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This McDonald Corrugated ceramic bowl resembles a stitched basket. A potter living along Arizona’s Mogollon Rim likely made this bowl in the 13thcentury. The bowl features a painted design and corrugation. Outside the Mogollon Highlands, corrugation was primarily reserved for cooking pots. Here, corrugation is purely decorative. In fact, other decorative choices negate many of the ways in which corrugation would be useful for a cooking pot. If heated, the pot’s black, smudged interior would oxidize and turn red. Corrugation also offers “grip-ability”, and yet the potter polished over and smoothed corrugated indentations. Pots like this one blur the line archaeologists have historically (and problematically) drawn between utility and aesthetics. On one hand, smudged pottery is more watertight and resistant to abrasion. On the other hand, the individual(s) who created this vessel may have been displaying what anthropologist Earl H. Morris called “virtuosity”—playing with techniques and making a pot that looks like a basket.
Maxwell Object Monday: McDonald Corrugated Serving Bowl
Name: McDonald Corrugated Serving Bowl
Dates and Period: ca. A.D. 1200-1250
Division: Archaeology
Maxwell Catalog #: 40.4.163
Post By: Genevieve Woodhead
Smudged, painted, and corrugated Mogollon brown ware serving bowl