confidence in his description. For example, Arrot (1967:65) points out that
the potters of Mixco make comals with the same technique as San Raimundo--a
claim that is erroneous. Nevertheless, Arrot's work is used to provide
supplementary data to the present study, but no attempt was made to give a
complete critique of Arrot's material.
At one time Mixco was a major ceramic-producing center with more than
100 women making pottery (Arrot 1967:65). Arrot (1967:65) in his study of
Mixco noticed that the craft was decreasing in the town but implied that
there were still 25 potters who made comals there. In June, July and
August of 1970, however, it took a great deal of effort to find four
potters. After five visits to the community during this period and extensive questioning of these four and other Mixco residents, these four potters
represent the last vestiges of ceramic production in Mixco. Even with the
four, however, the craft was disappearing. One woman was too old and senile
to work and another was rapidly approaching senility. There were only two
potters who worked regularly.
In Mixco, as elsewhere in preindustrial societies, pottery making is a
dry weather craft. One potter reported that she makes pottery only when
she has time--not every day. But, because of the dry and sunny periods
needed for drying and firing, pottery making is best accomplished during
dry and sunny periods in the rainy season or in the dry season when Arrot
(1967:77) points out that most of Mixco pottery is produced.
In 1970, Mixco potters specialized in making comals (in Pokomam Mox or

a concave griddle for cooking tortillas. Only 50% of the potters

made comals in former times (Arrot 1967). Besides use as a tortilla griddle,
comals were observed being used as a mold to hold freshly formed comals to
achieve their concave shape and were also used for holding various items
around the house. One potter reported making comals for an alleged use in
embroidering.
Among the four potters, clay (ak'al or ak'al kak, 'red clay') was
obtained either in the potter's yard or somewhere outside the pueblo. Two
potters had clay pits in their yards, and the remaining potters referred
vaguely to a clay source above somewhere or over the next hill; it was
impossible to obtain a precise location. Arrot (1967:66), however, mentioned a source on a hill 5 km east of the town, and this location and the
source mentioned by the informants in 1970 may refer to the same source.
Arrot (1967:66) says that the distant source is on private land, and potters
buytheirclay for .40 for 45 kilos, although they often buy smaller
quantities.
X-ray diffraction analyses of Mixco clays revealed peaks of feldspar;
one occurred at 27.8 in the samples from potters 2 and 3, and another
occurred at 28.oo in a sample from potter 1. A 30.5 peak from an unidentified mineral occurred in a sample from potter 3. Arrot (1967:66) says
that the clay contains iron oxide and a small percentage of sand and mica.
Visual observation of Mixco pottery confirms the presence of small quantities of mica. When dry, he says the color is dark coffee color (Munsel
soil color classification lOYR 4/3), whereas when it is wet it has yellowish
coffee color (lOYR 3/4).
The Mixco paste is untempered; non-plastics are not added to the paste.
Probably the main reason for this pattern of behavior is that the Mixco
clay contains enough non-plastics to reduce plasticity and improve workability without the addition of more. Arrot (1967:66) claims that the

339

paste contains little sand and this is a deficiency of the pottery. He

doesn't realize, however, that the paste does contain a sufficient amount
of such materials or the potter could not make the comals, or dry or fire
them properly without breakage.
Although Mixco pottery is untempered, a sand-like material is used in
the forming process in two ways: (1) it keeps the unformed coma! from
sticking to the mold while it is being made and while it is drying, and
(2) it also serves as a lubricant to move the clay lump on the mold so
that it can be worked into the proper shape.
The sand is actually a volcanic ash which is abundant in the area. It
is mined in local outcrops--one of which is located immediately below the
village on the highway to Guatemala. Mixco potters do not appear to have
any one particular local source for this material.
The affect of this sand on the pottery can be observed on the base of
the fired comals from Mixco. The tuff, of course, sticks to the bottom of
the vessels, but during firing some of the sand melts leaving a very rough
and pitted underside.
In preparing the clay for forming the comals, there is little data.
Arrot (1967:66) points out that the clay is moistened shortly before forming. One informant in' 1970 reported that she grinds her clay before use.
Another potter dries it in the sun first then soaks it in water. Then on
the following day, she kneads it and removes the rocks.
In preparing the lump of clay for forming, two alternatives were observed:
(1) several lumps of clay corresponding to the amount of clay for one coma!
were prepared before the potter begins to form the vessels, and each size
of coma! has a lump of clay of a particular size, or (2) clay is removed
from a large lump of clay as it is needed. In the latter activity, the
potter takes a piece of clay off the lump and rolls it into a hot dog shape
and then into a spiral. If it is too long or large, the potter cuts off a
little of the clay before making a lump again and sets it aside to be
formed later.
The potters observed in the summer of 1970 utilized two methods of
forming the coma!: the mold and a board. Three potters used molds and a
fourth used the board. Molds are raised, circular concave depressions on
the floor of the house which are used either to form the coma! or as molds
to hold the coma! during drying so that it retains the proper shape
(Figs. 4, 5). The potter who uses a board forms the comals on the board
(approximately 25 by 75 cm) and then dries them in fired comals which have
been dusted with sand so that the freshly formed comal will not stick to
the fired coma!.
In forming the
the potter first spreads sand on the mold or
board. She then takes a piece of clay and forms it into a crude pancake,
slaps it down on the mold and moves one hand around the upper circumference
of the pancake forcing the clay out away from the center with the palm of
her hand as she moves it around the mold. The other hand guides the
exterior of the lump of clay. She keeps forcing it out with her hand as
it gets flatter and flatter (Fig. 6). When the raw comal reaches a certain
size, she uses a jicara rind scraper to flatten it still further. When the
shape is round and the proper thickness, she takes an old piece of leather
dipped in water and makes a rounded smoothed rim for the vessel.
After the comal is formed, it is placed in one of the molds or in a
fired comal so that it will dry in a curved shape. The comals are partially
dried inside the house, but since the heat of the sun is also needed to

340

Figure 4. Moldes for

Making Cornals, Mixco
[Potters use the
higher white mold in
the foreground for
forming and drying
the comals in the
others. View is the
floor of the house of
potter l.]

Figure 5.

Detail of Moldes, Mixco [The mold in the foreground

for forming, that in the background for drying.]

341

Figure 6.

Potter No. 3 Making a Comal, Mixco [Prepared lumps of

clay (right foreground) are used for the vessels.
Dried comals in the background are ready to be fired.]

dry them, drying is completed outside. For this reason, a sunny day is
necessary to dry them completely.
When the vessel is leather hard, the upper surface is covered with tez
(or chakiwin). Tez is not really a slip but a material which potters place
on the surface of the comals so that the tortillas will not stick when they
are cooked.
In its raw state, tez is a soft roqk which must be ground
(usually rubbed on a piece of basalt) and mixed with water prior to use.
Fragments of the raw tez used for this purpose display one or more flat
sides which do not correspond to cleavage planes.
The tez slip-like material from Mixco (from potter 2) was analyzed by
x-ray diffraction and was found to contain montmorillonite or chlorite
with a peak of 6.2, talc with peaks at 9.7, 18.9, 28.7 and 48.8,
kaolinite or chlorite with a peak at 12.5, and feldspar with peaks at
23.2 and 28.6. An unidentified peak occurred at 31.5.
The tez or chakiwin does not have a local source but comes from some
distance away. One potter said it came from Rabinal, another said it came
from a location three days' walk away and a third said the source was three
leagues away. This lack of uniformity about the knowledge of the source of
this material is probably due to the fact that potters do not travel to the
source, but buy it from a merchant who obtains it at the source and sells
it to Mixco potters. Prices vary and do not show much consistency from
potter to potter.

342

After the tez had been applied, the comals are polished with a smooth
stone and are---re-ady to be fired. It is necessary to have a sunny day for
firing their comals. Potters claim that the comals will become black if
they are fired during a cloudy day. If there is sun in the morning, firing
can proceed at midday; the comals need to be hot from drying in the sun
before they are fired, so they won't crack or break. As many as a hundred
comals can be fired in one day.
Firing is done up against a wall; it may be the wall of a house, a fence
or a wall constructed especially for pottery firing (Fig. 7). One potter
uses a sheet of metal roofing used to keep the firing area dry, whereas
another uses the tops of 50 gallon drums for this purpose and to keep the
pottery off the ground.
The firing area for comals in Mixco produces an area of red baked bricks
on the wall where the firing took place. This area may be less than a meter
in height and
meters long. Similar fire baked areas of a similar size
occur on the ground adjacent to the walls. Since potters in each household
tend to fire in the same location again and again, each household has only
one firing location. The relative permanence of the baked clay should be
readily identifiable in archaeological contexts, and the same size and
shape of the fire baked areas in excavations may indicate the presence of a
potter's household.
For the firing process, potters use twigs (chiribisco) and dried grass.
Chiribisco costs five cents a tercio and a bundle of straw five cents.
Arrot (1967:68) claimsthat Mixco potters used pine firewood, but data
obtained in 1970 did not confirm that this fuel was used. First, the
potter prepares a mat of chiribisco about 25 cm thick from the base of the
wall to a point about 1 m from it. In the only firing process observed,
the ground at the base of the wall was covered with the tops of 50 gallon
drums, and the twigs were placed on top of these. Three fired comals are
placed vertically facing the wall with unfired comals also placed in this
position on the twigs leaning against the fired comals against the wall.
The comals interlock to provide space for the heat to move up between the
comals, and stacked until they are 75 cm from the wall and 15 cm away from
the edge of the sheet metal. After she has placed her pottery on the twigs,
she removes the excess twigs.
In starting the fire, the chiribisco is lit in several places with
sticks from the cooking fire (Fig. 8). When the flames begin to pass
through tops of the comals, straw is placed on top and sides of the vessels.
Potters say this use of straw produces the red color of the vessels. To
assure that all the straw burns, the potter moves around the comals with
a long pole lifting the straw to be sure that it burns well. After the
straw burns down, she adds twigs on top of the pile of pottery--an act
which she says makes the comals red. She continues to add more straw and
partly burned straw sparingly from the sides of the pile. When she nears
the end of the firing process, she stops putting straw on the fire and
makes holes in the burned straw in several places to see if the comals
have a red glow. If all the comals are red at this stage, then this
characteristic signals that the firing process is completed. This point
is probably the peak firing temperature of 7oo0 c (Arrot 1967:68). If the
comals are not red or only red in some places, she continues to place more
grass on the pottery where the comals were not red in color. Finally,
when all the vessels are red, the firing process is complete, and the
potter temporarily leaves the firing area.

343

Figure 7.

Firing Area of Mixco Potter No. 2 [Fire-baked clay occurs

on the wall (white area) and on the ground adjacent to it.]

Figure 8.

Mixco Potter Igniting Fuel to Begin Fire Process

344
Arrot (1967:69) describes firing according to the amount of time utilized.
Actually, howeyer, time is relatively inconsequential since the potter looks
for particular crucial stages of firing which serve as behavior-modifying
feedback mechanisms.
After an interval of approximately an hour, the potter returns to the
firing location and removes the burned straw and ashes from the pottery.
Using two broken pot sherds as holders, she removes the comals from the
ashes and lays them on the ground. Comals which have dark firing smudges
on them brighten when exposed to the air and become more reddish, and all
but the blackest firing smudges disappear. Thus, by removing pottery from
the firing area while they are still hot, the air oxidizes many of the dark
smudges on the hot pottery. The potter can thus alleviate all but the
worst firing smudges without firing them again.
Arrot (1967:69) claims that firing losses consist of 10% of the vessels
fired. Actually, observations of firing results of two potters revealed
that there were no losses from firing.
The size and amount of comals produced by Mixco potters varies. Arrot
(1967:66, 68) claims that a Mixco potter in a week can produce 30-36 large
comals which are 43 cm wide. Actually, production varied among the potters
observed. One potter fired 100 comals at the same time while other potters
made and fired far fewer. Arrot (1967:67) points out that sizes of Mixco
comals range from 15-43 cm. Actually, each potter produces several different sizes of comals in varying quantities (Table 2; Fig. 9; Appendices 2A,
2B, 2C), and these comals show considerable variation from potter to potter.
Mixco potters market their wares in several ways. One Mixco potter sells
her wares to local stores in Mixco for people who come from San Lucas
Sacatepequez to buy them. Another potter, however, made a large number of
small comals to sell to the children of a colegio on the Pacific Coast to
use for sewing or embroidery. Arrot (1967:69) mentions that Mixco comals
are cheaper than those of San Raimundo and that they are transported to
markets in the capital, nearby villages to the north, and especially to
coastal regions to the southeast.
Table 2.

Characteristics of Comal Diameters, Mixco

Total
Vessels

Modes

Range

Median

M-1

46-48
50-51
53

14-55

48

32

M-2

23-24
41-43
47-50

22-50

42

128

M-3

41-43
47

16-47

41

16

Potter

176
Rounded off to the nearest centimeters.

345

55
50

45
40
35
>-

30

:J

z
UJ

:::>

fl:

20

15
10

...

>II

,..,

.....
'

0
IO

15

20

25

30

35

DIAMETER (incms)

Figure 9.

40

45

50

55

60

---M-1
-M-2
M-3

Frequencies of Comal Diameters, Mixco [Graph includes

fired as well as unfired vessels produced by the three
potters. Measurements are to the nearest cm. See
Table 2 and Appendices 2A, 2B, 2C.]
CHINAUTLA, SACOJITO AND DURAZNO:

INTRODUCTION

The pottery made in Chinautla, Sacojito and Durazno is a complex mosaic of

similarities and differences. First, all three communities utilize an
almost identical technique in forming and firing their pottery. Secondly,
there is a similar core of basic (probably indigenous and traditional)
vessel shapes that is shared by all three communities. The differences
between the pottery of the communities mostly consist of the use of differing resources, different surface treatments, and the production of vessel
shapes other than the core of vessels made by other communities.
As elsewhere in the region, women are potters in these communities.
Almost all the data obtained indicated that their husbands make milpa, cut
firewood and make charcoal. These male activities are complementary
because land in the area must be cleared before planting. Furthermore,
trees can grow where crops cannot, and thus firewood cutting and charcoal
making provide supplementary income to subsistence agriculture. Increasing
population, however, is producing increasing deforestation and thus less
land per capita is available for agriculture. Furthermore, their extensive
agricultural technique requires more land and is forcing some farmers to
find milpas elsewhere (such as the coast). The traditional occupations of

346

milpa agriculture and firewood and charcoal production are more common in
Sacojito and Durazno which are more isolated than Chinautla, where men are
increasingly taking jobs in Guatemala City because of insufficient land for
milpa activities (Reina 1960).
Although many potters were observed making pottery in these communities
during June, July and August of 1970, some potters make pottery only in the
dry season beginning in November when there is more sun and no rain. Other
potters make some pottery in the rainy season although they practice their
craft predominately in the dry season. Any potter who does make pottery
during the rainy season, however, must take special precautions to avoid
damage to the vessels from the rain during fabrication and firing. One
potter in Sacojito pointed out that she worked during the wet season out of
economic necessity, because the corn could not be harvested and eaten.
All of these communities did not receive an equal amount of study.
Chinautla received relatively little emphasis in this study considering the
large number of potters in the community. There are several reasons for
this. First, Chinautla receives more influence from the national culture
than any other pottery-making community studied except Mixco, and thus
Chinautla potters have changed some of their techniques and styles to
include non-traditional items for the purpose of selling their pottery to
middlemen who market it to tourists. Moreover, the ease of access to the
city and the regular bus service to Chinautla have made marketing pottery
easier, and brought tourists to the community to 'see the Indians make
pottery.' Ironically, Durazno is about the same distance from the city by
road with only a few kilometers of gravel road compared to the 12 kilometers to Chinautla. The first part of the road to Durazno passes through
the suburb of Jocatales and is asphalt. Nevertheless, the transportation
to Durazno is erratic and bus service almost non-existent. Furthermore,
the road through Durazno goes nowhere; it branches out at several points
and ends. Similarly, Sacojito is almost inaccessible except by trail. An
unimproved road runs from the suburb of Milagro northeast through Sacoj to
the Finca Paris and then north to Sacojito. Access to the community is
only possible with a vehicle with four-wheel drive. Sacojito potters are
more isolated, and symbolically further from national culture. Furthermore,
Sacojito pottery exhibits less acculturation than pottery made elsewhere.
Thus, generalizations about the traditional craft with a focus on Durazno
and Sacojito is more relevant to the archaeology of the valley.
Secondly, Chinautla potters are becoming increasingly specialized with
making toys and incensarios of red clay, and figures and elaborately
decorated pottery out of white clay for a tourist market. Thus, generalization about pottery making there was difficult.
Thirdly, Chinautla has been the subject of a number of studies which
have given substantial treatment of ceramic production (Borhegyi 1961;
Reina 1959, 1960, 1966, 1964; Smith 1949). For these reasons, the study
of pottery making in the valley concentrated on the relatively unacculturated and unreported communities of Durazno and Sacojito, rather than the
better known and more acculturated community of Chinautla.
The organization of the ethnography of pottery making in these three
communities reflects the separation of the craft into the similarities and
differences in the communities. First, the basic technology of production
and vessel shape repertoire common to each community will be presented.
Then, a detailed discussion of each community will follow which will
include those aspects of each community not characteristic of others.

347

Pottery Making
In preparing the paste to make pottery, the clay (ak'al) is first dried in
the sun if it comes from the mine wet. Potters say that one to four days
may be necessary for drying, but three days was the predominant drying
period mentioned. After drying, the clay is soaked in water (ha') for one
day in an olla or an apaste. Then, on the following day, paste preparation
can continue and forming the vessels can begin.
In order that the pottery will not crack or break when fired, a volcanic
ash temper (bok) is added to the clay. Moreover, potters say that sand
makes the paste smooth.
In preparing the sand for mixing with the clay, it must be dired first
in the sun and then sifted. Drying assures that the sand will pass through
the screen; since the sand must be fine before it can be used.
Mineralogical analyses of the 'sand' tempers from Durazno, Chinautla,
and Sacojito revealed that all were weathered volcanic ash. X-ray diffraction analyses reveal that they contained no easily identifiable crystalline
materials. These results could mean that the minerals were not crystallized
enough for detection. For example, the sample may contain glassy volcanic
ash which is amorphous to x-rays. Or, perhaps insufficient amounts of
crystalline minerals were present.
(An estimated 5% of the sample must
contain a particular mineral in order to be detected by x-ray diffraction.)
Yet, Altheria Underwood reports that the 'sands were found to contain some
quartz.' Using the polarizing microscope, the sand samples were isotopic
and showed other characteristics of being glassy volcanic ash.
After the clay has been soaked and the sand has been prepared, the clay
is kneaded. It is during this process that the sand is added to the clay.
Potters differ concerning the amount of sand added to the clay. Two
potters in Chinautla claimed that they add one small vessel of sand to one
large vessel of clay in approximate proportions of one part sand to four
parts clay, according to one potter, and one part sand to five parts clay
according to the other potter. In actual practice, however, the amount of
sand added to the clay is not measured. Rather, the sand is mixed with the
clay a little at a time during the kneading process; the amount is determined by 'feel'--i.e., by the plasticity and consistency of the resultant
paste. Often, sand is spread on a board and the clay is kneaded on the
board. It is impossible, then, to know exactly how much sand is mixed
with the clay.
There are several tools used for making pottery. First, there is the
molde, an old upturned tinaja which serves as the mold for the first stage
of a vessel. Second, potters usually work on a long board approximately
1.5 m long and 30 cm wide (called alam in Pokomam). On this board there
is a smaller board with a rounded depression which serves to hold a round
bottomed vessel during the forming of the upper part of the vessel.3
Sometimes, only one board with depressions in it will be used. Potters
also use jicara (or calabash) rind scrapers of various sizes used for
removing the excess clay from the inside of the mold or the vessel. For
rounded scrapers they cut the calabash around the middle, but for longer
ones it is cut end to end. A fourth tool used for pottery making is a
split piece of cane (sakaxam) used for smoothing, polishing and finishing
3These depressions are made by burning the top of the board with a
piece of charcoal and rubbing the area with a stone until a depression of
the desired size and depth is achieved.

348

the pottery, particularly in the later stages of forming. Potters say that
the calabash rind scraper and the cane tool are purchased and come from
some distance away.
All vessel shapes (e.g., the tinaja, tinajera, jarra, olla, apaste,
and batidor) with the exception of some flower pots and new modeled items
in Chinautla, Sacojito and burazno are made using the molde (called a nam
in Pokomam). The molde or nam is also the word used to refer to the first
stage of the vessel resulting from the molding process. There are three
sizes of moldes: small, medium, and large. Each vessel to be formed uses
the molde of the next smaller size of the vessel desired. For example,
(1) a medium tinaja requires a small sized tinaja as a mold, (2) a giant
sized apaste or an olla uses a large tinaja as a mold, and (3) a large
tinaja requires a medium tinaja as a mold.
In the first stage of making a vessel, the potter first takes raw clay
off the lump of paste and rolls it into a sausage-like piece on a board
covered with sand. Then she rolls it in the sand again and folds over the
ends, forms it into a spiral shape on the board and then flattens both sides
of the spiral into a pancake shape. If the pancake shape needs more clay
she adds it to the top of the spiral and spreads it out. She then molds
the edges of the form with her hands and sets it aside. She repeats this
process until she has five pancake-like forms.
The potter then takes one of the pancake forms, spreads sand on the top
side and then turns it over onto the bottom of an old tinaja with the sand
covered side down, forcing the pancake down over the mold and patting it
down to take out any irregularities.4 Then she uses the smooth side of the
cane tool to smooth out the high places in the molded form and strips the
clay off of the bottom of the molded clay, scraping and smoothing it and
putting clay on top of the formed piece to make the angle of the base to
the sides more pronounced. After she dips her hand in water and smooths it
over the top of the molded form she dips the cane tool in water and uses it
to smooth the vessel wall. She scrapes along the sides and on the top of
the molded form except the area where the coils will be added, adding clay
where necessary.
When she has completed the molde she wets the top of it with water and
smooths the edges where she took off the clay. She then smooths it with
the cane tool, and lifts it off the mold setting it aside to dry upside
down on a board. If the vessel needs a flat bottom she presses the molded
form down on the drying board.
When the molde is partially dry and hard, it must be scraped with a
calabash rind scraper. Scraping cannot be done when it is freshly made so
at least a few hours of drying time are necessary before scraping can begin.
During this activity, the potter scrapes the inside of the molde, removing
excess clay while moving it with her other hand. Removed clay is used for
making subsequent parts of the pot. The potter also scrapes the smooth
exterior and smooths and flattens the edge where the walls of the vessel
will be attached.
The next day, after the thinned
of the mold has dried, the process of forming the vessel can continue. First, she uses the cane tool to
smooth the outside of the molde and wets the outside of the molde with
her hand--particularly at the place where the coils will be attached.
Since the size of the molde determines the size of the first coil, the
4one potter in Sacojito said she could make the initial stage of the
vessel by hand without the molde, but it would take a lot of

349

potter takes a piece of clay of the appropriate size and rolls it into a
hot dog shape on a sand covered board. After flattening the coil she places
it on the moistened upper edges of the molde, and closes the coil adding
more clay if necessary to complete the coil.
Using the knuckles of one hand, the potter then raises the clay from the
coil with upward strokes as she slowly turns the vessel with her other
hand placed against the inside vessel wall being worked. As she moves the
coil upward she removes stones and lumps from the clay. Then, she uses
the cane tool to raise the vessel walls in a series of upward strokes on
the outside, and smooths the inside and outside with the cane tool particularly at the place where the body and the molde are joined together.
If more clay is needed to achieve the desired size and shape of the
vessel, the potter places a second smaller coil on the vessel, and draws
it up with her knuckle. Then, she moves through the entire set of coils
pushing the clay upward into a large lump around the top, smoothing and
extending the lump upward. While the sides are still parallel, she trims
a little clay off of the top edge. While she scrapes the inside of the
vessel with the calabash scraper, the vessel walls begin to bulge outward.
She then uses the cane. to smooth the vessel walls, extending them upward
and slanting them inward using one hand to hold the cane tool and the other
hand to move the vessel from the inside.
Each vessel shape requires several stages of formation which requires
drying before the next stage can be added. All vessels require a molde
and a body which have already been described. Different kinds of vessels,
of course, require different bodies, but each vessel is made in a series
of stages (Fig. 10). For example, the cooking pot is made in three stages
(including the handles), while the tihaja is made in four stages. After
the potter forms the molde (which is the same for all pottery) and it is
dry, the potter makes the body and neck of the olla in one operation without drying, while in making the tinaja, the body and neck require two
operations with an intervening time for drying.
If still more clay is needed to achieve the desired size and shape, the
potter adds another coil. At this time the sides of the vessel have slanted
inward and she smooths and moves the tiny coil on the inside and the outside
using her hand as an anvil on the outside while she scrapes on the inside.
When she works on the outside of the vessel, the hand inside the vessel is
used to propel the vessel, and vice versa.
As the potter proceeds, she measures the emerging pot to be sure of its
size. She uses her hand to measure and then uses a pencil to be sure that
the distance is exact using the distance from her first finger to her
extended thumb. Medium sized tinajas may require two to three coils to
complete the body, while only one large coil and one small coil is necessary
to form the small tinaja.
Finally, she smooths the outside and inside with her hands, then uses a
cane tool to smooth the outside taking special care on the rim area. If
the junction with the molde can still be seen after the body is completed,
she adds a small piece of clay at that point and smooths the area to
obliterate the junction.
After she completes the body of the vessel, she sets it aside to dry.
If she wishes to make vessels with a round bottom (like an olla or a
tinaja) she places them on a rag wadded into a circular form which rests
on a long board. Then, when the shaping of the vessels with rounded
bottoms continues the vessels are placed on a board with rounded depressions 15.S cm in diameter.

\
\JJ
I \

CD

CD CD CD
I

<l)

"

(.]l

\lJ

UJ

\D

(J)

'17 '17

\D
G

Figure 10.

Principal Vessel Shapes and Fabrication Stages in Chinautla, Sacojito and Durazno [The
first stage is made with a mold and subsequent stages by modified coiling. A drying
period is necessary between each stage of the forming process. The shapes illustrated
are:
(a) narrow mouth tinaja, (b) wide mouth tinaja, (c) jarra, (d) apaste with lugs,
(e) apaste with handles and incurved rim, (f) batidor, and (g) olla.]

351
The day after the body has been formed and it is hard, the potter adds
the handles, and if the shape desired requires it, the neck of the vessel.
First, she scrapes the inside of the completed body and smooths the outside
with a cane tool. Then she adds the handles to the vessel. Potters in the
three communities use four handle modes:
(1) no handles, (2) a single
handle from the rim to the body of the vessel (jarra, batidor), (3) vertical
lugs (found on some varieties of apastes) on the body, and (4) two vertical
strap handles placed on the body of the vessel (tinaja, apaste, olla).
(Although potters claim that they can place handles anywhere, in actual
practice there is a well-patterned placement of handles for each vessel
shape.) When the potter places the handle on the vessel, she measures
across the rim of the body to assure that the handles are placed equidistant from the rim and directly opposite one another. Finally, after
completing the neck of the vessel, the potter uses a moist lemon or orange
leaf to smooth the rim of the pot.
From the time of forming the molde until just before the pot is completed
the vessel is known as ak (Fig. 11). After the pot is completely formed,
however, it is no longer a ak, but is called by its vessel shape name--like

example--even,though the vessel is not polished or decorated.

Pottery must dry in the sun for as much as three days and then on the
third day the pottery can be fired. During drying the potter must be
turned on its side so the bottom of the pottery can also dry.
After the pottery has dried in the sun to a leather hard condition, it
is polished before it is fired. Although the cane tool is used for smoothing and polishing the vessel in the latter stages of forming, a smooth
stone dipped in water is used to polish the pottery at this final stage
before firing. A fine edge on the stone is used to polish the corners of
the pot while blunt ends are used to polish elsewhere on the vessel. The
composition of the stone varies, but the stone in many cases appears to be
a worn ancient celt of green stone which has one or both ends worn down-presumably from polishing. Stones can be purchased, or passed down from
the grandparents, but many potters pointed out that the stones were left
to the potters by the ancients. One Sacojito potter said the stone comes
from Chiquimul (Chiquimula ?) . Young girls often do the polishing.
In summary, the process of forming the pottery can take several days,
because each stage of the vessel must dry for a while before the next
stage can be started. After each day of forming the pottery must be
scraped. The first day the molde is formed; the second day the coils are
added to the molde and the body of the vessel is completed. On the third
day the neck (as in the tinaja) and handles are added to the body. On the
day after the pottery is completed (fourth day) the pottery is polished,
and may also be fired at this time. Although the potter may also fire
on the fifth day, she often waits several days to fire.
Potters do not use a kiln for firing. Potters in all three communities
fire in the open, and thus can fire almost anywhere. Most potters, however,
fire their pottery in the patio of their house or in a large open space
near the house.
Potters tend to fire towards the end of the week--usually Thursday or
Friday, so that their pottery can be transported to the market in Guatemala
City and sold on Saturday. Although there is little data on the frequency
of firing by individual potters, several said that they fire every 15 days.
Weather conditions also affect the occurrence of firing. It is necessary
to have sunshine to fire pottery. The pottery must dry properly prior to
firing and when there is rain the pottery will crack and break because of

352

(complete
vessel)

( without handles l

Figure 11.

Pokomam Reference Terms for Parts of a Tinaja [The names

generally refer to sections of the pot produced in each
of the stages shown in Fig. 10.]

wet weather. Since rain substantially interferes with a successful firing

process, potters do not fire when it is raining and tend not to fire during
the rainy season. Nevertheless, there are always some potters who make
pottery and fire during the dry periods of the rainy season.
Before the actual process of firing begins, the potters must prepare
adequately. The first preparatory step is the accumulation of a sufficient
amount of the appropriate fuel. Potters repeatedly volunteered statements
that it cost a lot to make pottery and to fire the pottery since all the
raw materials for firing as well as for forming pottery must be purchased.
There are several kinds of fuel used to fire pottery and all are locally
available: materials from pine, cow dung, and chiribisco (twigs).
Pine materials constitute the most important and most frequently utilized
fuel for firing. Potters recognize two kinds of pine in the region: white
pine (sak chax) and black pine cu 1 ul chaj). Where potters specified fuel
other than just 'pine,' white pine was preferred. Black pine was not
mentioned.
The pine products used consist of bark, chips, firewood, cones, needles
and rotten tree trunks. All of these materials with the exception of
firewood (which is seldom used) are unused by-products of cutting firewood
and making charcoal--an activity carried out by many men in the area
including the husbands of the potters.

353
Pine bark cXrix
is the most important items used for firing and the
most frequently used by potters (C:lO; SJ:l4; D:l4)? One potter reported
that it costs .25-.30 for a net of this material. Another potter pointed
out that if it is not available, cow dung can be substituted. Like all
materials, pine bark needs to be dried prior to use. Pine chips are
infrequently used by potters (C:O; SJ:3; D:l), and consist of the small
chips often obtained from cutting down a tree or are pieces of wood attached
to the pine bark. Firewood (or lena) is used for firing only in Chinautla
(C:4; SJ:O; D:O). One Chinautla potter pointed out that if firewood was
not available, they could use cana de castilla. Similarly, cones (C:O;
SJ:2; D:l), rotten trunks (C:O; SJ:O; D:2) and needles (C:l; SJ:O; D:l) are
used infrequently for firing pottery.
The second most important firing material is straw which is widely used
in all the communities (C:6; SJ:l2; D:ll). Potters can use any kind of
straw or grass for fuel and it usually consists of dried and partially
dried grass. It costs .10 for the amount one person can carry and one
potter has three loads on hand to use for firing her pottery.
The third most important material for pottery firing is cow dung and it
is used widely in all three communities (C:3; SJ:7; D:8). One potter said
that COW dung gives more heat than pine bark, but another claimed the two
to be equal in heating quality. Cow dung is used primarily in the dry
season when it can be easily dried. In the rainy season, potters substitute
pine cones and pine bark. Other potters buy it in the dry season and then
store it for use in the rainy season. If potters do not have cattle or if
they are not in a position to collect the dung, they must buy it. One
potter reported that it cost .31-.50 a dozen and another said it cost $1
for a net full of dung.
Chiribisco (or twigs) is a very minor fuel for firing used only in
Durazno (C:O; SJ:O; D:2). It is not utilized in any of the other communities for firing.
After the potter has collected the appropriate dry fuel, she prepares
the firing area. First, she cleans the firing area by removing any debris
from the ground. Then, if the ground is damp or wet (as it is in the rainy
season), potters must take proper precautions. If they fire directly on
the ground, the humidity will rise and make the pottery black. The most
widespread method of alleviating this problem is to spread broken pot sherds
on the ground with the fuel and pottery stacked on top of it (C:2; SJ:3;
D:6). One potter places ashes (Fig. 12) and another places sand on the
ground before the sherds are laid down. In Chinautla, with its higher
degree of acculturation, two potters place metal on the ground and one of
these potters places ashes on top of the metal. Another potter in Chinautla
uses a metal platform raised off the ground and supported by two rocks and
a broken tinaja. If, on the other hand, the ground is dry, these procedures are not as important and the potter can fire directly on the ground.
The next stage of the preparation procedure involves arranging the fuel
in the firing area. Different materials are used for different stages of
the firing process. The first stage involves placing of the fuel on the
ground (or the sherds) before the firing begins. Several kinds of fuel
5The symbols in parenthesis (C:O; SJ:6, D:7) indicate the number of
potters practicing that particular pattern in each community. For example,
in the set of symbols above, Chinautla (C:) potters were not observed
utilizing the pattern; in Sacojito (SJ:), six potters were observed using
the pattern and seven were observed utilizing that pattern in Durazno (D:).

354

Figure 12.

Preparating for Firing during the Rainy Season [As

illustrated here, some potters prepare the firing
area by spreading ashes on the ground and sherds on
the ashes before they stack fuel and pottery for firing.]

used at this stage are listed below from the most frequently used to the
least frequently used pattern:
(1) pine bark (C:3; SJ:8; D:6), (2) pine
bark and broken up cow dung (C:2; SJ:4; D:4), (3) pine bark and finely split
firewood (C:4; SJ:O; D:O), (4) pine bark and pine chips (C:O; SJ:l; D:l),
(5) cow dung (C:O; SJ:O; D:3), (6) rotten tree trunks, pine bark and cow
dung (C:O; SJ:O; D:2), (7) pine bark and chiribisco (C:O; SJ:O; D:2),
(8) cow dung, pine bark, pine chips and pine cones (C:O; SJ:l; D:O),
(9) cow dung and pine chips (C:O; SJ:l; D:O), and (10) cow dung and pine
cones (C:O; SJ:l; D:O).
Following all of the proper preparations for firing, the actual firing
process can begin. The fire is started by placing live coals in the center
of the fuel and around the outside. Coals are brought from the cooking fire
in the house in a broken comal, an olla pot sherd, a sherd with a handle on
it, or in an iron skillet.
(When the fire is started after the pots are
stacked, coals are placed around the outside of the pottery and between
the stacked pots.)
Sometimes they will add more fuel to the pile after it
is started--like adding forewood or pine bark to the mat of recently
ignited fuel.
Periodically, potters may blow on the fire to spread it
around or pick up a piece of pine bark and use it as a shovel to change
the position of the burning coals.

355

When the fire has been ignited successfully, potters stack the vessels on
top of the mat of combustible material with the mouths usually facing outward and down (although not always). They place smaller pots (like jarras)
in the depressions and holes in the stack and around the edges. Potters
must stack their wares carefully so that the pile does not collapse during
firing. If at this time a larger area is desired for firing more pottery,
the circle of sherds or fuel is enlarged.
Sometimes more cow dung is added around the outside of the vessels, and
as the firing progresses potters may add more fuel like chiribisco around
the outside of'the pots. More broken pine bark may also be added between
the pots and this material may need to be ignited by a sliver of pine. One
potter (Durazno) added corn stalks to the fire at this stage of the process.
Also at this stage, freshly painted and polished vessels can be added to
the pile of pottery being fired as they are completed.
In order to keep the pile of stacked pottery from collapsing during the
firing process, the potter places old pieces of pottery or broken vessels
(such as tinajas, apastes, tile or ollas) around the circle of pottery.
Potters usually have a large collection of broken pot sherds and discarded
vessels stacked near
firing area for precisely this purpose. On occasion sticks of wood will brace up the ring of old pots to further support
the stack of pottery being fired. In spite of these precautions, the stack
of pottery does slip and fall on occasion and potters must stack the vessels
again.
Generally, there were no religious rituals observed during the firing
process. One lady in Chinautla, however, placed chile peppers on the pottery
at this stage because it gave strength to the pottery. Since the potter
lived near the road in Chinautla, she feared that a passer-by with an evil
eye would look at her pottery and cause it to break.
If the flame leaps out of the pile of pottery during this early stage of
the firing process, a bowl or a pot sherd is placed over the location to
deflect the flame down into the pottery being fired. Sometimes the pottery
is rearranged so that the heat is spread around.
The next major stage in the firing process is signalled by the addition
of straw to the top of the stack of pottery.6 Straw is used in the majority
of cases (C:6; SJ:l2; D:ll) but there was an infrequent use of pine needles
(C:l; SJ:O; D:l) and one case (in Durazno) where a woman used straw from
the thatch in the roof of her house to add to the fire. Potters say that
straw is placed on the pottery to make it white. If it is not added, some
vessels will turn out black.
Straw is placed on the stack of pottery when the potter sees certain
conditions occurring during the firing process (Fig. 13). There is some
variation among the potters as to what signals prompt them to add straw to
the pottery. One important signal mentioned by many potters is the blackening of the pottery. One potter elaborated, saying that the crucial point
occurred when the pottery began to become black, while two others said the
straw was added when all the pottery was black. A second and most frequent
(five potters) variation was that the straw was placed on the pottery when
all of the fuel below the pottery had caught fire and was burning.
(It
is at this point before straw was placed on the fire that Sacojito potters
6Before the straw is placed on the fire, however, Sacojito potters place
the salt-sand mixture on the pottery. Usually this occurs after the pine
bark below
pottery is burning or immediately before the fire has a good
start.

356

Figure 13.

Pile of Pottery during Firing in Sacojito [Pottery is

stacked with mouths inward resting on ashes (nearest
the ground, see Fig. 12), sherds, and pine bark. The
potter is just beginning to add the straw to the top of
the vessels. Note the blackened pottery on top of pile.]

put the salt-sand mixture on their pottery.) Before all of the fuel below
has completely burned many of the pots are completely blackened because the
flames rise and heat up the pottery. The third and least frequent variation
of the signals is that straw is placed on the pottery when all of the fuel
below is arranged properly. The potter who used this variation did not wait
until all of the vessels were black.
Potters have several techniques of placing straw on the pottery at this
stage of the firing process. One potter spread straw or pine needles in
localized areas first, but for every pattern (e.g., top vs sides or windward
vs leeward) there is a reverse pattern.
Generally, care is taken so that
the entire pile is covered and the straw material burns quickly, making a
hot flame.
If part of the pottery is not blackened and blackening is the signal to
add the straw, potters take care not to cover that area with straw until it
has blackened. Otherwise pottery in that area will crack and break.
Gradually, the unblackened area is covered with straw on the edge and the
potter blows on the blackened area to heighten the flame. Finally, the
unblackened area is covered lightly with straw even though all of the
pottery may not be completely blackened. Firing is then continued.

357

As soon as a part of the grass burns up and becomes black, the potter
adds more grass to the fire. Each time the flame comes through the grass,
she covers the pottery with grass again.
If rain threatens firing after the process has begun, potters must take
elaborate precautions. One potter said that if it rains during firing,
nothing happens when straw is placed on the fire. In one situation, however, in Sacojito, rain threatened firing after the fuel was ignited. The
potter began putting more pine back around the base of the vessels and
made a fan to stimulate the flame. The potter then moved the fire around
the base of the pots, and cut up shavings from firewood to help the fuel
around the outside of the pottery to catch fire. By speeding up the process they could put straw on the pottery sooner and thus finish the crucial
part of the process before the rain came.
At the climax (punta) of the process, the potter stops placing more
straw on the fire. When all the straw is burned, she uses a long pole to
lift up the straw on the pottery so that it can finish burning. Then, one
must wait 30-60 minutes until the blackened straw turns to ashes. When
there is no more black straw, the potter removes the pottery from the fire.
Potters have explanations for various kinds of firing accidents. A
vessel that had broken on the upper point of the body during firing had
been caused by pottery which had not been dried thoroughly in the sun.
Potters explain partially pink spots on the outside of the pottery as the
result of too much heat. A vessel which had a silvery blackened area with
a depressed area in the middle is also the result of an excessively hot
flame even though the potter says that the black area indicated that the
pottery was well fired. One potter says that this type of firing accident
was produced by the cow dung that they use for firing. If the pottery gets
too hot, the glassy ash temper may melt and produce tiny glass bubbles on
the surface of the pot.
Vessel Shapes
The tinaja is the most widely and most frequently produced vessel in the
three Pokomam communities of Sacojito, Durazno and Chinautla. Although
k'ay is the Pokomam word for the shape, potters frequently use the Spanish
cognate tanaa to refer to the tinaja.
In all three communities, potters predominately use a white firing or
near white firing clay to produce this shape: potters in Chinautla and
Sacojito use white clay and those in Durazno use black clay. They occasionally, but infrequently, make tinajas with red or ordinary clay, but
Chinautla is the only community in which this variation is found.
(See
also discussion of pottery making in Sacoj Grande.) Tinajas of a very
small size are produced only in Chinautla, are used for toys, and are made
exclusively of red clay.
Tinajas are used exclusively for carrying water. This use probably
helps explain the high production rate of this vessel in the three communities since vessels which are consistently handled and carried have a high
risk of breakage. Furthermore, the great distance to water sources in
communities like Sacoj and Sacojito (which do not have piped community
water supplies) makes use of water-carrying vessels mandatory and increases
risk of breakage.
Tinajas are often carried on the head, but they can also be carried on
the back by passing a rope or cloth through the handles around the back
of the vessel. The other end of the rope or cloth is attached to a strap

358

which is placed on the forehead so the vessel can be carried in tumpline

fashion. There is also a three-handled variant of the tinaja that can be
carried on the back. The third handle is also a vertical strap handle and
occurs below the point of greatest circumference of the vessel, but perpendicular to the plane of the other two handles. The vessel is carried like
the two-handled variety except that the rope is passed through the third
handle as well.
Potters recognize two mouth sizes of tinajas (see Fig. lOa,b): small
Cut or suti
and large (tanaa, kakamay, or kakamay tanaa). The
data presented here are from Sacojito, but there is some evidence that
these distinctions are also recognized in Durazno and Chinautla. Potters
say small mouthed tinajas are for placing a small plate over the top of a
tinaja, while the large mouthed tinajas require a larger plate. Sacojito
potters say that buyers ask for both sizes of mouths.
Potters also make several sizes of tinajas. Again the data presented
here are primarily from Sacojito, but there is no reason to suppose that
patterns there are any different from those in Durazno or in Chinautla. A
list of the distinctions made by Sacojito potters and their linguistic
glosses are given in Table 3. The uses of all the sizes are not known, but
small tinajas are used by children to carry water on their heads.
The style used in decorating tinajas varies from community to community.
For example, Durazno tinajas are made with black clay and are white slipped
with red painted designs. Tinajas from Chinautla and Sacojito are made
with white clay and tend to have different surface treatment. Both Chinautla
and Sacojito potters (as well as those from Durazno) occasionally place
finger or fingernail impressions at an oblique angle on the rim of a tinaja.
Only Chinautla potters, however, make tourist-oriented tinajas with applique
adornos and fancy relief designs with reed stamping and incisions to bring
out the detail. Moreover, Chinautla potters may often slip their tinajas
white whereas Sacojito potters may place a salt-sand mixture on the pottery
while it is being fired. Potters recognize these inter-community differences and label the tinajas according to the community in which they were
made. For example,
Pakom (or tanna Pakom) is a tinaja made in
Chinautla (which Sacojito potters call pretty, mook
Sacax

Nak'oy refer to tinajas made in Sacojito and Durazno, respectively.

The apaste (or kukol in Pokomam) is an open bowl and has several uses.
The most frequent use mentioned was for washing nishtamal (lime-soaked corn).
Other uses include: storing water, washing dishes, making the paste to
make tamales, a general receptacle to store miscellaneous items, a containeJ:'
for storing clay or temper, a flower pot, and a container for preparing
beans for cooking. One potter said that the apaste could be used for
everything while several informants (particularly in Chinautla) said the
apaste could be used for cooking. Similarly, two other potters pointed out
that the apaste could be used in the same way as the olla. A long flat
kukol (sometimes called an apastilla) is used for giving water to animals.
The distinctive features of the apaste shape consists of a round bottom
and the lack of constriction on the neck of the vessel. The mouth of the
apaste shape corresponds to the point of greatest diameter of the vessel
(Fig. lOd,e).
The apaste has two rim variations:
(1) a plain rim, and (2) a folded
rim. The plain rim (observed only in Chinautla and Sacojito) has no flare
or modification; it follows the curve of the vessel and ends at the point
of greatest diameter of the vessel. There are no vertical strap handles
associated with this rim type. Rather, there are two flat vertical lugs

359

Table 3.

Size and Mouth Variations of Tinajas

Mouth Size

Vessel
Size

Small

Small
?

Large

No Size
Indicated

tak tanaa
tak e tanaa
tak pit tanaag
tak kulom tanaa
kotak

Medium

median 'Mut

median ut

median

Large

lemax Kut

lemax tenaa

lemax

No size
indicated

tanaa
kakamay
kakamay tanaa

attached to the rim which serve as handles (see Fig. lOd). In the other
type of rim modification (Figs. lOe, 14), the rim is folded horizontally
or near horizontally outward (most common) or inward (less common and
observed only in Durazno) and then usually (but not always) modified to
produce a wavy appearance. Vertical strap handles occur with this rim
variation and they are placed just below the rim of the vessel.
The olla (in Pokomam, on) is a jar of varying sizes used most frequently
as a cooking pot to cook beans and prepare meals (like with rice). The
olla was also used as a storage jar for water, sand or clay. It can also
be used as a flower pot (one potter in Chinautla made red ware ollas exclusively for flower pots). One potter said the olla could also be used for
the same purpose as the apaste.
The olla has a number of distinctive etic features which help to
distinguish it from other vessel shapes (Fig. lOg). First, it has a round
bottom like the apaste. Second, there are two strap handles opposite one
another below the neck of the vessel, but just above the point of greatest
circumference. Third, and most important, the cooking pot has a constricted neck which is always less than the greatest circumference of the
vessel. The rim above this point is variable in height and in the amount
of flare. Some olla rims rise almost vertically from this constriction
while others flare markedly outward. Olla rims are never doubled over
horizontally nor modified to give a wavy appearance (except when made for
use as a flower pot). The rim height above the neck constriction also
varies within a small range; some are very short while others are slightly
higher. The factors affecting this variability were not investigated, but
some of this variation is probably produced by a single potter like that
produced by the potter visited in Sacoj.
The constriction of the neck of the olla contrasts with the apaste
shape. The handles have the same placement on the apaste as on the olla,
and the bottom is rounded. The most important difference between the two
vessels is that the apaste has no neck or mouth constriction. Rather, the

360

Figure 14.

An Apaste with Typical Horizontal Rim [The rim shows

characteristic wavy appearance found on most apastes.]

mouth is at the point of greatest diameter of the vessel.

Rim shape on the
apaste is also different with either a plain vertical rim or a rim doubled
inward or outward to a horizontal position.
The tinajera is a very large jar with a constricted mound (Fig. 15).
Most potters said that there was no word for the shape in Pokomam, but one
potter used tanaa and another used pilaj--both are obvious Spanish loan
words.
The tinajera is always made with colorado or red clay and used exclusively for storing water. The tinajera shape is similar to the tinaja, but
tinajeras are much larger and have a proportionately wider mouth.
Two
vertical strap handles occur on the vessel at the point of greatest circumference.
Tinajeras are mostly made in Chinautla and Durazno because of the
occurrence of red clay there. They are not produced in Sacojito because
the clay used must be imported from the river bank deposits located in the
village of Chinautla. From observations and questioning of potters visited,
potters produce tinajeras infrequently in comparison to tinajas. Probably
the reduced demand for these vessels stems from the fact that they break
less frequently than the tinajas because they are used for storage and
appear to be moved infrequently after the newly purchased pot has been
brought into the household. No potters observed made tinajeras during
June, July and August of 1970 and only one newly made tinajera was
observed during this time.

Table 4.

Household
cccc-

1
2
3
4

c-

Tinaja

w
w

A12aste

Jarra

w
w

Chinautla Vessel Types

Olla

R(toy)

Incensario

c-

c-10
c-11
c-12
C-13
c-14*
c-1s

Flower
Pots

Others

Angel (W)
Apastilla (W)
Toys (R)

Angel (W)

c- 6
c- 7

c-

Figures

Figures,
lampstands, and
candleholders (W)
Animals,
statuettes (W)

w
R

x
x

Clay type noted when available:

red, W = white, X

Batidor (W)
Batidor

unknown.

*Most of pottery was made with white clay.

w
O'I

I-'

362

CM
0

Figure 15.

100

Profile of a Tinajera

Decoration on the tinajera is different than that used on any other

vessel. Decoration occurs on the body and the handles if it occurs at all.
The decoration on the body of the vessel consists of relief decoration-sometimes raised relief (a'om) and at other times an indented relief
(Fig. 16). Decoration on the handle consists of small irregular adornos
placed on top of the handles. Costs of tinajeras vary. Large vessels cost
.50 while small ones cost .20-.35.
The jarra (in Pokomam, k 1 anakwal) is a constricted neck jar, which is
used for holding water or heating water on the fire. The distinctive features of the jarra are almost identical to the tinaja except the jarra has
one handle which extends from the rim of the vessel to a point just above
the point of greatest circumference.
The batidor (no word in Pokomam) is a constricted necked vessel which is
used for heating or cooking a small item (like eggs or chile) on the fire
during the preparation of a meal. There are several distinctive features
of the batidor which separate it from other vessels. First, like the olla
and apaste the batidor has a round bottom. Second, it has a single loop
handle from rim to a point just above the point of greatest circumference.
Opposite the handle is a small molded spout. Third, like the olla, the
constricted neck is always somewhat less than the greatest diameter of the
vessel and the rim flares out obliquely from the constriction.
Flower pots are a variable shape made differently in different communities. Some are made using a mold, others are made by hand.
(In Sacojito,
three holes are punched in the bottom of the molde of the flower pots.)

363

Figure 16.

A Tinajera with Depressions as Decoration, Chinautla

[Observed in a houselot, an overturned apaste rests on
a piece of sheet metal covering the mouth of the vessel. ]

There is no consistent data on the distinctive shape characteristics, since

they appear to be made differently in each of the communities, and they
appear to be produced infrequently in comparison to tinajas and apastes.
Incensarios are produced in Chinautla and Durazno. Many were observed
in Chinautla, but none were observed in Durazno although potters there said
that they made them.
In Chinautla the incensario is a small bowl on a
pedestal base with three decorated pieces of clay joining approximately
15 cm above the bowl. As the name for the shape indicates, incensarios are
used for burning incense for religious ceremonies.
Pottery production varies with the vessel shapes produced--which of
course varies with the demand. One potter says she makes about six tinajas
a week. Observations of pottery production, firing frequency (every two
weeks) and the drying requirements of tinajas confirm that this number of
tinajas is a reasonably accurate production of one potter. Different
production rates would vary with each vessel shape. But, because potters
in these communities make mostly tinajas, the rate for tinaja production
is easiest to obtain .

364
CHINAUTLA (PAKOM)
Chinautla is a Pokomam- (or Pokom) speaking community located approximately
12 km north-northeast of Guatemala City. In contrast to Sacoj and Sacojito
which lay to the east and northeast, respectively, Chinautla is located on
the valley floor along the Chinautla river. Chinautla, like nearby communities of potters, lies in the midst of the poorest soil of the valley--the
sloping, highly eroded barranca slopes of volcanic ash (Areas Fragosas-the AF-type soils, see Fig. 17).
Chinautla can easily be reached by road from Guatemala City and has
regular bus service which continues on to San Antonio Las Flores north of
the pueblo. The road then continues northwest to El Carrizal and finally
west to San Raimundo. Chinautla is the most important community in the
municipio of Chinautla which includes the pottery-making aldeas of Socojito
and Durazno, as well as other communities such as San Antonio Las Flores
to the north and Jocotales, a suburb of Guatemala City to the southeast.
Chinautla has been the subject of many anthropological studies which
deal with the community as well as the pottery that is made there (Reina
1959, 1960, 1966, 1969; Borhegyi 1961; Feldman 1971; Smith 1969; and the
Instituto Indigenista Nacional 1948). No attempt was made to integrate
these into the present study, but they provide important supplementary
material for the material presented here. Since pottery making in Chinautla
is relatively well described, comparatively little time was spent in
Chinautla except to gather samples of pottery and raw materials for the
Neutron Activation Analysis project (see the report elsewhere in this
volume), and gather comparative material for ethnographic work done in
Sacojito, Sacoj, and Durazno which are relatively unknown as pottery-making
centers, and undescribed in the literature.
There are approximately 300 potters in Chinautla (Institute Indigenista
Nacional 1948:17, 20). Informants report that every woman in the community
makes pottery. The author visited 15 households and collected samples of
pottery and/or raw materials in each of them. The visits in 12 of these
also provided ethnographic information on pottery making in Chinautla.
White clay (sak ak'al or ik'al sako(x)) is the most important clay for
potters in Chinautla. It is used primarily to make tinajas, although other
clays can also be used.
The source for this white clay (9030'8" W. long.; 140042'32" N. lat.)
is located approximately 1.5 km directly north of Chinautla near the Finca
Primavera in the drainage of the Tzalja river (see Fig. 1). The source is
actually a series of nine mines located well away from the river up on the
lower slope of the barranca. Here in a smaller barranca, mines have been
dry in the sides of the barranca down into the clay layer. The clay layer
is overlain by a large area of volcanic ash above and a dry hard yellow or
'ordinary' clay below which had a thickness of approximately 6 m (see
Fig. 18). When this clay is wet, it looks like clay in the stream bed of
the Chinautla river. This clay is not used for pottery and is considered
to be 'pesa mucho' (too heavy) in comparison to the white clay.
There is no white clay visible above the mines or in the sides of the
barranca. The miner at the clay source says that one must descend
approximately 10 m vertically below ground level (Fig. 18) to reach the
level of the clay, and then tunnel into the clay layer horizontally. In
the mine currently in use, one clay miner reported that the underground
mining area extends approximately 50 m horizontally underground with a
series of excavated rooms big enough for a small man or boy to stand.

365

Figure 17.

Eroding Volcanic Ash on Barranca Slope , Chinautla [View is

slightly south and east of Chinautla looking west-southwest.
The friable nature of the volcanic ash and the steepness of
the slopes of the barrancas makes the soil very susceptible
to erosion, and thus results in this area having the poorest
soil in the region.]

Near the mine currently utilized there are several other mines which have
been used in the recent past. Clay apparently underlies much of the area
of the small barranca and can be reached by any number of mine shafts .
Clay is only mined in the dry season (December-May) because the rains
cause the clay and sandy overburden to collapse , making removal of the clay
dangerous . When the location was visited in July, all of the mines had
collapsed . After the harvest when the weather gets drier , miners will
begin opening the shafts and removing the caved-in material to gain access
to the clay.
Clay is mined by the family of the owner and is extracted in large
chunks . Freshly mined , the clay has a blue or gray color , but when it is
dry the clay is white . Clay is measured a nd sold by the pile ; a pile
two-thirds by one-half meters costs five Quetzals ($5 U. S . ) . The informant who mined the clay said that potters are poor so there are various
prices for the clay and varying amounts sell for two, three, four , or
five Quetzals.
Potters ' accounts of the cost of white clay , however , appear inflated in
comparison to the accounts of its cost obtained from the informant at the
mine . For example , in the summer of 1970, potters reported that a pile of

366

Figure 18.

Clay Mine Near Finca Primavera: A Source of White Clay

[During the summer of 1970, the soft material above the
mine had collapsed into the shaft. The clay miner says
that clay is reached by sinking a vertical shaft 10 m
below and behind the ground surf ace pictured in foreground.]

clay cost six-ten Quetzels depending on the size of the pile. One potter
pointed out that eight Quetzals would buy a pile of clay one meter high and
one meter wide.
The Chinautla clay source is the only known source for white clay and
all potters from Chinautla and Sacojito obtain their white clay from this
source. There are other sources for other kinds of clays, but there are
none for this white clay. The clay miner at the source has been mining
clay there for 15 years, and he claims that Chinautla potters have always
used that source--at least in his memory.
Potters travel to the mine once each year during the dry season and buy
the clay from the owner of the land. They often need from two hours to a
full day to go and obtain the clay. Since the clay is transported to the
potters' houses using a tumpline, two or more separate trips may be necessary. One potter measured the cost of the clay in this way, saying that
clay transported in five trips cost ten Quetzels.
The uniqueness of the Chinautla clay and its single source are well
recognized by local potters who sometimes refer to it as espirit ak'al
which means that it is a special clay and there is no other clay like it.
Furthermore, the singular deep underground source of the clay in contrast

367
to other clays is another reason potters call the clay espirit ak'al, which
is an apparent reference to the source of the clay in the underground spirit
world.
X-ray diffraction analysis of the white clay samples from Sacojito and
Chinautla which had their origin in the Chinautla clay course revealed that
most contained quartz (samples collected at Sacojito potters 12, 13, 14 and
19 and Chinautla potters 12 and 14) with a peak at 26.70. The sample from
Chinautla potter 8 did not show any crystalline minerals with the technique.
Feldspar occurred in the sample from Sacojito potter 14 (with a peak at
28.0). X-ray diffraction analysis of one sample of white clay by B. F.
Bohor of the Illinois State Geological survey showed that the white clay
was mostly kaolinite with some quartz; montmorillonite and attapulgite were
also present.
While clay is preferred for pottery making in Chinautla, but pottery can
also be made with 'colorado' (or ordinary) clay
ak'al or an
ak'al). This clay is exposed all along the bank of the river which flows
through the town and it is more abundant, closer to potters' houses and
thus easier for the potters to dig and transport than the white clay. It
is also cheaper than the white clay. For example, one potter pays .10
for the right to dig the red clay. Another potter paid .25 for one-half
arroba (about 12.5 pounds or 5.7 kg). All of these facto.rs induce some
potters to utilize this red clay, even though potters do not consider it as
a good clay for making pottery--particularly tinajas. Nevertheless, potters
say that it can be used to make all kinds of vessels although in actual
practice it is not used in this way. X-ray diffraction analysis of the red
clay from the Chinautla river bed, but collected in potters' households 12
and 4 reveal that quartz was the predominant mineral present with a peak at
26.70. There are probably clay minerals present as well in this clay, but
the methodology used in x-ray analysis did not permit the identification
of these minerals.
Chinautla potters prefer white clay for making tinajas (particularly
large ones) and apastes but prefer red clay to make tinajeras and ollas.
Tinajeras made with white clay are known, however, and tinajas and apastes
made with red clay occur but are infrequent, as are ollas made of white
clay. Red clay seemed to be predominant in the production of tinajeras,
incensarios, and certain miniature tinajas and figures used for toys and
banks. Some figures like angels, candle holders, lampstands, animals,
statuettes, and fancy pottery (with modeled designs) for the tourist
market are made of white clay.
Out of the twelve pottery-making households visited which provided
ethnographic information, four were using colorado clay (Table 4). Only
one potter used the clay to make tinajas, but produced apastes with the
clay as well. A second potter (C-14) made only a few pots of this red
clay. Only two potters used red clay exclusively: one produced tiny
tinajas, toys, figures, and incensarios, and another made ollas (cooking
pots) and apastes.
Potters recognize the superior quality of the white clay and often refer
to the difference between white and ordinary clay by saying that ordinary
clay 'pesa mucho.' At first this seems to express the presumable 'heaviness' of ordinary clay in comparison to the white clay, but it is also
possible that this expression may refer to the sadness and regret that
comes from witnessing the cracking and breaking of the pottery that results
from using the ordinary clay. Thus, the meaning of the term is unclear in
actual ceramic practice.

368

Other clays occur in the river bed besides the red clay. For example,
there is a black clay (ak'al
which is not used to make pottery and a
green clay (ak'al ikerja) which is referred to as arcilla de caballo. This
latter clay causes the pottery to crack or break a great deal during firing.
White clay occurs in the river bank also, but it is not clear whether it
could be used to make pottery or not. To my knowledge, Chinautla potters
did not exploit this clay for pottery making.
In summary, the clay resources of Chinautla are vast. Not only the
important source of white clay exists nearby, but there are large amounts
of red clays along the river that local potters can exploit. These clays
probably also provided a large repertoire for ancient potters who lived in
the area as well.
In order to keep the pottery from breaking 'sand' must be mixed with the
clay, and both red clay and white clay in Chinautla is tempered in this way.
The 'sand' is actually volcanic ash and x-ray diffraction analysis of one
sample from Chinautla (potter 4) showed that it is primarily glassy without
associated crystallized minerals. This ash blanketed much of the area in
time past, and in many locations this layer of ash is 50 to 100 m thick so
that with the extensive erosion in the Chinautla area, this ash material
is found almost everywhere (see Fig. 1). As one would expect, Chinautla
potters obtain this tempering material in many different locations. Some
potters only refer to a source 'in the forest' (presumably the ash on forest
floors on the barranca slopes) while others who live on the eroded sides
of the barranca have small mines for sand in their yard or close by. In
contrast to the river valley, the ash is close to the surface and easily
accessible in these locations. One potter who had such a mine sold sand
from it to other potters.
There is one area, however, which shows extensive exploitation of sand.
Over the low hill to the west of the pueblo, the trail slopes down to the
Rio Tzalja, crosses the river and then splits to go to Sacojito on the one
hand and the Finca Primavera white clay mine on the other. In the lower
part of the trail there are numerous excavated areas where potters have
obtained their sand. This location is the largest concentration of temper
mines in the region and is probably the most important source in
Chinautla. Several potters visited mentioned that they obtained their
sand in this location.
After vessels made in Chinautla have been formed and are leather hard,
they are usually slipped. Generally, but not always, pottery made with
white clay such as tinajas, incensarios, and modeled figures like angels,
animals, statuettes, and fancy pottery with modeled designs are slipped
with a white paint. Incensarios, toys and small figurines made with the
ordinary clay are slipped with a yellow paint (which fires to a brownishred) and decorated with a white paint. There are no data on the slipping
or painting on other items made of ordinary clay, but they are always
polished.
The white slip (which is also used to paint designs on pottery of
ordinary clay) comes from Lo de Reyes, a small community located northeast
of Chinautla, over the low escarpment to the east (see Fig. 1). This
source is also the source of white paint for potters in the Durazno area
and one Chinautla potter reported that a woman from Los Altos (a potterymaking canton in the Durazno area) buys the slip at the source and brings
it to Chinautla to sell to the potters there. One medium sized tinaja
full of the white paint sells for one Quetzal. Besides slipping her

369
vessels, however, one potter painted red flowers on her tinajas--a decorative technique used in Durazno.
Little data were collected on marketing of Chinautla pottery. This
aspect of pottery making in the community is sufficiently reported by
Reina (1959, 1960, 1966, 1969). One potter said she sold her pottery at
the market at the bus terminal in Guatemala City, while two others sold
their pottery for a tourist market. One of these latter women was commissioned by the owner of 'El Patio' (a tourist shop in Guatemala City) to
make fancy white slipped pottery. The other received an advance of five
Quetzals ($5 U.S.) for her pottery from a woman in the central market in
Guatemala City.
The infusion of plastic tinajas into the pottery market has worried some
potters. Plastic tinajas are cheaper than the clay ones, and one potter
believes that plastic tinajas lower the price of clay tinajas because
potters feel that in order to sell the clay vessels, the price must be
cheaper than the plastic ones. So, they lower their prices to remain
competitive with the plastic ones.
SACOJITO (SACAX)
Sacojito (9031'15" W. long.; 1442'20" N. lat.) is a Pokomam-speaking
community located 1.5 km northwest of Chinautla. Politically, Sacojito is
an aldea in the municipio of Chinautla and inhabitants claim that it is
more than 80 years old. In contrast to Chinautla which lies in the river
valley, Sacojito rests on top of a small portion of the high tableland,
and its correspondingly fertile Guatemala type (Gt) soils. All around the
community, however, are the highly eroded barrancas with much poorer (AFtype) soils. Although a few fields are located on the tableland in or near
the community, this land is generally insufficient for the subsistence
needs of the community and many fields are located on the barranca slopes
with its poorer soil.
Sacojito is a relatively isolated community which is somewhat difficult
to reach except by trail. A road from Milagro (a suburb of Guatemala)
travels northeastward to Sacoj and the Finca Paris before it turns northward towards Sacojito. The road is dirt and unimproved, with axel-deep
ruts and puddles in the rainy season. These difficulties plus a steep
incline of the road into Sacojito from the Finca Paris make travel to
Sacojito very difficult except with a four-wheeled drive vehicle.
There is no public transportation into the community, and except for a
truck which transports charcoal, firewood and pottery of the community
every week, there is no transportation out of the community. It is the
most isolated community of potters that was studied.
Foot trails link Sacojito to communities to the southeast and northwest.
A path leads from Sacojito down into the barranca to the Finca Primavera
and ultimately to Chinautla, and the walk to Chinautla takes about an hour.

leads from Sacojito to the Cakchiquel-speaking community of

Chillani to the northwest--where the women of Sacojito obtain their colorful huipils.
Sacojito has 26 households and residents claim a population of 200, with
41 families (Figure 19). Like elsewhere in the area, population tends to
be nucleated, and Sacojito is one such nucleated community. Some isolated
households, however, are located on the trail between Sacojito and Chinautla.

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Figure 19.

Sketch Map of Sacojito fPaths (dotted lines), buildings and positions of households
surveyed are illustrated. Wavy lines indicate lines of tress or agave cactus which
are usually houselot boundaries. Groups of three-pointed plant-like symbols indicate
a presence of a small milpa. SJ numbers refer to potters' households.]

371
Almost all of the households in Sacojito (23/26) make pottery. 7 Local
informants say that 30-35 women make pottery and this estimate is reasonably
accurate based on the author's observations in the community. Inhabitants
also noted that every woman knows how to make pottery. Genealogical data
for 65% (17/26) of the households revealed that the principal potters in
these households belonged to four extended families--one of which came
originally from Durazno and another from Lo de Fuentes (Figs. 20-23).
Of the 26 households in the community, 22 were visited, 20 of these
were potters and 19 provided ethnographic information on pottery making.
An occasional isolated pottery-making household is also located between
Sacojito and Chinautla, but no potters are located in Chillanf, or immediately north and west of the community.
Potters in Sacojito prefer white clay to make pottery and obtain it
during the dry season from the Chinautla source. It is a lot of work to
carry clay from Chinautla, but they regard it as a special clay which has
the highest quality. In practice, almost all of the potters use the white
clay.
Potters, however, say that clay occurs nearby in all of the barrancas,
and there are two other kinds of clay that they can use: black clay and
red clay. There is little data, however, on these two types of clay because of their infrequent use. Black clay fires to a whitish color.
Potters obtain it in the village of Chinautla and the probable source is
the outcrop of black clay on the banks of the river there. Its firing
characteristics and inexpensive cost would make it a desirable raw material,
but only one potter was observed producing vessels (cooking pots) with this
clay. Another potter reported that black clay was used only when white
clay was unavailable (i.e., during the rainy season when the clay mine in
Chinautla was inaccessible because of cave-ins).
Red clay (k'an ak'al anwag or k'an
ak'al) is also considered to be
inferior to the white clay. Like the black clay it can be used for all
types of pottery, but potters say that few people actually use it in this
way. In fact, in the summer of 1970, no potters were observed using this
kind of clay. One reason that the Sacojito potters do not use the red clay
is that their customers in Guatemala City will not buy vessels of red clay.
So, potters say that they use it only when they cannot obtain the white clay.
Red clay, like that found in Sacoj is available locally and is primarily
used for making cooking pots. There are at least two sources in the immediate vicinity:
(1) near a house behind the Sacojito church (west of household 12), and (2) down in the barranca immediately to the south of the
school. One other source may exist in one of the other barrancas. Several
potters pointed out that they do not make cooking pots from this clay even
though a source is nearby. Apparently, a different red clay is used to
make the tinajera because one potter pointed out that she knew how to make
this vessel, but there was no red clay of this type available in Sacojito.
?Households in this community as well as others in this study gradually
refer to residential units of often more than one house, which were usually
all part of one extended family. The 23 households which make pottery
include three households (SJ-21, SJ-22 and SJ-23) which were not visited
but which were reported to be potters by informants. Two additional households (SJ-24 and SJ-25) were not visited and it is not known whether there
were potters in these households or not. SJ-26 was also a store for the
community and the woman there did not make pottery, although she was
probably a potter.

372

Rather, this clay must be procured in Chinautla, probably from an outcrop

exposed along the river bank.
There are two sources for the sand
near Sacojito. One source
(Source 1) lies near the trail of Chillani about 30 m below the top edge of
the barranca immediately northwest of the community. The mine itself is a
relatively shallow hole dug into the volcanic ash on the side of the
barranca. The husband of one of the potters mines the sand from this location and sells it to potters. The second source (Source 2) lies east of
Sacojito along the trail to Chinautla and the Finca Primavera. In the
first 30-50 m below the top of the barranca along the trail, there is a
series of holes in the soft sand in the barranca slope where potters have
dug their temper. Judging by the size and number of holes, this location
has been heavily used and probably was the principal source of temper for
Sacojito potters in the past.
Source 1 is recent and relatively unused by
comparison.
Prices for temper vary. The husband of one potter who mines temper and
sells it to potters claims he charges two Quetzals ($2 U.S.) a sack, but
another potter said that it cost .10 a sack. Another said it costs .05
for a small pile.
Sacojito potters produce fewer vessel shapes than Chinautla potters.
Based on data obtained at about half (11/20) of the Sacojito pottery-making
households visited, Sacojito potters make more tinajas (Table 5) than any
other vessel shape. Jarras and ollas are the second most popular items
produced in Sacojito while batidors and apastes are next in popularity.
(Apastes are far less frequently made in Sacojito than at Chinautla).
Modeled items like candle holders, angels, incensarios or toys like those
made in Chinautla are not produced in Sacojito.
The least popular items made were two vessel shapes made in Sacojito
and not elsewhere. One was called tinaja pachito and is a basic tinaja
shape, but is flat (like a canteen) with a constricted neck.
It is used
to carry water to the fields (Fig. 24). The second, called apastilla is a
low flat dish for toasting coffee. Both vessels are made with white clay.
One potter in Sacojito made pottery in a special structure designed
especially for that purpose (Fig. 25). This structure was approximately

m square with a thatched roof and walls made of corn stalks. Pieces of
plastic were also used for roofing material under the roof on the inside
of the structure.
Inside of the structure was a raised platform for placing
completed pots for drying. The potter put plastic over these to keep water
from the roof from damaging the vessels. There was also a box of sand used
for temper and to place on the mold in order to keep the clay from sticking.
The potter sat facing a board and used the board for working the clay
and forming the vessels.
A similar structure was observed in Durazno, but it was used only for
storage of pottery. The activity of pottery making in such a structure
was not observed anywhere else in the area, but use by an old woman suggests that it may have been a more typical pattern for ceramic production
in the past.
Sacojito potters decorate the pottery made with white clay in three
basic ways.
Most frequent, however, is the production of undecorated
pottery. Most Sacojito potters polish the body clay of the vessel without
further treatment.
Some potters, however, throw a salt and sand mixture
on the pottery during the firing process, or immediately before it. This
activity produces characteristic organish blotches on the pottery, and may
leave some of the salt and mixture sticking to the side of the vessel.

373

SJ

6=0

=6

19

41

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9
9

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41

6=

114

6=0

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Figure 20.

I
9

=6

14

Genealogical Representation of a Family of Potters, Sacojito

[Numbers refer to household locations in Fig. 19; the square
refers to persons--children in this case--of unknown sex.]

0=0

=6

=6
20

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31

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116= I

26

24

SJ

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71

SJ

6=
5

6=

0
Figure 21.

A Second Family of Potters, Sacojito [The dotted lines

indicate patterns of learning pottery making. The older
women in this family originally came from Durazno.
Letters denote village of birth. ]

LF

=6
II

SJ

SJ SJ

=6
10

Figure 22.

=6

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211

131

SJ SJ

23

22

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A Third Family of
Potters, Sacojito

=6
12

Figure 23.

A Fourth Family of
Potters, Sacojito

374

Table 5.
Potter

Tinajas Apastes

Sacojito Vessel Types

Jarras

SJ- 1
SJ- 2

SJ- 3
SJ- 4
SJ- 5
SJ- 6
SJ- 7
SJ- 8
SJ- 9
SJ-10
SJ-11
SJ-12
SJ-13
SJ-14
SJ-15
SJ-16
SJ-17
SJ-18
SJ-19
SJ-20

27

Ollas
---

Batidors

25
28

Others

a,12astilla,
canteen

x
2(?)
17

x*
x

16

x*

x
x
x

canteen

All white ware except as noted.

*Black

clay.

Sometimes the ashes from the straw sticks to the melted sand on the pot.
The stated purpose of using this salt/sand mixture is to provide their
pottery customers with concrete evidence that the pottery has been fired.
One Sacojito potter said that white pottery is hard to sell because buyers
think it has not been fired. A second style (which is infrequent) is to
slip the pottery with white paint obtained from Lo de Reyes in the Durazno
area.
Potters polish the pottery after the slip is applied. A third style
is a painted style which is identical to that utilized in Durazno and tends
to be used on tinajas and an occasional apaste. After the pottery is
slipped white with the Lo de Reyes slip, it is decorated with a yellow
paint (kak ak'al or k'an ak'al) also obtained in the Durazno area which
turns red on firing (Fig. 26). The painting tool is a small piece of
twisted cloth.
The designs painted on the vessels vary, but they usually consist of
birds, feathers, leaves, flowers or a combination of these motifs. Some
vessels also have a red rim and a set of short parallel lines on the
handles.
Some vessels, like tinajas, may also have plastic decoration such
as finger indentations on rims.
The only potters who produce this painted pottery in Sacojito are the
four women who have come from the Durazno area (Table 6, Figs. 20-23).
The Durazno area is the source area of these red painted tinajas. Two
potters of local origin in Sacojito say that they do not use the white

375

Figure 24.

Canteen-Shaped Vessel (tinaja pachito)used to

Carry Water to the Milpa

Raised Platform

rs;-1

Figure 25. Floor Plan of Structure used

by SJ-4 for Making Pottery [Location
of structure is the square irrunediately
below the '4' in SJ-4 in Fig. 19. Not
drawn to scale.]

Boord
Door

Figure 26.

A Slipped, Red Painted Vessel Decorated in Durazno

Style Potter [Household is that of SJ-3.]

376

Table 6.
Potter's
Household
l

2
3
4
5
6

7
8

10
11

12
13

14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26

Origin of Sacojito Potters

Wife's Origin

Husband's
Origin

Sacojito (Sacoj
Grande) *

Sacojito

Durazno
Sacojito

Sacojito

Conunents
She learned pottery
when she came from
Sacoj Grande*

Sacojito
Chinautla (first wife,
Durazno)
Los Altos (Durazno)
Sacojito

Mothers and grandparents came from

Durazno

Sacojito
Sacojito
Mixqueno (Lo de
Fuentes)
Sacojito

Chillani
Sacojito
Mixqueno

Sacojito
Sacojito

Ortega **
Sacojito

Sacojito

Sacojito

Cumbre de Guayaba
(Durazno)
Sacojito
Sacojito
Sacojito

Sacojito
Sacojito
Sacojito
Sacojito

Sacojito
Chinautla

Sacojito
Sacojito

Sacojito

*contradictory data.
**Probably this is a reference to Finca San Jose Lo de Ortega, located
approximately 45 km due west of Sacojito.

paint, because they do not know how to use it. Another potter pointed out
that the red-on-white style was also used in Chinautla (although I only
observed it once among the 15 potters visited), but she doesn't use it even
though she knows how to paint, because the sources for the white slip and
red pairtt are too far away. Durazno potters use this style, she says,
because sources of these materials are closer to them.
Apart from potters' statements, however, the only limitation to using
this style is resource availability, as the materials are located in the

377

Durazno area. Few Sacojito potters travel to Durazno, and those who do
only go because they have relatives there. For example, two potters from
Durazno have brothers in the Durazno area. Furthermore, there is no
itinerant trader or merchant who comes to Sacojito to sell the white slip
or red paint. Nevertheless, the husband of one Durazno potter has a milpa
in Durazno which provides opportunity to visit his in-laws and obtain white
and red paint for his wife. She was the only potter actually observed
making tinajas in the Durazno style, although there may be others.
The different styles of decoration used in Sacojito are somewhat related
to the social structure of the community. Although most inhabitants surveyed indicated that they were natives of Sacojito, there were others in
the community who came from Durazno, Sacoj, Chinautla and elsewhere
(Table 6, Figs. 20-23). In most cases, it appears that occasional community exogamy plus patrilocal residence combine to bring women into the
community who utilize different decorative styles than those which Sacojito
potters use. It is clear that patrilocal residence is not universally
located in Sacojito.8 Moreover, it appears that Sacojito males also desire
skillful, hard-working potters as wives, as Reina (1966:57) mentioned in
Chinautla, to
subsistence activities, made necessary because of
a combination of population pressure and the poor agricultural land in the
region (see Arnold 1977). Of most interest, however, is that at least four
Sacojito males obtained wives from Durazno--a community some distance away
and much more difficult to reach by road or trail than nearby communities
like Chinautla or Sacoj.
Potters fire their pottery in an open space near the house and fire in
these same areas again and again. In Sacojito, more than any of the other
communities studied, pottery firing produces irregular and uneven patches
of fired clay on the ground in virtually every household (Figs. 27-29).
This feature is caused by repeated firing on soil with heavy clay content.
Thus, the firing area of each household can be easily observed by the red
baked clay area and the piles of broken sherds nearby used to keep the
pile of pottery from falling and to keep the flame and heat inside the
pile during firing. Found in areas where surface soils contain clay like
on the Guatemala (Gt) type soils, this feature could also occur in archaeological contexts on identical soil types (like in Kaminaljuyu and other
locations) where potters fired their pottery.
Since Sacojito is an isolated community with virtually no transportation
into or out of the community, there is only one pattern of transportation
for selling the vessels. On Friday, a truck comes to the community and
loads up pottery (and sometimes firewood and charcoal). The owner then
leaves his loaded truck at his house on Friday night, and drives it to the
terminal market the next morning. Meanwhile, Sacojito potters get up
early on Saturday morning and walk an hour to Milagro and take a bus to
the terminal market where they meet the truck driver at 6:30 am and obtain
their pots. Potters then sell them by the dozen or by two or three pieces
at a time. Large vessels like tinajas cost .40-.50, whereas small
vessels cost .30.
Many potters in Sacojito sell their pottery in the market at the bus
terminal in Guatemala City where buses leave for cities and towns all over
8From data in Table 6 and Figures 20-23, community exogamy is not a
widespread pattern, but occurred in 20% of the marriages documented.
Furthermore, most of these cases reveal a patrilocal residence pattern,
but two reveal a matrilocal pattern.

378

F igure 27.

Irregular Burned Clay Areas Resulting from Repeated

Firings
[Location is near household SJ-7.]

Figure 28.

Irregular Burned Clay Areas Resulting from Repeated

Firings
[Location is near household SJ-20.]

379

't

House

0
0

0
0
0

()Sherds

'f

t t t
t
t
t t
'f

Bushes

0
0
0

'.//

cS()
Pots

Ded

0
0

0
0

Trees

Clay
Areas

Poth

Figure 29.

Sketch of Houselot SJ-20 Showing Position of Broken Sherds

and Fire Baked Clay Areas [Positions of these areas in
most houselots in Sacojito are indicated in Figure 19 by
an irregularly shaped figure with a dot in the center.]

the country. Eight out of the ten potters which provided data on marketing
confirmed that they sold their pots at this location. One potter, however,
said that she sold her pottery in Milagro whereas another pointed out that
she could sell her pottery in any market in Guatemala.

DURAZNO (NAK'OY)
El Durazno is a predominantly Pokomam-speaking community located north of
Guatemala City and north-northeast of Chinautla and includes five cantones:
Durazno proper (La Joya), Cumbre de Guayaba, Arenales, La Laguneta, and
Los Altos. Politically, one alcalde auxilliar links the municipalidad in
Chinautla with Arenales and Durazno proper, and another alcalde auxilliar
links it with Los Altos, La Laguneta, and Cumbre de Guayaba. Like other
pottery-making communities in the area, Durazno is located in a region of
poor soil--the rocky, shallow Chinautla (Chn) type soil.
Since Durazno is only 3-4 km away from Guatemala City, it can be reached
by road from the suburb of Jacotales in less than 15 minutes. From Durazno
the road continues northward, first separating to go to San Jose Nacahuil,
then separating again with one branch to Lo de Reyes, and the other to San
Pedro Ayampuc. The road ends at San Jose Nacahuil, San Pedro Ayampuc, and

380

for all practical purposes at Lo de Reyes although the topographic map

shows an unimproved road turning south towards Guatemala City.
Potters are found in all of the cantones of Durazno. It is difficult
to estimate their number exactly, but there are probably at least 50
different households making pottery.
In areas to the north, east and south, pottery is reportedly not made.
Suburbs and colonias of Guatemala City lie to the south. To the east,
there are no indigenous people and no pottery is made there. Similarly, to
the northeast at Tres Sabanas, there are few indigenous people, but no
pottery is made there. One Chinautla potter who came originally from Tres
Sabanas said that red painted tinajas were produced at one time in Tres
Sabanas, but now the area was inhabited by Ladinos. The pottery from this
area, however, did not sell well, she said, and thus the inhabitants of
Tres Sabanas abandoned the craft. Finally, to the north is San Jose
Nacahuil, a Cakchiquel-speaking conununity which reportedly does not make
pottery, although there may be some potters in the area.
In the summer of 1970, the author visited 17 pottery-making households
in the Durazno area. Samples of different pottery and raw materials were
collected at each household, but some ethnographic information was collected
at 16 of these households. Visits were exclusively confined to the cantones
of Durazno proper, Los Altos and Arenales. Cumbre de Guayaba and La Laguneta
were not visited.
There are three classes of clay used in Durazno. Each has different
characteristics, is mined in different locations, and is used to make different vessel shapes. The first and most important clay is the black clay
used to make most pottery except the tinajera and in some cases ollas.
This clay fires to a near white which appears whiter than pottery made
with the white Chinautla clay, but often has a characteristic 'black core'
of unoxidized carbonaceous matter from the raw clay. Vessels made with
this clay are almost always slipped white and decorated with a yellow paint
which turns red in firing.
The black clay (ak'al
in Durazno comes from a singular source area
in the canton of Arenales and all the potters in El Durazno and Los Altos
obtain their black clay from this location.9 Here along the trail on the
west bank of the Rio Mogollon is an area of black clay which is pock-marked
with holes and extends for 100 m along the stream. The source is not a
single mine, or series of deep mines, but a number of these holes. Some of
the holes are shallow, but others are 2-3 m deep.
Potters apparently do not mine the clay themselves but buy it from the
owner of the land. The area with this black clay occurs on the property
of several different individuals, and because mining clay is a risky job,
clay is not mined in the rainy season to avoid cave-ins.
Not all black clays can be used to make pottery. It is necessary to
know how to select the good black clay for making pottery because if the
quality is poor, the pottery will crack. The women who make pottery and
those who mine it know how to select good clay.
The clay is expensive and appears to reflect the demand for clay, the
risk involved in mining, and the seasonality of production. Prices quoted
9rt is uncertain whether potters in the cantones of Cumbre de Guayaba
and La Laguneta use this source since those cantones were not visited.
Data presented here assume similarity of patterns described for all the
Durazno area, but is based on data obtained only in Arenales, Los Altos,
and Durazno proper.

381

by potters varied greatly from .50 to $15, depending on quality. One

pottery said a pile one-third meters high cost one Quetzal. Prices quoted
most frequently were $5-10.
X-ray diffraction was carried out on two samples of black clay--one from
household no. 5 and the other from household 7. Both samples contained
quartz with a peak at 26.70. Although clay minerals were undoubtedly
present, they were not identified.
A second class of clay can ak'al) is used for making ollas, which are
used for cooking food like corn. Olla
is a colorado (or red) and most
potters who used or mentioned this clay mined it on their own property in
small mines located near their houses. One potter said he sold his clay
to other potters for .50 a net full. Paste of olla clay is a mixture of
clay with little volcanic ash temper, but less is used in comparison to
the amount that is mixed in the black clay used for tinajas.lO Some
potters say that this clay is used exclusively for making ollas, while a
few said it can also be used to make the tinajera. It is rarely, if ever,
used to make other vessel shapes.
Three samples of olla clay were analyzed by x-ray diffraction. The
samples from households 17 and 7 came from sources near the potters' houses.
A sample from household" 10 came from another unidentified source although
there was a mine for olla clay near the household. All of these samples
showed the presence of quartz. Samples from households 7 and 17 showed a
quartz peak at 26.6, while the sample from household 10 showed a complete
quartz pattern, with an additional peak at 28.00 indicating the presence of
oligoclase feldspar. Other minerals like clay minerals were probably also
present, but none were identified.
A third and minor class of clay used by Durazno potters is the clay used
to make tinajeras. Relatively few potters mentioned it, and there was little
agreement about it. One potter claimed she bought the clay. Another said
she obtained the clay near the church at Las Lomas, a small community located
along the road to San Jose Nacahuil. A third potter used the Las Lomas clay
to make ollas, while another claimed to have the tinajera clay in her yard
and used it to make both the olla and tinajera. A couple of potters said
that the difference between olla clay and tinajera clay was slight. This
belief probably accounts for the variation in potters' statements about
using each of these two kinds of clay for either the olla or the tinajera.
One sample of tinajera clay was analyzed by x-ray diffraction. This
sample was collected at household 9, and was obtained in Las Lomas, a
community along the road to San Jose Nacahuil. This sample contained
montmorillonite or chlorite (with a peak at 6.2), possible montmorillonite
(with a peak at 10.6), talc (with a peak at 28.7), and quartz (with a
peak at 26.70).
Like the potters in Sacojito and Chinautla, Durazno potters use a
volcanic ash to temper their pottery. Because of the different geological
history of the Durazno area, volcanic ash is not as abundant there as it is
in Chinautla and Sacojito. While one potter said that the sand temper
!Orn an earlier paper (Arnold 1977) I erroneously mentioned that
Durazno utilized a red untempered clay to make cooking peters (Table l in
that paper) whereas, in reality, non-plastics (although fewer) are added
to red clay as well as black clay to make cooking pottery. Furthermore,
ceramic decorative patterns in Sacojito include applique and modeling
occasionally, as well as the use of the salt/sand mixture already mentioned
in Table 2 of that paper.

382

could be obtained almost anywhere, almost all potters indicated that they
obtained their temper from two main sources. The majority of potters
interviewed (ten) indicated that they obtained their sand from a location
near Chinautla about a three-hour walk away. The second source (mentioned
by four potters) was located near the Finca Buena Vista near Jocotales, a
suburb of Guatemala City.
In addition, there were several minor sources of temper. One potter
said that sand could be obtained in the forest where her husband made
charcoal, and two potters suggested that temper could be obtained in the
community of Chinautla itself. Still another potter indicated that temper
could be obtained at San Juan, an unknown location. Prices for temper vary,
but potters mention the cost of temper as follows:
(1) one quintal at .20;
(2) one sack from Chinautla at .15; and (3) one small net full from Buena
Vista at .25.
Although the two major sand sources were the most frequently mentioned
by potters, none of the sand sources were visited in the Durazno area.
Thus, more detailed information about them was not available.
From the sample of 16 households from which data on vessel shapes were
obtained, the tinaja was the most frequently produced shape (Table 7).
The olla was the next most frequently produced shape, with the apaste and
the jarra, respectively, the next most frequently produced shapes.ll
Floreros, incensarios, tinajeras, batidors, apastillas, maseterohs (an
unknown and unidentified shape) and cajetes were made only occasionally.
The cajete is one vessel made in Durazno, but not elsewhere. The cajete
is similar to a small apaste except it has two adornos or appendages placed
on the rim of the vessel and it is made from the molde without the addition
of more clay by means of modified coiling. The cajete is only made by the
older potters.
Most of the pottery (except the ollas and the tinajera) is made with
black clay. Production of other vessels (like apastes) with red clay was
observed rarely and is not a common pattern. Tinajeras are made of red clay
exclusively.
The olla
in Pokomam) can be made with several types of clay:
(1) on---a;-kakak'al, 'red clay,' (2) on de sul ak'al, 'black clay,' and
(3) on de sak ak'al, 'white clay.' The latter two types of ollas are
painted and have a rim, but one potter claims that the mouth is different
for each class of clay.
The olla of red clay (man ax nem Mon) is also called 'olla de fuego'
or loosely translated, 'cooking pot.' This vessel is used for cooking
beans, and it is said that the flavor of the beans is not lost when they
are cooked in a vessel of this clay. Red clay ollas do not have a flaring
rim like those made in Chinautla and Sacojito. Ollas of red clay are also
much thicker than those of black clay.
Ollas can also be made with black clay, and are usually slipped white
and painted with red designs (Fig. 30). One potter said that ollas made
with this clay does not take away the flavor of the beans.
No data are available on ollas made from the third class of clay--white
clay. This may be a reference to the ollas made with white clay in
Chinautla and Sacojito, but it is uncertain.
llrn Durazno, as well as elsewhere, old ollas and other pottery like
apastes and tinajas are frequently placed under the eaves of a house to
catch water draining off the roof.

383

Table 7.
Tinaja
Number of
potters in
sample
making the
vessel*

Durazno Vessel Types

Olla

Apaste Jarra Florero

Other Shapes

tinajera (2)
13

3 (red ware)

incensario (2)

3 (white ware)

batidor (2)

5 (ware not

aEastilla (1)

recorded)
cajete (1)
*sixteen out of 17 potters visited provided data.

One potter noted that clay from San Ramon or Pitacaq (probably Petaca,
a tiny community located 5 km northeast of San Pedro Ayampuc at 900 25' 24"
W. long. and 140 49" N. lat.) made good ollas for putting on the fire, and
draws out the flavor of the beans.
The most distinctive characteristic of Durazno pottery is the use of a
black clay cu1 ak'al) for forming the pottery and the use of a white slip
on the vessels painted with red designs (Figs. 31-32). The crude unfired
pottery from Durazno looks a deep purple, but when fired turns a whitish
color and in some respects seems even more whitish than the pottery from
Chinautla. Nevertheless, Durazno potters do not leave their pots unslipped,
as potters do in Sacojito. They claim that in order to turn out pretty,
the pottery must be slipped and painted. They occasionally fire the slipped
pottery without painting it, and several potters mentioned that they produce and market unpainted, but white slipped pottery (like apastes or
tinajas). Potters also may place tiny modeled adornos on the handles of
tinajas which can also be painted.
Only the tinajas, aEastes, jarras and ollas made with the black clay are
slipped white and painted; red ware vessels are only polished. Potters say
they can paint what they like on the pottery and can copy drawings, or paint
birds, chickens or animals. Descriptions of some painted tinajas and
aEastes are given in Appendix 5.
Pottery with a white slip and red paint is a characteristic of Durazno
pottery, but some women from Durazno have taken the practice of slipping
and painting the pottery with them when they have moved elsewhere--probably
because of a combination of some community exogamy and patrilocal residence.
Generally, however, potters who are natives of Chinautla and Sacojito do
not make pottery in the Durazno style.
The flow of potters from Durazno and Sacojito does not seem to be matched
by a reverse flow. No one from Chinautla lives in Durazno, and it is not
known whether there are Sacojito potters in Durazno; there are, however,
four Durazno potters in Sacojito.
The white paint used for a slip is obtained at mines near Lo de Reyes, a
small community located 5 km northeast of Durazno. Paint costs .25 or $1

384

Figure 30.

Ollas of White Slipped Black Clay,

Decorated with Red Designs

for a tonativo or a tonal. Also one potter reported that the paint can
be purchased at Labor Vieja, a community 1 km south of Lo de Reyes.
In the summer of 1970, one informant complained that the white paint
from Lo de Reyes was inferior saying that it was sandy and fired to a cream
color, rather than a white color.
He also claimed that the owner had died
and the caretaker was no longer selling the white slip clay from the
property. Furthermore, the white slip clay was not mined during the rainy
season, and therefore fresh slip clay from the mine was unavailable.
Three x-ray diffraction analyses were made on the white slip from Lo de
Reyes. An analysis by B. F. Bohor of Illinois State Geological Survey of
a sample collected at the source revealed that the material was mostly
kaolinite with montmorillonite, attapulgite and a lot of quartz. X-ray
studies of two samples by Herbert McKinstry and Altheria Underwood
revealed:
(1) the sample collected at the source showed the presence of
quartz peaks at 20.9 and 26.7 and peak for clay prisms at 19.9, (2) a
sample collected at household 7 in Durazno showed the presence of quartz
with peaks at 20.9 and 26.7 and a peak for clay prisms at 20.0. Unfortunately, McKinstry and Underwood did not use methods (like those used by
Bohor) which would reveal the occurrence of clay minerals.
The white paint source at Lo de Reyes lies approximately 1 km south of
the community near the road to Labor Vieja.
The sources for this material
lie along the Mogollon river and can be reached by walking west of the road
after it crosses the river. The mines lie along the river bed immediately

385

Figure 31.

A Red Painted Tinaja Made of Black Clay, Durazno

Figure 32.

A Red Painted Tinaja Made of Black Clay, Durazno

386
before it swings north then east and crosses the road. One series of three
small mines lie along a stretch of 50 feet along the stream and extend into
the steep banks. All the mining areas in this immediate vicinity are dug
into the bank along the river or are adjacent to it. There are caved-in
mines on the northside of the stream, and an informant said that there were
other mines in the
further downstream, one further upstream than
the ones described here and one further up the hill to the south.
The clay miner only mines paint in the dry season when potters come to
buy it; only women buy it. At .60 a sack he said he sells $15 worth of
clay a year with an occasional low year of only $10. In earlier times
he said he sold $5 worth of paint every day, but there are fewer potters
now.
The owner of the land on which the white paint occurs lives in Guatemala
City. A caretaker, however, lives on the land and mines and sells the
paint, and has been doing so for 25 years. In return for the services of
the caretaker, the owner permits rent-free use of the land for his milpa
but the caretaker must pay the owner for all the paint he mines and sells.
One male informant from Sacojito, who has relatives and a milpa in
Durazno, travels two hours to the white slip source on foot. Both men and
women travel from Chinautla to obtain it and frequently load mules with it
to transport to Chinautla.
There is little direct evidence that the mines at Lo de Reyes are
ancient. One local inhabitant said that the mining area had been a source
for the white slip for about 60 years. The miner, however, thought the
mines were at least 50 years old. At the Lo de Reyes crossroads, however,
there are a series of mounds which tentatively date architecturally to
the Preclassic, Middle and Late Classic periods. Although these structures
(several pyramids, a stela-oriented complex and a ballcourt) are not
directly associated with mining activity in any way, the site lies in the
midst of some of the poorest soil in the valley (the Chinautla-type soils).
Habitation refuse extends southward, almost to the white slip source.
This fact suggests there was some other reason for the location of the
site, and its close proximity to the white slip clay suggests the site may
have been an important ancient mining or pottery-making community.
To prepare the white clay from Lo de Reyes for use as a slip, it must
be soaked in water and filtered through a cloth before it is applied to
the exterior of the vessel. After application the vessel is polished.
Potters use a yellow clay (kak' akal) to paint the designs on the
pottery. This material is mined in the canton of Arenales, in an area
located upstream along the Mogollon river from where the city is mined,
but on property owned by another individual. 12 The mining location is
marked by a number of small holes, but paint can be obtained by digging
anywhere along the steep west bank of the stream. Since much less red
paint than clay is utilized to make pottery, the size of the holes from
which the paint is extracted is small and the mining location is thus hard
to locate.
The raw material is a yellow earthen-like material which fires to a red
color. It is mined along the lower part of the steep bank of a stream
approximately one-half way up the talus of eroded material. In mining the
paint, the surface material of 3-8 cm must be removed before one finds the
substrate of usable paint.
12one potter claimed that red paint was obtained from the same source
as the white paint.

387

Potters usually do not mine the paint at the source, but buy it from
the owners of the land on which the paint occurs. There is some disagreement about the persons who own this land. One potter said that the owner
lives across the road from the Durazno church and another potter was
observed approaching this household to buy the paint. Another potter said
that the owner of land lives in Guatemala City. Nevertheless, almost all
potters in Durazno use this yellow paint to decorate their pottery. One
informant reported that a Chinautla potter comes to Durazno to buy the paint
for use in Chinautla.
X-ray diffraction analyses of a sample of red paint obtained at the source
revealed the presence of quartz with peaks at 20.9, 26.7, and 36.6, and
perhaps feldspar with a peak at 2a.0. An unidentified peak occurred at
41.5. More intensive studies of this material may reveal the presence of
more minerals.
Preparation of the paint for decorating the pottery first involves soaking the crude paint in water (usually in an olla or apaste). Then several
hours later the potter strains the mixture through a cloth to assure that
it is smooth. Chicken feathers are then used to apply the fine fraction
of the paint to make designs on the pottery.
From available data, Durazno potters sell their pottery exclusively in
the markets and plazas of Guatemala City. Several potters indicated that
they sold their pottery in any of the markets. One indicated a preference
for the terminal market, but another indicated that she sold her pottery
anywhere the trucks went in Guatemala that transported her pottery. One
potter sold her pottery by the dozen or individually, at .30-.40 each,
while another sold it only individually.
CONCLUSIONS
The pottery-making communities in the Valley of Guatemala are Mixco, La
Cienega, Sacoj, Chinautla, Sacojito, and Durazno. Sacoj and Mixco have
few potters, but the remainder of the communities have many potters, and
pottery making substantially supplements subsistence activities in these
communities since all the communities lie on poor agricultural land.
The community of La Cienega (and nearby San Raimundo) speaks Cakchiquel
but all the remainder of the communities speak Pokomam. This linguistic
pattern is further reflected in the differences in the fabricating techniques utilized. All of the Pokomam-speaking communities use a mold-like
device for forming part or all of a vessel, whereas the Cakchiquel
communities form their pottery by hand on the ground.
Different communities produce different kinds of vessel shapes. Mixco
potters make exclusively comals, whereas La Cienega potters make comals and
ollas. Potters in Durazno, Sacojito and Chinautla make an almost identical
set of shapes. The few potters in Sacoj make shapes similar to Durazno,
Sacojito and Chinautla.
Each community of potters utilizes local resources to make its pottery
and these resources are in part responsible for the differences among the
pottery (Fig. 1). Mixco and La Cienega potters utilize clay with abundant
non-plastics which comes from a diversity of sources in/or near the
community. Sacojito and Chinautla potters make much of their pottery with
a white clay which is tempered with a glossy volcanic ash. Durazno potters
make most of their pottery with a black clay which is also tempered with a
volcanic ash but slip their pottery white and usually paint it with red

388

designs. Chinautla potters also import the white slip and use it on some
of the vessels made there. Chinautla and Durazno make pottery with red
clays which come from multiple sources along the river in Chinautla, in
many households in Durazno, and in nearby Las Lomas.
Most important, the vessel shapes, techniques, resources and decorative
styles may make it possible to identify the community of origin of archaeological pottery which was made in the valley. Comals, of course, are
readily identifiable by shape and by the use of the shiny, talc covered
concave surface, but vessels made in Mixco can be distinguished from those
made in Le Cienega by the pattern of the talc painting and the technique of
fabrication of the vessels revealed on the underside of the comals. For
example, Mixco comals have a curved but rough and pitted underside while
La Cienega (and presumably San Raimundo) comals have a sharp angle on the
outer edge of the smooth underside which shows evidence of scraping marks.
Similarly, pottery made using the white clay from the Chinautla source may
be generally identified by the lack of red painted decoration and the
absence of unoxidized black organic matter trapped inside the vessel walls
('a black core'). Red painted, but white slipped, vessels of the shape
described here with a black core come from Durazno, although there may be
occasions when the black organic matter in the Durazno clay could be completely oxidized in firing.
Chinautla pottery is usually slipped white whereas Sacojito pottery
often has orange blotches from the salt/volcanic ash mixture placed on the
pottery before or during firing. These guidelines are not hard and fast,
however and there are exceptions. For example, ollas and other vessels
made of red clay are almost always impossible to attribute to a particular
conununity. Sacoj ollas, however, can easily be distinguished from the
Chinautla red wares because of the deeper red-brown quality of the Sacoj
ollas in contrast to the orangish-red color of the Chinautla red ware. The
paste of course is also different. Red wares in Durazno were observed too
infrequently for generalization; and Sacojito potters seldom, if ever,
produce red wares. Nevertheless, this paper should provide important data
on understanding the source/origin of archaeological pottery from the
Valley of Guatemala made in the same tradition described here.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Office of the Vice President for Research of The Pennsylvania State
University supported this research through a National Science Foundation
Institutional Grant. The co-directors of the Penn State Kaminaljuyu
Project, Joseph W. Michels and William T. Sanders, also provided assistance
and support in the field, and the Wheaton College Alumni Faculty Development fund, the Research Office of the College of the Liberal Arts of The
Pennsylvania State University, and the Vice President for Academic Affairs
of Wheaton College provided support for preparing the illustrations for
publication. Herbert McKinstry, assisted by Altheria Underwood, sununer
intern, Materials Research Laboratory of The Pennsylvania State University,
and B. F. Bohor, Illinois State Geological Survey, made the mineralogical
identifications (by x-ray diffraction) of the raw material samples mentioned
in this paper. Richard Stellway, Chairman of the Department of Sociology
and Anthropology provided support for secretarial help needed to complete
this paper. Finally, I am particularly grateful to Pauline Roelofs, Sue
Pantle, and Nina Buker who typed the various drafts of this manuscript
and saw it through to its successful conclusion.

389

REFERENCES CITED
Arnold, D. E. 1971. Intercommunity ceramic differences among the central
Pokomam, Guatemala. Paper presented at the American Anthropological
Association, New York City.
1977. Ceramic variability, environment and culture history
among the Pokom in the Valley of Guatemala. In The Spatial Organization
of Culture. I. Hodder (ed.). Duckworth Press, London.
(In press.)
Arrot, C.R. 1967. Ceramica actual de Guatemala (Mixco Nuevo).
Antropologia e Historia de Guatemala, 19: 65-71.
Borhegyi, S. F.
1961. Steps in present day pottery making in
Chinautla, Guatemala. Katunob Newsletter Bulletin, 2 (1): 56-57.
Feldman, L. H.
1971. A Tumpline Economy: Production and Distribution
Systems of Early Central Guatemala. Doctoral Dissertation,Department
of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park.
Institute Indigenista Nacional. 1948. Chinautla, sintesis socio-economica
de una comunidad indigena Guatemalteca. Publicaciones Especiales del
Institute Indigenista Nacional, No. 4. Guatemala.
Reina, R. E. 1959. Continuidad de la cultural indigena en una comunidad
Guatemalteca. Cuadernos del Seminario de Integracion Social Guatemalteca,
Primer Serie, No. 4. Guatemala.
1960. Chinautla, a Guatemalan Indian community. Middle
American Research Institute Publication, 24: 55-130. Tulane University,
New Orleans.
1966. The Law of the Saints: A Pokomam Pueblo and Its
Community Culture. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., Indianapolis.
1969. Eastern Guatemala highlands: The Pokomames and Chorti.
The Handbook of Middle American Indians, 7: 101-132. University of
Texas Press, Austin.
Simmons, C. S., J.M. Tarano T. and J. H. Pinto A. 1959. Clasificacion
de reconocimiento de los suelos de la Republica de Guatemala.
Institute
Agropecuario Nacional Servicio Cooperative Inter-americano de Agricultura, Ministerio de Agricultura. Guatemala.
Smith, R. s. 1949. Ceramica elaborada sin torno, Chinautla, Guatemala.
Antropologica e Historia de Guatemala, l (2): 58-61.

390

Appendix 1

MEASUREMENTS OF SACOJ GRANDE COOKING POTS

Mouth
Diameter
(cm)

Greatest
Diameter
(cm)

Height
(cm)

27.5
34
17.5
25
26
23.5
26.5
25
21
30
24
29
22
28.5
32
31.5
29
24
29.5
24
30
28
28.5
32.5
32.5
32

36
49
25.5
26
28
25
28.5
30
26.5
36
26.5
34
23.5
31
44
38
32
26
34.5
26.5
39
30
32
44
47
45

28.5
41.5
20
22.5
25
22.5
28.5
26
23
29
22
29
19
26
35
32
29.5
22.5
29
22.5
32
25
27
35
38
38

SG-lB

24.5
25
23
25
21.5
22.5
13.5
11.5

26
28
25
27
24
25
19.5
22

22
22.5
21.5
23.5
20.5
22.5
18
20

SG-lA/B

18.5
23

Potter
SG-lA

18
19.5

Fired repertoire of two potters in the same household.

Comments

Small mouth

391

Appendix 2A

COMAL DIAMETERS FROM MIXCO POTTER NO. 1

Diameter
(cm)

No.
Fired

14
41
42
44
46
46.5
47
47.5
48
49
50
50.5
51
51.5
52.5
53
54.5
55

1
2
1

Total

No.
Unfired

1
2
4
2
1
2
1
2
1
4
1
1
2

1
1
1

1
13

19
Total
coma ls

32

392

Appendix 2B

COMAL DIAMETERS FROM MIXCO POTTER NO. 2

Diameters
(cm)
22
22.5
23
23.5
24
24.5
41
41.5
42
42.5
43
47
47.5
48
48.5
49
49.5
50

No. of
Comals
1
8
34
43
9
1
4
7
3
2
1
1
1
3
3

5
1
1

Total

All fired.

128

393

Appendix 2C
COMAL DIAMETERS FROM MIXCO POTTER NO. 3

Diameter
(cm)

No.
Fired

16
29.5
31
40.5
41
41.5
42
42.5
44
46.5

No.
Unfired

1
1
1
3
1

1
1

Totals

13

394

Appendix 3
CHINAUTLA VESSEL SHAPE MEASUREMENTS {in cm)

Potter

c-

Mouth
Diameter

Width

Height

Ware

Shape

White

Tinaja

11

19.5

23

C-13

12

22.5

26

Tinaja

22.5

27

Tinaja

9.5
23.5
9.5

All pottery is fired.

12

Red

AEaste

10.5

White

Batidor

395

Appendix 4A

MEASUREMENTS OF WHITE WARE TINAJAS FROM SACOJITO

Potter
SJ-1
SJ-3

SJ-8

Mouth
Diameter
(cm)

Greatest
Diameter
(cm)

11.5

27.5

30

28
9
13
10
14.5
18
16
16.5
9.5
16
7
14
13.5
7.5
15
13
15.5
9
15
9.25
14.5
14
9.5
14
7.5
14
14
11
12
14.5
13.5
13
16.5
17.5

38
33
30
31
31
38
36
36
31.5
34
34
32.5
32.5
33
33
33
36
35.5
35
21.5
31
31.5
32
31.5
31
32
31.5
23
21
32
32.5
32.5
36.5
36.5

50.5
38
30
34
31
35.5
35.5
33
32
34
35
29
29.5
35
31
36

11
9.5
11.5

25.5
27
26
27
27.5
26
28

30
29.5
29
29
30.5
30.5
32

13. 5
13
13

Height
(cm)

37
31
26
32
34.5
34
34
35
33
31.5
23.5
22
35
31
32
36.5
36.5

Comments
P(Plain)
2
D(Decorated)
p

D
D

p
p
p
p
p
p
p
p
p
p

D
D
D
D

D
D
D

p
p
p

p
p
p

p
p
p

396

Potter

SJ-7

Mouth
Diameter
(cm)

Greatest
Diameter
(cm)

Height
(cm)

14.5
13.5
15
14
13.5
13.5
13.5
13.5
13.5
13.5
14
10
14
13
13.5
14
9
6.5
11

28
27.5
28
33
32.5
34
32.5
34
34
34
32.5
35
33
34
32
32.5
15
17.5
20

31.5
30.5
31
35
33.5
34.5
35.5
35
34.5
34.5
34.5
34.5
35.5
34.5
34.5
35
17.5
20
23.5

p
p
p
p
p
p
p
p
p
p
p
p
p
p
p
p
p
p
p

8.5
8

30
29.5

30
31

7
7
9.5
8
9
9.5
14
13
14.5
14
14
13.5
12.5
13.5
13
13

21
30
36.5
28
29.5
29.5
30
29.5
30.5
30
30
29
23.5
24.5
22.5
29.5

22.5
32
41
30.5
32
31
31
31
31
32
32
29.5
26
25
23
31.5

RR3; AH 4
Molded flowers on body
RR; AH
RR
RRI AH; AUB 5

14
10.5
13
14
14
14
15.5

30.5
30
30
29.5
28.5
31
29

32
32
32
29
32
32
30

Comments

RR; AH; AUB

RR
RR

RR
RRI AH
RR
RRI AH
RR
RR
RR; Molded

flowers on
body
RR
Plain rim
RR; AH
RR
RR
RR
RR

397
Appendix 4A:

Notes

1. It is uncertain whether these pots were measured when they were

fired or unfired.
2. A dash indicates that data is missing.
3. RR - 'Ruffled Rim,' i.e., finger indentations on the rim.
4. AH - Small adornos placed on top of the handle.
5. AUB - A small adorno placed on the upper body perpendicular to the
place of the handles.

Appendix 4B
MEASUREMENTS OF MISCELLANEOUS VESSEL SHAPES
OF WHITE WARE FROM SACOJITO

Potter
SJ-7

SJ-8

Mouth
Diameter
(cm)

Greatest
Diameter
(cm)

Height
(cm)

Vessel Shape

20

22

17.5

Olla? (probable
shape)

18

21.5

21

Olla? (probable
shape)

18

24

Jarra

9.5
18
25.5

8.5

Apaste

12.5

A12aste

398

Appendix 5

MEASUREMENTS OF VESSEL SHAPES FROM DURAZNO

Potter

Mouth
Maximum
Diameter Diameter

Height

Vessel Shape *

22
23
14

25
25.5
17

Tinaja
Tinaja
Tinaja

8
8.5

14.5
14.5

17
17.5

Jarra
Tinaja

14.5

17.5

Tinaja

14.5

18

Tinaja

9
7

14.5
14

17.5
18.5

7.5

14

17

Tinaja
Small
Tinaja
Jarra

11.5

24.5

28

Tinaja

D-3
(fired)

11.5

26

29.5

Tinaja

D-5
(unfired)

21
19.5

26
26

21.5
23

Olla {red)
Olla (red)

D-6
(unfired)

10.5
10
9.5
10.5
10.5
10
10
9.5
10.5
10.5
10.5
9.5
11

22.5
23
22.5
23.5
21.5
22
24
24
22.5
24
23.5
23
23

25
25
26
27
24
23.5
26.5
25
24
27
25
25.5
25.5

Tinaja
Tinaja
Tinaja
Tinaja
Tinaja
Tinaja
Tinaja
Tinaja
Tinaja
Tinaja
Tinaja
Tinaja
Tinaja

D-2
(fired)

10.5
11.5
8.5

Comments

4
1
2
3
D ; RR ; PR ; PS ;
C(2) 5 ; L(5+6) 6
D; PR; PS; H7; SL8
D PR PS LV;

'
D; PR; PS; C(2 rows
each 1 cm high,
.5 cm wide); L{4+5)
D; PR; PS; L(6+6);
Le(7)
D; PR; PS; L; xlO
(Plain or no data?)
Length of spout =
7.5 cm; D; PR; PS;
L; c (1)
D; PR; PS; L; yll

399

Potter
D-7
(fired)

Mouth
Maximum
Diameter Diameter

Height

Vessel Shape *

Comments
p512; RR;

12

30

29

Tinaja

11.5
11.5
8

29
29
32.5

32
30
29.5

Tinaja
Tinaja
Tinaja

12
12

28.5
28.5

31
28.5

Tinaja
Tinaja

D; PR;
LH13
D; PR;
D; PR;
D; PR;
LH
D; PR;
D; PR;

11
11
11

25
34
27
28

15
28.5
31
29

AEaste
Tinaja
Tinaja
Tinaja

RLA16; LH(3); 17
PR; PS; LV (4); 18
19
PR; LH(4); PS; 20

D-8

DR14; RR; LH
DR; RR; LH
DR; AH15; RR;
DR; RR; LH
PS; RR

*ware if other than white.

Appendix 5:

Notes

1. Decorated.
2. RR
'Ruffled Rim,' finger indentations on rim.
3. PR - Rim painted red.
4. PS
Red scallops pendant from exterior of rim.
5. C
- Concentric rows of vertical red lines on the upper body.
(The number of rows are in parentheses.)
6. L
- Series of red parallel lines on upper part of handles.
(Numbers indicate number of lines on each handle.) LV - vertical lines.
7. H
- Horizontal stripes on the entire length of the handle.
8. SL - Spiral alternating with leaf (4 pairs) on upper body of vessel.
9. Le - Leaves on upper body around design field.
(Number of leaves
are in parentheses.) The style of leaves may differ from vessel to vessel
(e.g., Le(6) above has different style of leaves than Le(7).)
10. X
- Design on upper body is divided into two fields. On each of
the fields is a wavy line bordered by short vertical lines which are
attached to it--like leaves. When asked what kind of drawing it was, the
potter replied: "It is a curved line with dots."
11. Y - The area on upper body is divided into two fields--one on
either side of the handles. A wavy line on one side of the handle has
spirals, the base of which touch the lines. The one on the upper part of
the line is divided into three sections. One section consists of short
vertical lines. In between each of those sections is a small spiral. The
other side is exactly the same pattern except the upper part of the design
on the vessel has only two parts. It does not have the upper part of the
design. It has entirely short, thick lines which are only broken by one
spiral at the base of that wavy line also.

400

12. The pendant scallops on outside of rim are solid red (rather than
just lines) .
13. LH - Short horizontal lines on handle (the number in parentheses
is the number of lines present.)
14. DR - Heavy dotted line on the exterior of the rim; probably a
sloppily executed scallop (see 12 above) .
15. AH - Adornos (little appendages) placed on top of the handles.
16. RLA - Parallel lines on rim at right angles to edge of rim.
17. Around the upper 4 cm of the edge on the outside is a long featherlike design alternating with a leaf design on one side with some vertical
lines between each. Inside there is a circle with four leaves at four
corners, then opposite feather-like designs (see Fig. 31).
18. On one side of the body of the vessel are two hens. Below one hen
is a spiral with a leaf design in front. In back of the other hen is a
spiral and below that a leaf. Above one of the handles is another leaf.
On the other side of the vessel are also two hens, and in front of one is
a feather design. On top of the hen is another feather design and behind
it is a leaf design. Between the two hens a spiral, and in front of the
next one is a feather design. Behind the hen and below it to the rear is
a leaf design and above the rear of the hen is a feather design.
19. This tinaja has a curved line with alternating bifold rotational
symmetry on this design. There is an alternating feather on top, spiral
on top, then feather on bottom, leaf on top, spiral on bottom, leaf on
bottom, and spiral on top. The symmetry is broken here with the feather
design on top and spiral on the bottom, and feather design next to the
spiral. Then, there are two spirals opposite one another.
20. This tinaja has a similar plan of decoration as 19 above, only there
is relatively unbroken bilateral symmetry for each side.
One side:
top - leaf/spiral/feather/spiral
bottom - leaf/spiral/leaf
Other side: top - spiral/feather/spiral
bottom - spiral/leaf